Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Drops Gagosian Gallery

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation is to leave Gagosian Gallery, which has represented Rauschenberg since a shortly after the artist’s death in 2008. The New York Times reports that the foundation has dropped the gallery in favour of three alternatives, will now be overseen by these galleries, which are diverse and peppered across the globe: Pace (New York, London, Hong Kong, and Beijing), which represented Rauschenberg near the end of his life, Thaddaeus Ropac (Paris and Salzburg), and Luisa Strina, in the ever-expanding art capital of São Paulo.

Rauschenberg is the subject of a major new retrospective at the Tate Modern, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2016, before travelling to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Pace New York will show a selection of the artist’s late works this Autumn, commemorating the artist’s 90th birthday. This will be followed by Solo presentations at Ropac’s Paris location in October 2016 and at Luisa Strina, in Rauschenberg’s first gallery show in South America.

“The Foundation’s focus is on three strategic areas for Rauschenberg’s art: increasing access to the artist’s work via museums and institutions, encouraging scholarship among students, and preparing our archives to produce a catalogue raisonné,” explained Christy MacLear, the Foundation’s executive director, in a statement. “Partnering with these three galleries will cement Rauschenberg’s presence on the global stage—from New York to São Paulo, to Beijing and beyond.”

In the last few years, several high-profile artists have exited the gallery, including Damien Hirst and Yayoi Kusama. Christy MacLear, the executive director of the Rauschenberg Foundation, told The Times, “The foundation is looking forward to working directly with a more distributed leadership that is very strong in their local geographies.”

Image: Dennis Hopper’s 1966 photo of Robert Rauschenberg with his tongue stamped “Wedding Souvenir, Claes Oldenburg”

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