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New York Times

Celebrating Centennials, Two Visionary Artists Still Hold Sway

Two groundbreaking artists of the 20th century — Robert Rauschenberg and Joan Mitchell — were born 100 years ago this year. Mitchell, one of the few women among the early Abstract Expressionist painters and a remarkable colorist, lived and worked in New York in the 1950s. Rauschenberg, too, was in New York then when he began the pioneering series of artworks he called 'Combines.' In these pieces, he conjoined painted canvases with physical objects, such as a taxidermied goat, a rubber tire or even, in a piece called 'Bed,' his own quilt and pillow. Yet Mitchell and Rauschenberg aren't typically discussed in tandem. 'They weren't in the same circles in life,' said Courtney J. Martin, executive director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. But, added Christa Blatchford, executive director of the Joan Mitchell Foundation: 'They totally knew each other and overlapped in some manner.' While the artists may not have shared a stylistic similarity or close friends, their foundations are aligned in their missions in many ways. 'I always point to the Mitchell Foundation as probably our best mate,' said Martin, who joined Blatchford at the Mitchell Foundation's New York offices with a reporter last month to discuss the field of artist-endowed foundations, opportunities presented by Rauschenberg's and Mitchell's centennials, and the ways that the foundations are working to keep their artists' legacies alive. Martin was also among the participants in the Art for Tomorrow conference in Milan last week. The event, founded in 2015, is organized by the Democracy and Culture Foundation with panels moderated by New York Times journalists and others. During the conference, speakers from the art world explored some of the most provocative subjects facing artists and institutions today. 'Every single social, cultural, political and ethical battle that has happened everywhere else is actually happening inside the museum,' Martin said, during a panel discussion on 'The Institution of the Future.' In addition to these battles, some of the biggest challenges to artists and institutions face, many at the event agreed, are financial, especially at a time of economic turmoil. Artist-endowed foundations, such as the Rauschenberg and Mitchell organizations, are created by the artists or their heirs for various purposes. Typically these foundations use an artist's assets to promote their legacy posthumously and, often, their charitable and educational aims. Both the Rauschenberg and Mitchell foundations manage substantial collections of their artists' work, along with curatorial staffs and artist residencies. (The Mitchell organization's residency is based in New Orleans and Rauschenberg's in Captiva, Fla., where he primarily lived from 1970 until his death in 2008.) And both foundations have robust programming rolling out this year to celebrate their artists' centennials. The two foundations have long been leaders in grantmaking to individual artists, according to Christine J. Vincent, managing director of the Aspen Institute's Artist-Endowed Foundations Initiative, and are among the largest of nearly 400 artist-endowed foundations in the United States that Vincent tracks. Support from this community remains vital as government funding to individual visual artists was cut entirely in the wake of the culture wars in the 1990s over so-called decency standards for grantmaking by the National Endowment for the Arts. Arts funding broadly is now being limited and scrutinized by President Trump who, on May 2, introduced a budget that would eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2023, the Rauschenberg Foundation reported an operating budget of over $14.1 million in its tax filing and, since 2012, has awarded 395 grants to individuals and organizations, emergency funding to over 1,100 creative practitioners and hosted more than 500 artists and scholars in Florida and New York residencies, according to the foundation. The Mitchell Foundation has an operating budget this year of $9.5 million, said Blatchford. Since 1993, a year after Mitchell's death in France, where she moved in 1959, her foundation has distributed grants and fellowships to more than 1,300 individual artists and 115 organizations supporting artists. Since its New Orleans campus opened in 2015, the foundation has hosted nearly 350 artists in residence, according to figures provided by the foundation. During Martin and Blatchford's discussion last month, the two longtime colleagues and friends mused over the parallels between their foundations, their purpose and their challenges. The conversation has been edited and condensed. The start of the second Trump administration has seen an upheaval in funding for many sectors of society. How does that affect your world? CHRISTA BLATCHFORD In the very short term, what we're seeing are artists losing commissions, artists losing exhibition opportunities because museums are reducing how many shows they're doing, and artists losing their jobs as professors. Do I see a crisis in sustainability for artists? A hundred percent. Do I understand what that means for us as a foundation? Not yet. COURTNEY MARTIN It is very easy to be distracted by what seems to be right in front of you. Yet my own financial and philanthropic understanding says that an artist-endowed foundation is much like the life of an artist and that it's a long game. What do you see as the role of artist-endowed foundations in the cultural ecosystem? MARTIN When I tell people what I do and the range of things we offer — and they say, 'an artist?' — why is it that we wouldn't expect an artist to be on the pulse of certain kinds of civic work both nationally and internationally? We have no problem thinking money like that could come out of banking or an industrialist like [Edsel] Ford, [the son of Henry Ford and founder of the Ford Foundation]. I'd like to see the entirety of the artist-endowed foundation field elevated to such a degree that we understand that artists serve a huge function in our society. BLATCHFORD We play a role in larger philanthropy conversations about advocating for artists. For me, there's a real hope that this field continues to think about collaboration and collective action. We saw it with the L.A. wildfires, where artist-endowed foundations stepped forward as a group participating in the Getty relief fund [which raised over $15 million for the Los Angeles arts community from foundations, museums, galleries and individuals ]. How has each of your foundations approached your artist's centennial celebration and what do you see as the opportunities around this milestone? BLATCHFORD The Mitchell retrospective that finished touring San Francisco, Baltimore and Paris two years ago was so magnificent and huge in terms of changing a narrative around the artist and broadening the understanding of her work. We are interested in deepening scholarship this year. What that looks like for us ranges from partnering with the Art Institute of Chicago for a symposium in October on Mitchell to ending the year with an exhibition in New York at David Zwirner focusing on Mitchell's work in the 1960s. MARTIN We're now at 14 shows from this spring into 2026 [including a show of Rauschenberg's rarely seen sculptures which opened this month at Gladstone Gallery in New York.] Until this fiscal year, we had never really funded Rauschenberg exhibitions or publications with institutions. The centennial provided us with this opportunity to break from that. I want more for Rauschenberg, elevating an understanding of why it was important for a painter to also be involved in dance and performance, why sculpture wasn't just this static thing and painting wasn't this static thing. One of the things that I want to come out of the centennial is this: Rauschenberg did not live in New York full time from 1970 until 2008 when he died. And yet the story in art history is he was in New York. Where else would he be? Part of the division in our country is rooted in small things like saying New York is the only place in the country that has culture. Well, one of the most important artists of the 20th century didn't live [predominantly] in New York while he made some of his most important works. BLATCHFORD And Mitchell was living in France, making her work in France most of the time. MARTIN If I come away with nothing else from the centennial but to have art students not feel that they are beholden to one place, one idea, one way of making, one way of thinking, that'd be good enough.