The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has announced the winners of its Rauschenberg Centennial Awards, which come with unrestricted grants of $100,000 each.
The Rauschenberg Centennial Awards are given in four disciplines, and their winners are as follows: Senga Nengudi for art; David Thomson for performance; Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun for photography; and Patricia Spears Jones for writing.
The awards were established to celebrate the influential postwar artist’s centennial birthday, in October 2025. Winners were selected from a pool of past attendees and invitees to the foundation’s Captiva Residency program in Florida, which was established in 2012 and has hosted over 500 artists.
A panel of external judges in each discipline provided holistic reviews for the winners, “taking into account artistic excellence, the depth and significance of each artist’s body of work, impact beyond their primary medium, community engagement, and education and mentorship,” according to a release.
Senga Nengudi, Detail ACQ Installation Component, 2017.
Photo Thomas Erben
Nengudi is among her generation’s most influential artists, with a five-decade career that encompasses sculpture, installation, performance, dance, film, and photography. She is best-known for her “R.S.V.P.” series, soft sculptures from the 1970s in which she filled pantyhose with sand and stretched them into various compositions. Several of her works are on long-term via at Dia Beacon in Upstate New York, including her “Water Compositions.” A traveling retrospective of her work made stops in Munich, São Paulo, Denver and Philadelphia between 2019 and 2021, and she won the 2023 Nasher Prize for sculpture.
“Avant garde artist Senga Nengudi is a lodestar for generations of artists who have centered questions that bridge social, political and philosophical concerns,” artist Nyeema Morgan said in a statement. “What it means to be present in one’s own body and the conditions that influence our engagement with each other and the world have been central for her nearly fifty-year career. She has committed to taking bold risks in her work, eschewing categorization and prioritizing a spirit of camaraderie through her collaborations and teaching.”
Thomson’s practice foregrounds collaboration and stretches into multiple disciplines, including music, dance, theater, and performance. Active since the 1980s, Thomson has produced work with Yvonne Rainer, Ralph Lemon, Matthew Barney, Lee Mingwei and Bill T Jones, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Lucinda Childs, among others. He was a founding member of the Bebe Miller & Company and also performed with the Trisha Brown Company.
“David Thomson is a singular agent for dance and performance, empowering both performers and audiences, the stage and the archive,” Stuart Comer, chief curator of media and performance at the Museum of Modern Art, said in a statement. “He carries the full weight of New York’s remarkable dance history in his body, as he performs at the crossroads of a singular, intergenerational network of artists, whose work he has brought to vivid life. … Thomson has routinely demonstrated the urgency of building culture, sustaining communities, and creating living archives.”
Chandra McCormick, Men Going to Work in the Fields of Angola, 2004.
Courtesy the artists
McCormick and Calhoun are a husband-and-wife duo whose photographic work spans for than three decades, with a focus on their native Louisiana. Their work has been included in the 2015 Venice Biennale and the 2014 edition of Prospect New Orleans.
Photographer An-My Lê said in a statement that their “life’s work constitutes an expansive documentation not only of the daily life in Louisiana over the past thirty-five years, but also of the criminal and environmental justice systems, the enduring legacies of slavery, and the complexities of African American experience in the American South. Their body of work reflects a sustained and deeply passionate commitment—one that merits careful recognition, critical engagement, and long-term preservation.”
Jones is a poet and educator who is the author of several collections of poetry, including The Beloved Community (2023) and The Weather That Kills (1995). She is co-editor of anthologies like Ordinary Women: An Anthology of New York City Women (1978) and THINK: Poems for Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Day Hat (2009). In 2015, she was among 10 poets commissioned by MoMA to produce a new work in response to Jacob Lawrence’s “Migration Series.”
“This award celebrates the extraordinary, interdisciplinary achievements of Patricia Spears Jones, including her forward-thinking poetry, ecological stewardship, and community-oriented work on all levels,” Catherine Taft, deputy director of the Brick in Los Angeles, said in a statement.
In a statement, Rauschenberg Foundation executive director Courtney J. Martin said, “It is a privilege for the Foundation to recognize the work of these individuals on the occasion of the artist’s centennial year. Each of them has made an extraordinary impact in his or her respective field, exemplifying Rauschenberg’s collaborative spirit, social consciousness, and commitment to experimentation.”
