Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation awards grants to small and mid-sized arts organizations across all disciplines. A smaller program makes emergency medical grants to artists, and the foundation’s affiliated Artists Council makes grants for human services and social justice in the U.S.
IP TAKE: Through its grants, residencies and collaborations, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation “celebrates new and even untested ways of thinking and acting.” This open-minded arts funder works across and beyond artistic disciplines to “promote the legacy of Rauschenberg’s joyful, responsive, and irreverent approach to making work while living an empathetic and meaningful life.” Unfortunately, most of its programs do not accept unsolicited applications, emergency medical grants and an archival research residence being the exceptions. Networking will be key here, but it may be worthwhile to join the foundation’s mailing list for updates.
PROFILE: Based in New York City, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation was created in 1990 by the artist Robert Rauschenberg to foster his philanthropic and artistic legacies. Rauschenberg, who passed away in 2008, was acclaimed for his paintings, sculptures and multimedia works, some of which included performance art. The foundation maintains a three-pronged mission.
The Rauschenberg Foundation supports research and other projects “that open the artist’s life and work to wider interpretation and understanding.”
The foundation "holistically sustains the creative life and well-being of artists across the disciplines” through grants and residencies.
Finally, the Rauschenberg Foundation funds “exhibitions, publications, and special projects across the globe that reflect Rauschenberg’s joyful, responsive, and irreverent approach to making art while living an empathetic and meaningful life.”
In addition to grantmaking for arts organizations, this funder offers emergency medical grants for artists, dancers and choreographers, runs three arts residencies, and supports collaborations “to increase public access to and scholarship on Rauschenberg’s artwork.” Grantmaking appears to prioritize New York City arts organizations.
Grants for Arts and Culture, Arts Education and Humanities Research
The Rauschenberg Foundation’s giving consists of grants, emergency medical grants, residencies and collaborations.
Rauschenberg’s main grantmaking program “seek[s] to provide alternatives to the canonical and to celebrate new and even untested ways of thinking and acting across the disciplines.” The foundation prioritizes small- to medium-sized organizations that are “contrarian and experimental, even courageous, in driving towards equity.” Grants have gone to organizations from multiple fields of visual and performing arts, as well as arts education organizations and programs.
One recent grant supported Beach Sessions, a New York City choreographic organization that presents contemporary dance performances on the the city’s public Rockaway Beach. Another grantee, the Clemente Solo Velez Cultural & Educational Center, used funding to launch its Historias arts festival, which “will serve primarily low-income people and involve oral histories, archival research, think tanks with scholars and artists, and artists’ commissions to secure the different histories while also making them more accessible through talks, performances, exhibitions, and a website.” Other grantees include New York’s Chen Dance Center, Aubin Pictures, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Teach and Learning Through Photography Tanzania.
Rauschenberg’s Emergency Medical Grants provide up to $5,000 to visual artists or choreographers living anywhere in the U.S. who are experiencing medical or dental emergencies. These grants are administered in collaboration with the New York Foundation for the Arts, which provides detailed eligibility and application information on its website.
The foundation runs three residency programs:
The Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva is located at the artist’s property on Captiva Island, Florida and “welcomes artists of all disciplines from around the world to live, work, and create.” Each year, the foundation runs eight residencies of four to five weeks in length, serving approximately 100 artists a year. Participation is by invitation only, with artists selected “anonymously [. . . ] from a diverse mix of disciplines, backgrounds, geographies, ages, and career levels, who are interested in working in an interdisciplinary environment and are open to the idea of collaboration.”
The Archives Research Residency provides funding to cover “costs related to travel and lodging expenses” for researchers engaging with materials in the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives in New York City. This program accepts applications annually from researchers who “ demonstrate a compelling need to use the archival materials.” Grants range from $4,000 to $7,000 “depending on travel distance and length of residency.” Guidelines, FAQs and information about past residents are linked to the program page. The due date for residency applications generally falls in November.
The Rauschenberg Residency 381 reflects the artist’s “iconoclastic and inclusive approach to living and working,” and “integrates artists into the daily work activities of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation headquarters in New York.” This program provides residents with “a space to work, think, experiment, and create within Rauschenberg’s 381 Lafayette Street home and studio during Foundation business hours” but each residency is unique, in that it reflects individualized artistic projects or engagement with the foundation. This residency is by invitation only.
The Rauschenberg Foundation also engages in collaborations “with institutions and organizations to increase public access to and scholarship on Rauschenberg’s artwork.”
A recent collaboration with CUNY’s Hunter College produced a seminar for the M.A. Program in Art History on the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange, through which Rauschenberg explored intercultural creative processes from 1984-1991. Other collaborations have produced programs at the Semantic Lab at Pratt Institute, the University of Delaware’s Program in Art Conservation, Williams College and Art in America magazine.
Other Grantmaking Opportunities
An unspecified portion of the Rauschenberg Foundation’s grantmaking is overseen by the Artists Council, “an anonymous group of working artists who assist in shaping the foundation's philanthropy program.” The council does not name specific goals for its grantmaking, but human services and social justice appear to be areas of importance to the initiative, which is also receives financial support from the Annenberg Foundation.
Grantees include the LA Black Workers Center, New York City’s Chinatown Tenants Union, the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission and Black and Pink, “a prison abolitionist organization” that aims “to liberate LGBTQIA2S+ people and people living with HIV/AIDS.”
Important Grant Details:
Rauschenberg grants mainly range from $1,000 to $200,000.
This funder does not name geographic restrictions to its grantmaking, but appears to prioritize New York City, where it is based. Grants to organizations outside of the U.S. are rare.
The foundation favors small- and medium-sized arts organizations for its grants and collaborations.
Applications for grants and residencies are by invitation only. The exceptions are Emergency Medical Grants for artists and the Archives Research Residency, which accepts applications for researchers interested in using the Rauschenberg archives.
Information about past grantmaking is available on the foundation’s grants page.
For updates on grantmaking opportunities, join the foundation’s mailing list.
Email addresses for the foundation’s staff are available on its website. The foundation may also be reached by telephone at (212) 228-5283.
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