ArtSPEAK @ FSW Lecture Series

On this page you will find articles about guest lecturers invited by the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery to participate in its ArtSPEAK @ FSW Lecture Series.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Curator Dan Cameron to discuss Arturo Vega and Pedro Friedeberg at December 7 ArtSPEAK (12-06-16)

The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery on the Lee campus of Florida SouthWestern State College (FSW) is hosting a Gallery Talk on Wednesday, December 7, in conjunction with EMPIRE: An Arturo Vega Retrospective exhibition. Internationally-renowned New York-based curator and cultural critic Dan Cameron will be presenting a “one-off” ArtSPEAK@FSW lecture on Arturo Vega and noted Mexican artist and designer Pedro Friedeberg at 6 p.m.

Dan Cameron (b. 1956, New York) most recently served as Curator and has just returned from opening the 13th International Cuenca Biennial in Ecuador. As an independent curator, he has organized international exhibitions since the 1980s for institutions including Fundación Caixa/Barcelona, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía/Madrid and elsewhere. In 2003, he was the Artistic Director of the 8th Istanbul Biennial, and in 2006, Cameron was Co-curator of the 5th Taipei Biennial and founded the Biennial Prospect New Orleans, where he worked until 2011.

From 2012 to 2015, Cameron was Chief Curator at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California. From 1995 to 2005, he was Senior Curator at the New Museum, New York, where he developed group exhibitions and individual shows dedicated to artists David Wojnarowicz, Xu Bing, Los Carpinteros, William Kentridge, Carolee Schneemann, Christian Marclay, Doris Salcedo, José Antonio Hernández Diez and others. Over the last four decades, Cameron has published hundreds of texts in art books, exhibition catalogues and major magazines, and has given countless lectures at museums and universities around the world.

“I have been thinking about Arturo Vega’s relationship to Pedro Friedeberg and the small but, by all reports, amazing psychedelic scene in Mexico City in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s,” notes Cameron. As his ArtSPEAK@FSW lecture will illustrate, “Friedeberg is the closest Arturo had to an artistic master, and the dialogue between their oeuvres is pretty amazing.”

This event is open to the public, free of charge. For additional information, please telephone (239) 489-9313 or visit www.RauschenbergGallery.com. This presentation is sponsored in part by the Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Council of Arts and Culture and the State of Florida.

___________________________________________________________________

Saff and Voytek share rich personal stories about Bob Rauschenberg with ArtSPEAK audience (04-30-16)

At the behest of the Rauschenberg Foundation, Donald Saff was in town this week to capture an oral history of Bob Rauschenberg from his long-time studio assistant Lawrence Voytek. On Saturday, the two men capped off their hours of in-depth conversations with an hour-long reminiscence of the artist they both idolized.

Spurned by Columbia (“which didn’t have the providence to hire me”), Saff joined the faculty of the University of South Florida in Tampa in 1965. Three years later, he landed a grant from the Florida Arts Council to establish a printmaking operation under the name of GraphicStudio. In the years that followed, Saff invited a stream of iconic artists to work in the state-of-the-art facility he and his staff created at USF. In addition to Rauschenberg, the list included James Rosenquist, Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Shusaku Arakawa, Nancy Graves, Ed Ruscha, Lee Friedlander and Philip Pearlstein. But he formed a particularly close working and personal relationship with Rauschenberg, who he accompanied to China in 1982, which gave rise to the Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange. Saff served as artistic director for R.O.C.I., which sought to effect positive social change through collaborations with local artists, authors, poets and performing artists in more than 21 host countries. Saff continued to work with Rauschenberg until the latter’s death in 2008.

Voytek first met Bob Rauschenberg at Edison State College (now FSW). Rauschenberg hired him that same year to serve as his sculpture fabricator. A master of new and unusual materials, Voytek became Rauschenberg’s director of production. In that capacity, he was not only tasked with welding and casting, but research and development. Like Saff, Voytek worked with Rauschenberg until Bob’s passing in 2008.

As you might imagine, the two have a plethora of personal stories, anecdotes and deep insights into Rauschenberg’s art, persona, temperament and creative elan, and they shared a sampling of their memories and recollections with a rapt audience inside the gallery that today bears Bob Rauschenberg’s name. It was a magical hour which Voytek capped by reading a poem he composed for Bob’s memorial in a voice that at times faltered with thick emotion. But Voytek left the audience to ponder something Rauchenberg once told him that puzzles Voytek to this very day.

