In celebration of the centennial of Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008), and in partnership with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) presents Robert Rauschenberg’s New York: Pictures from the Real World, a major exhibition opening on September 12, 2025. This dynamic show explores Rauschenberg’s innovative integration of photography and found objects into his art, reflecting his deep engagement with “the real world” and his complex relationship with New York City.
Widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of postwar New York, Rauschenberg’s irreverent approach to art-making pushed the envelope for an entire generation, reshaping the art world in New York and around the world. At the heart of his practice was a desire to incorporate the tangible world around him into his art. Gathering materials and inspiration from his surroundings, he often brought found objects and images sourced or reproduced from magazines and newspapers into his paintings and sculptures. But Rauschenberg was not merely a user of found imagery; he was also a photographer with a bold creative vision— an essential aspect of his artistic practice that is the focus of the exhibition.
The show is organized into three sections—Early Photographs, In + Out City Limits, and Photography in Painting—tracing the evolution of Rauschenberg’s photographic practice and its interplay with painting, sculpture, and assemblage. His earliest images are largely intimate portraits and experiments with formal elements such as framing, light and shadow, and flattening the picture plane. The centerpiece of the exhibition is In + Out City Limits, a three-year (1979–81) photographic survey conducted across the United States—a project Rauschenberg had originally conceived decades earlier as a student at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. His New York photographs from this project reveal his fascination with the signs and symbols of human culture, even in the most humble or discarded remnants of the city. Together, these photographs emphasize his observational rigor and his constant effort to channel the fleeting, ineffable moments of life into his work—revealing a deep sensitivity to the social landscape.
In addition, the exhibition presents a selection of works created between 1963 and 1994 that combine Rauschenberg’s New York City photographs with images taken around the world, illustrating how he re-contextualized his photographic imagery through his innovative creative process.
Image: Robert Rauschenberg, Wet Flirt (Urban Bourbon), 1994. Courtesy Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
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