The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has named the inaugural winners of its Rauschenberg Centennial Awards, granting four visionary creators unrestricted prizes of $100,000 each, per artnews.com. Established to mark the 100th anniversary of the legendary postwar artist’s birth in October 2025, the awards recognise excellence across four distinct disciplines: art, performance, photography and writing.
The 2026 recipients are multi-disciplinary artist Senga Nengudi, performance creator David Thomson, photographers Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun, and poet Patricia Spears Jones. Each winner was selected from a distinguished pool of alumni from the foundation’s Captiva Residency programme in Florida, which has supported more than 500 artists since its inception in 2012.
Senga Nengudi, a defining figure of her generation, was honoured for a five-decade career spanning sculpture, dance and film. Best known for her “R.S.V.P.” sculptures made from sand-filled hosiery, Nengudi has long explored the complexities of the human body and social engagement. David Thomson was celebrated as a “singular agent” for performance, noted for his extensive collaborative history with icons such as Yvonne Rainer and the Trisha Brown Company.
In the photography category, husband-and-wife duo Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun were recognised for their 30-year documentation of life in Louisiana, specifically their poignant work regarding the legacies of slavery and the American South. The writing award went to poet and educator Patricia Spears Jones, whose interdisciplinary achievements and community-focused literature have made a lasting impact on the contemporary poetry scene.
An external panel of judges selected the winners based on artistic excellence and their influence beyond a primary medium. Courtney J. Martin, Executive Director of the Rauschenberg Foundation, noted that the recipients exemplify the collaborative spirit and social consciousness that defined Robert Rauschenberg’s own career.
•Featured image: David Thomson, The Venus Knot (performance still), at The Invisible Dog, New York, 2015/Simon Courchel