“If I do my job correctly, we won’t need artists any more,” Bob said. The throw-away comment provides deep insight into Rauschenberg’s raison d’etre as an artist, an educator and a person. Rauschenberg’s gift was his characteristic proclivity to see the world in a fresh and unconventional way and communicate to viewers around the world that people can make art from anything in any way the mind can imagine. Prior to Rauschenberg, brushes and oils were the stuff from which artworks were made. Since Rauschenberg, debris, detritus, cardboard boxes, dirt and even the nose oil can be molded into an artwork. With that realization comes the inevitable conclusion that anyone can offer new ways of seeing and interacting with the world around – not just artists like a Manet, a van Gogh or even a Bob Rauschenberg.

If you missed the rare opportunity to hear Don Saff and Lawrence Voytek reminisce about the 20^th century’s most innovative and, perhaps, important artist, shame on you. But take heart. Saff and Voytek recorded the discussion. It’s now part of the official Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/Columbia University – Rauschenberg Oral History Project. For additional information, please telephone (239) 489-9313 or visit www.RauschenbergGallery.com.

________________________________________________________________

Donald Saff and Lawrence Voytek to reminisce about collaborations with Bob Rauschenberg on April 30 (04-27-16)

The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Florida SouthWestern State College is hosting a special ArtSPEAK@FSW presentation on Saturday, April 30 featuring Donald Saff and Lawrence Voytek.

Donald Saff is an artist, art historian and educator who founded the celebrated editions atelier Graphicstudio/Institute for Research in Art at the University of South Florida in Tampa in 1968, and collaborated with many of the most significant artists of the twentieth century – including numerous experimental print and sculptural multiple projects with Bob Rauschenberg. He served as artistic director for Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI, 1984–91), a worldwide initiative for positive social change with art exchanges and resulting exhibitions as the catalyst. In 1991, Saff established Saff Tech Arts (later Saff and Company) in Oxford, Maryland, where he continued to work with Rauschenberg to create series including Eco-Echo (1992–93), Shales (1994–95), and Arcadian Retreat (1996). Their Made in Tampa (1972–73) works on view currently in RAUSCHENBERG & ALBERS: Box Vs. Square were the first editions Saff and Rauschenberg produced in collaboration. Emeritus Dean and a Distinguished Professor at U.S.F., Saff was also formerly the Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Saff’s prolific career has been documented in Marilyn Kushner’s book, Donald Saff: Art In Collaboration (2010).

Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Lawrence Voytek studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and received his degree in sculpture from RISD in 1982. After meeting Robert Petersen at Edison College (now FSW), Voytek was introduced to and immediately hired by Bob Rauschenberg that same year to serve as sculpture fabricator and later director of production. Voytek was tasked with welding and casting, but he was also in charge of research and development at the Captiva studio until the artist’s death in 2008.  Since Bob’s passing, Voytek completed approved works and has regularly consulted on the subjects of art installation, fabrication and restoration with renowned international museums and galleries while pursuing his own art career and exhibiting his work widely.

Saff and Voytek are both on site to record conversations for the official Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/Columbia University – Rauschenberg Oral History Project. On Saturday, they will engage in a public exchange about their extensive work and decades-long relationships with Bob Rauschenberg. “Donald SAFF & Lawrence VOYTEK: A Conversation about Collaborations starts at 1:00 p.m. in the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery. The event is open to the public, free of charge.

For additional information, please telephone (239) 489-9313 or visit www.RauschenbergGallery.com. This presentation is sponsored in part by the Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Council of Arts and Culture and the State of Florida, with support provided by Chico’s International.

_________________________________________________________________

Next ‘ArtSPEAK@FSW’ to feature screen actor and filmmaker Crispin Hellion Glover (06-26-15)

The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Florida SouthWestern State College has announced that internationally-acclaimed screen actor and movie director Crispin Hellion Glover will be presenting an ArtSPEAK@FSW event on Friday night, July 10, beginning at 7 p.m. in the Rush Library Auditorium. Offering the second part of his “IT?” trilogy for the first time in Southwest Florida, Glover will perform a one-hour narrative reading of his illustrated books as “Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Slide Show, Part 2” before screening his most recent feature It Is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE. Following the film, he will open the floor to discussion with a Q & A, and will end the evening with a book-signing/meet n’ greet.

