Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Names Five Artists for One-Time Centennial Award
A century after Robert Rauschenberg’s birth, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation is marking the occasion with a single, high-impact gesture: a one-time Centennial Award that places $100,000 of unrestricted support into the hands of five artists and writers connected to the foundation’s storied Captiva Island residency.
The recipients are American artist Senga Nengudi (b. 1943), Caribbean-American interdisciplinary artist David Thomson, poet Patricia Spears Jones, and the New Orleans-based photography duo Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun. Each will receive a $100,000 prize with no restrictions on how the funds are used.
The award arrives at a moment of transition for the foundation. All of the honorees have attended, or were invited to participate in, the residency program on Captiva Island, Florida, which is scheduled to conclude in August following the foundation’s decision to sell Rauschenberg’s former compound.
In a statement, Courtney J. Martin, the foundation’s executive director, framed the Centennial Award as both a celebration of Rauschenberg’s legacy and an investment in the kinds of boundary-crossing practices he championed. The selected group spans performance and sculpture, interdisciplinary installation, poetry, and documentary photography, underscoring the foundation’s long-standing interest in work that moves between mediums and communities.
Nengudi, represented by Sprüth Magers, is widely recognized for a practice that helped reshape the language of postwar American art, particularly through works that merge sculpture, movement, and the body’s presence in space. Her career has included solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Henry Moore Institute, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA Miami). Her work has also appeared in major international surveys, including the 2017 Venice Biennale and the Carnegie International in 2007.
Thomson’s work has been shown at venues including The Kitchen in New York, The Bronx Museum, and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, reflecting a practice that is both materially experimental and attentive to cultural histories.
McCormick and Calhoun were recognized for photography that documents Black life and experience in the American South, a sustained collaboration that treats the camera as both witness and archive. Jones, a Poet Laureate and author of multiple publications, brings the award’s scope beyond the visual arts, emphasizing the foundation’s broader commitment to creative labor across forms.
With the Captiva residency nearing its end, the Centennial Award reads as a pointed reminder of what artist-centered infrastructure can do: provide time, space, and resources, then extend that support outward. As the foundation prepares to close a chapter tied to Rauschenberg’s own home and studio environment, the prize signals an intention to keep the spirit of experimentation and generosity in motion — even as the physical site changes hands.
