Collection in Focus | Robert Rauschenberg: Life Can’t Be Stopped at The Guggenheim New York (October 10, 2025 – May 3, 2026)
Robert Rauschenberg, Yellow Body, 1968. Solvent transfer with graphite, watercolor, and gouache on paper, 22 1/2 × 30 in. (57.2 × 76.2 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation 98.5219.
October 10, 2025 – May 3, 2026
In celebration of the centennial of Robert Rauschenberg’s birth, the Guggenheim New York presents Robert Rauschenberg: Life Can’t Be Stopped, a Collection in Focus exhibition drawn from the museum’s permanent holdings with key loans from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Featuring over a dozen seminal works, the presentation explores the artist’s groundbreaking use of materials and media and builds upon his decades-long relationship with the Guggenheim. Timed to what would have been his 100th birthday, the exhibition contributes to a global slate of 2025–26 initiatives that reexamine Rauschenberg’s legacy, honoring his expansive creativity, spirit of curiosity, and commitment to change.
A central theme of the exhibition is Rauschenberg’s experimental incorporation of photographic imagery into drawing, painting, and printmaking. At the heart of the presentation is Barge (1962–63), a 32-foot-long silkscreen painting co-owned by the Guggenheim New York and the Guggenheim Bilbao. Jointly acquired during Rauschenberg’s 1997–98 Guggenheim retrospective, Barge was among the first 100 artworks to enter Bilbao’s collection upon its opening in 1997. Executed predominantly in a 24-hour period, Barge remains the largest work in his Silkscreen Paintings series, which includes approximately 80 paintings produced between 1962 and 1964. This monumental piece makes its highly anticipated return to New York for the first time in nearly 25 years.
In conjunction with the exhibition. Works & Process will present a special program in the rotunda titled “Robert Rauschenberg Dance Collaborations” with Trisha Brown Dance Company and Paul Taylor Dance Company on October 15th.
The Guggenheim has long supported Rauschenberg’s work, including him in a 1961 group show, followed by Six Painters and the Object (1963), the first museum exhibition of Pop art in New York. In 1997, the museum presented the most comprehensive retrospective of his career to date—a landmark exhibition spanning its building on Fifth Avenue, the former Guggenheim SoHo, and a satellite gallery on Hudson Street.