Described as part horror film, part exploitation picture and part documentary, It Is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE. tells the story of a man who is unable to express his sexuality in the way he desires. Communicated from the actual point of view of lead actor and screenwriter Steven C. Stewart, who, while suffering from severe cerebral palsy and confined to a nursing home for a decade, lived for years watching people do things he was never able to do – this semi-autobiographical, psycho-sexual tale was revered as, “Wildly impassioned and macabrely fascinating” by The New York Times.

Crispin Hellion Glover began his prolific acting career at the age of thirteen. He landed his first film role in My Tutor in 1983, and was cast opposite Sean Penn that year in Racing with the Moon. Perhaps best known for portraying riotously eccentric characters on screen, Glover starred as George McFly in Robert Zemeckis’ box office smash Back to the Future (1985), Layne in River’s Edge, Groovin’ Gary in The Orkly Kid installment of The Beaver Trilogy, the Christmas-obsessed Dell in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990), Andy Warhol in Oliver Stone’s The Doors (1991), Howard Barth in Gus Van Sant’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993), Train Fireman in Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), the Knave of Hearts in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010), as well as oddball title roles in Bartleby (2000) and Willard (2002).

Not scheduled to be screened again (after this Ft. Myers presentation) until late August at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, PAPER magazine declared, “What Diane Arbus was to photography, Crispin Hellion Glover is swiftly achieving as a filmmaker… Training his sardonic eyes on the strange and afflicted, he achieves a mad dark poetry on celluloid.”

This is a special “one-night-only” ArtSPEAK@FSW Event with Mr. Glover in attendance at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery/Rush Library Auditorium.

This event is open to the public, free of charge, but seating is first-come, first-served. However, please note that NO ONE UNDER 18-YEARS OF AGE WILL BE ADMITTED due to the graphic/adult nature of the material to be presented.

For additional information please call 239-489-9313 or visit www.RauschenbergGallery.com. The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery is located on the Lee campus of Florida SouthWestern State College at 8099 College Pkwy, Fort Myers, FL 33919.

The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery was founded as The Gallery of Fine Art in 1979. On June 4, 2004 the Gallery of Fine Art was renamed the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery to honor and commemorate its long association and friendship with the artist. Over more than three decades prior to his death, the Gallery worked closely with Rauschenberg to present world premiere exhibitions including multiple installations of the ¼ Mile or Two Furlong Piece.  The artist insisted on naming the space the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery (versus the “Robert Rauschenberg Gallery”) as it was consistent with the intimate, informal relationship he maintained with both the local Southwest Florida community and FSW.

____________________________________________________________________________

Bernard Brunon lecture and performance to be featured in May 13 ArtSPEAK@FSW (05-12-15)

The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Florida SouthWestern State College has announced that Los Angeles-based visual artist, art critic and curator Bernard Brunon will be presenting an ArtSPEAK@FSW performance/lecture on Wednesday, May 13 at 6 p.m.

Originally aiming to make paintings that would stand outside the established art historical codes of representation, and sharing an affinity with the work of the internationally-renowned BMPT and Supports/Surfaces art groups in France in the 1960’s and early ‘70’s, Bernard Brunon eventually found himself painting houses. Adopting as his motto “With less to look at, there’s more to think about,” the artist has run a house-painting company (THAT’S PAINTING Productions) as a conceptual art project for almost three decades.

According to Bernard Brunon, “Painting a room does not create an image of the room; it inscribes it in its real space.”

By managing a house-painting company, the artist sets painting, and art-making, within social and economic reality of the everyday. With a respectful nod to Rauschenberg for his groundbreaking work in the gap between the two, Brunon’s practice truly merges art and life – turning monumental monochrome abstraction into house-painting (and vice-versa).

