Rauschenberg Foundation Awards $100K Centennial Prizes to Five Artists

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has granted $100,000 awards to five artists to mark the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth. Senga Nengudi received the visual art honor, David Thomson for performance, Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun for photography, and Patricia Spears Jones for writing. In other art world developments, Emerson Bowyer was appointed chief curator at the Kimbell Art Museum, Julian Cox will leave the Art Gallery of Ontario after controversy, and Madeleine Grynsztejn will depart Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art. Additional appointments include Luciano Johnson as chief librarian at The Frick Collection, Jitish Kallat as future president of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Helen Legg as artistic director of London's Royal Academy of Arts, and Liz Munsell and Constanza Valenzuela joining Powerhouse Arts. Trevor Paglen won the 2026 LG Guggenheim Award, Smiljan Radić received the Pritzker Prize in architecture, Alissa Schapiro was named senior curator at UC Berkeley's Magnes Collection, James Taylor-Foster became executive director of Para Site in Hong Kong, and Toleen Touq was appointed curator for MOMENTA 2027 in Montreal. A Reuters investigation claims to have identified Banksy as Robin Gunningham, now known as David Jones, though the artist's lawyer denies the allegation.