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<\/p>\nFrom Munich to Hong Kong, this year has been crowded with centennial tributes to Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), whom the critic Robert Hughes described in 2006 as \u201cthe most important American artist of the last century\u201d. Even with this global influence, Florida remained the artist\u2019s centre of gravity for four decades, as materials and collaborators from the Sunshine State powered many of his breakthroughs\u2014from his experiments with cardboard and scrap metal to the Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange (Roci), a seven-year programme that positioned art as cultural diplomacy at the tail end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n
As Miami Art Week again convenes the art world in Florida, Rauschenberg\u2019s presence in the state both widens and narrows. Beyond the presence of his work on the stands of Gladstone Gallery and Thaddaeus Ropac at Art Basel Miami Beach, two projects here mark the moment. Robert Rauschenberg: Real Time at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale (until 26 April 2026) is one of the artist\u2019s final centennial exhibitions, while the book Out of the Real World: Robert Rauschenberg at USF Graphicstudio will be published later this month to highlight the artist\u2019s extensive collaboration with the Tampa print workshop.<\/p>\n
Yet the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation announced this past summer that it would end its prestigious artist residency on Captiva Island and sell Rauschenberg\u2019s home and studio there. Coming amid the year-long celebration of the artist\u2019s legacy, this decision warrants a look back at how Rauschenberg\u2019s Florida years shaped his ambitions and accomplishments.<\/p>\n
Escape from New York<\/p>\n
Born in Port Arthur, Texas, Rauschenberg led an itinerant early life. He pursued pharmacology at the University of Texas at Austin, served in the US Navy Hospital Corps in San Diego, then pivoted to art at the Kansas City Art Institute. His developing practice later took him to the Acad\u00e9mie Julian in Paris and to Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he met future collaborators including John Cage and Merce Cunningham.<\/p>\n
Rauschenberg moved to New York in 1949 to study at the Art Students League and spent nearly two decades in Manhattan. His circle there included Cy Twombly, Susan Weil (his wife from 1950-52) and Jasper Johns, his one-time romantic partner.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
No Wake Glut (1986) was part of a show of Rauschenberg\u2019s Glut works\u2014sculptures the artist created from scrap metal, such as old signs and car parts\u2014at Thaddaeus Ropac gallery in Paris earlier this year Photo: Charles Duprat<\/p>\n
But in autumn 1960, frustrated with a lack of progress on his Dante drawings, Rauschenberg sought isolation on Treasure Island, off Florida\u2019s west coast. By 1968, he had purchased property on Captiva, a barrier island further south. Although he maintained a Manhattan studio, Rauschenberg relocated to Captiva in 1970, eventually becoming its largest private landowner.<\/p>\n
Rauschenberg\u2019s shift to the island echoed a broader pattern of post-war artists seeking distance from the New York City grind: Agnes Martin left for New Mexico in 1967; Ellsworth Kelly settled in Spencertown, New York, in 1970; Johns established a base on the Caribbean island of St Martin in 1972; and Brice Marden developed a summer studio on Hydra, Greece, in the early 1970s.<\/p>\n
For Rauschenberg, Captiva was both studio and subject. Describing the island as holding \u201ca magic that was unexplainable in its power\u201d, he wrote to the Orlando Sentinel critic Philip Bishop: \u201cI have thanked my instinct every day I am here and when I can\u2019t be, Captiva is the foundation of my life and my work.\u201d<\/p>\n
New materials, new visions<\/p>\n
Courtney J. Martin, the executive director of the Rauschenberg Foundation, tells The Art Newspaper that \u201cFlorida served not only as his home but also as a catalyst for artistic innovation that continues to resonate globally.\u201d One way to trace that innovation is through the materials that defined the artist\u2019s Captiva years. They range from works on fabric (many on view at the Menil Collection in Houston until 1 March 2026) to his scrap-metal Glut sculptures, which Thaddaeus Ropac introduced to France via an exhibition at the gallery\u2019s Paris space this autumn.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps the most surprising aspect of Rauschenberg\u2019s works from his first decade in Captiva is their beauty,\u201d say the organisers of his show at NSU Art Museum\u2014the museum\u2019s director and chief curator, Bonnie Clearwater, and the curator Ariella Wolens. \u201cEven when using the lowliest of materials, such as the cardboard boxes that formed his first series of new work begun in Captiva in 1971, he distilled their alluring beauty and elevated their position as art.\u201d<\/p>\n
