Rauschenberg Foundation Names Senga Nengudi, David Thomson, and More as Centennial Awards Winners
A new set of six-figure grants is arriving with a clear message: the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation wants to honor artists whose influence travels beyond a single medium. The foundation has announced the inaugural winners of its Rauschenberg Centennial Awards, each of which comes with an unrestricted $100,000 grant.
The awards are presented across four disciplines. This year’s recipients are Senga Nengudi for art; David Thomson for performance; Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun for photography; and Patricia Spears Jones for writing.
The Centennial Awards were established in advance of Robert Rauschenberg’s 100th birthday, which will be marked in October 2025. Rather than an open call, the foundation drew the winners from a specific community: past attendees and invitees of its Captiva Residency program in Florida. Founded in 2012, the residency has hosted more than 500 artists.
In a statement announcing the awards, the foundation said that external judges in each discipline selected the winners through “holistic reviews,” considering artistic excellence and the depth and significance of each artist’s body of work, as well as impact beyond a primary medium. The criteria also included community engagement, education, and mentorship — values that align with Rauschenberg’s own collaborative ethos and his long-standing interest in art’s social life.
Among the awardees, American artist Senga Nengudi has spent five decades moving fluidly across sculpture, installation, performance, dance, film, and photography. She is widely associated with her “R.S.V.P.” series from the 1970s, in which pantyhose filled with sand are pulled and stretched into tensile, bodily forms. Her work has been shown on long-term view at Dia Beacon in upstate New York, including pieces from her “Water Compositions.” A traveling retrospective of her work toured from 2019 to 2021, with stops in Munich, São Paulo, Denver, and Philadelphia, and she received the 2023 Nasher Prize for sculpture.
Artist Nyeema Morgan, quoted in the foundation’s announcement, described Nengudi as “a lodestar for generations of artists,” pointing to the way her practice has persistently engaged questions that bridge social, political, and philosophical concerns.
The performance award goes to David Thomson, whose career has unfolded through collaboration and a porous approach to discipline, spanning music, dance, theater, and performance. Active since the 1980s, Thomson has worked with figures including Yvonne Rainer, Ralph Lemon, Matthew Barney, Lee Mingwei and Bill T. Jones, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Lucinda Childs. He was a founding member of the Bebe Miller & Company and also performed with the Trisha Brown Company.
Stuart Comer, chief curator of media and performance at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), said in a statement that Thomson is “a singular agent for dance and performance,” emphasizing his role in sustaining communities and building “living archives” through his work.
In photography, the foundation recognized the husband-and-wife team of Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun, whose practice spans more than three decades and remains closely tied to their native Louisiana. Their work has appeared in major international and regional contexts, including the 2015 Venice Biennale and the 2014 edition of Prospect New Orleans.
The writing award goes to Patricia Spears Jones, whose work has long been central to American literary culture.
With the Centennial Awards, the Rauschenberg Foundation is positioning its anniversary programming not as a backward-looking commemoration, but as a forward-facing investment — one that treats artistic rigor, cross-disciplinary reach, and civic commitment as inseparable.