Graphicstudio emerged as a crucial partner in this era. Mark Fredricks, the editor of Out of the Real World and a researcher at the printshop, says the collaboration \u201ctook place over two main phases, 1972-74 and 1983-87\u201d,
and proved prolific. The first two years alone yielded 22 mixed-media prints and five sculptural editions. Among them\u2014and on view at NSU Art Museum\u2014is Switchboard (Airport Suite) (1974), Graphicstudio\u2019s first project primarily realised off-site, partly by shipping an etching press to Rauschenberg on Captiva. The title nods to the artist\u2019s peripatetic schedule; the editions, made entirely on fabric supports, were signed in a Tampa airport hotel room. Clearwater and Wolens describe the works as \u201cgossamer-like\u201d, fluttering in an \u201cunchoreographed dance stirred by the viewer\u2019s own movement\u201d.<\/p>\n
Out of the Real World also underscores the wide-ranging collaboration between Rauschenberg and Graphicstudio\u2019s founder, Donald Saff, who met the artist in Greenwich Village in the 1960s. In addition to his role in editioning, Saff served as the artistic director of Roci (named for Rauschenberg\u2019s pet turtle, Rocky), an initiative largely funded by the artist and combining cultural diplomacy, workshops and a travelling exhibition.<\/p>\n
Roci toured ten countries that Rauschenberg identified as \u201csensitive\u201d, from East Germany to Venezuela. He added new, site-responsive works at each stop alongside the pieces shown in previous venues. \u201cRoci is, in effect, Rauschenberg\u2019s way of acting personally on behalf of concepts as global and daunting as peace and understanding,\u201d Saff said in 1991.<\/p>\n
Serving as a key liaison, Saff convened local artists, writers and poets for catalogues tailored to each site, bringing the world into dialogue with Rauschenberg\u2019s Florida studio and sending Captiva\u2019s ethos of experimentation across the globe.<\/p>\n
Rauschenberg\u2019s legacy<\/p>\n
Rauschenberg\u2019s collaboration-rich Florida years and its setting reshaped how later artists worked with materials, site and community. The Rauschenberg Foundation converted most of the Captiva estate into a residency in 2012, and more than 500 artists of all kinds have since passed through\u2014including Kevin Beasley, Douglas Coupland, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Senga Nengudi and Jennie C. Jones.<\/p>\n
\u201cCaptiva was different from other residencies in many ways,\u201d says Jones, a 2014 resident. \u201cBob\u2019s legacy was tangible; the place was filled with the gravity of his footprint on the world.\u201d During her residency, Jones made a series of works on paper that she describes as \u201cthinking pieces\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat kind of experimentation can feel vulnerable, but Captiva felt safe,\u201d Jones says. \u201cThat spirit of doing felt profoundly connected to Bob himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
She remembers the campus as \u201ca magical but fragile environment\u201d, and Captiva\u2019s environmental precarity has become insurmountable in the decade since. In 2021, Kendall Baldwin of WXY Architecture, who had worked on the campus since 2016, described Captiva to the Santiva Chronicle as \u201ctremendously vulnerable\u201d, but noted that \u201cthe foundation is working with climate change, not against climate change\u201d. Damage from recent storms\u2014Hurricane Ian in 2022 and Hurricane Milton in 2024\u2014has wrought further challenges to the estate. The formal announcement to close and sell the 22-acre property came in August 2025; the foundation\u2019s statement cites the \u201crecurring storm damage, broader climate risks and rising maintenance costs\u201d as its prime reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not easy to process the foundation\u2019s decision because of the powerful legacy and experience myself and others had there,\u201d Jones says. \u201cBut climate change is all too real. It\u2019s affecting everything\u2014including Captiva.\u201d<\/p>\n
Proceeds from the sale, together with funds previously earmarked for the campus\u2019s upkeep, will likely be redeployed to more flexible forms of artist support. In this way, even the selling of Rauschenberg\u2019s compound will advance the legacy of the island and the artist who called it home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Munich to Hong Kong, this year has been crowded with centennial tributes to Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), whom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[40881,13359,5885,28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-70963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-american-art","9":"tag-art-basel-miami-beach-2025","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-florida","12":"tag-florida-headlines","13":"tag-florida-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}