For his ArtSPEAK@FSW presentation at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, Bernard Brunon will discuss his current work-in-progress – “Erased Dave Muller” (2015) – within the historical context of Bob Rauschenberg’s seminal “Erased de Kooning Drawing” (1953). Previously “painting out” or “painting over” site-specific installations by other prominent fellow artists, Brunon’s newly commissioned work for the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at FSW, is the latest in a series including his “Erased (Daniel) Walravens” in Galerie le Sous-sol in Paris in 1996, “Erased (Hamish) Fulton” at Texas Gallery in 1997 and “Erased (Katharina) Grosse” at the Contemporary Art Museum (CAMH) in Houston in 2004.

The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, FSW and Los Angeles artist Dave Muller have commissioned THAT’S PAINTING Productions to paint over the 250+ ft. mural painted for “Dave Muller: Everything Sounds Good Right Now” in wall-colors that were developed by our Gallery namesake Bob Rauschenberg as the backdrop for numerous exhibitions of his own work.

This event is open to the public, free of charge, on a first-come, first-served basis. For additional information, please call 239-489-9313 or visit www.RauschenbergGallery.com.

_______________________________________________________________________

May 2 ArtSPEAK@FSW to feature artist, musician and composer Emil Schult (04-29-15)

The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Florida SouthWestern State College has announced that internationally-acclaimed Düsseldorf-based visual artist, musician and composer Emil Schult will be presenting an ArtSPEAK@FSW performance/lecture on Saturday, May 2nd at 1 p.m. Accompanied by special guest YuXuan Kong on the Guzheng (Chinese zither) and including a set from Bob Rauschenberg’s former collaborators and renowned experimental music collective Sonic Combine, this multimedia concert event will also provide visitors a final opportunity to experience the site-specific and immersive exhibition Dave Muller: Everything Sounds Good Right Now.

A master student of Joseph Beuys and Dieter Roth at the KunstAkademie/Düsseldorf in the early 1970’s, Emil Schult is perhaps best known for his collaborations with the legendary Teutonic electronic/pop band Kraftwerk. Most conspicuously contributing artwork for the staging of tours and album covers (including Autobahn and Radioactivity), Schult also provided lyrics for numerous songs – including “The Model” (a track featured on the band’s seminal The Man-Machine record). With recent “retrospectives” at both the Museum of Modern Art/MoMA in New York City and the Tate Modern in London – plus, a 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy’s – the cultural impact, broad visual and musical influence of Kraftwerk can scarcely be overstated.

As a visual artist Emil Schult has exhibited his work in galleries and museums internationally for decades. In conjunction with the 2012 Bob Rauschenberg Gallery exhibition “Things Not Seen Before: A Tribute to John Cage” (which then travelled in expanded form to the National Gallery of Art/Tbilisi, Georgia – former Soviet Union), Schult was commissioned to paint a portrait of the late composer John Cage and to select records for our “John Cage’s 33-1/3 – Performed by Audience” installation.

This event is open to the public, free of charge. However, first-come, first-served seating is limited. For additional information, please call: 239-489-9313 or visit www.RauschenbergGallery.com.

_________________________________________________________________________

Ted Riederer and screening of documentary ‘Never Records’ to be featured at ArtSPEAK@FSW on April 9 (04-02-15)

The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Florida SouthWestern State College has announced that New York-based visual artist and musician Ted Riederer will be presenting an ArtSPEAK@FSW performance/lecture in conjunction with a special “one-night-only” screening of his much-celebrated, feature-length documentary Never Records: You Are Not Listening (Directed by Jason Wyche) next Thursday evening, April 9, from 6-8 p.m.

Shot on location in Northern Ireland and in London, England, the film Never Records: You Are Not Listening explores the power of art and music to unite, educate, and uplift a community.  A self-proclaimed “one-time refugee from punk rock and sometime band member (as frontman for Thumper),” Ted Riederer has ambled artistically from the Americas to the Antipodes while creating a catalyst for social interaction and the artistic expression of others through his Never Records projects.

Travelling his record label and not-for-profit recording studio/”mock record shop” (Never Records) from New York to Liverpool, Lisbon and New Orleans, Stephen McCauley of BBC Radio/UK proclaimed that Riederer’s efforts had “taken the city by storm… a cultural phenomenon. [Never Records] plugged people back into why music was important in the first place.”  Receiving the Best of Fest award at the Victoria Texas Independent Film Festival in 2013 and garnering critical-acclaim in both the 2013 RxSM Underground Film Expo and CBGB Film Festival, Wyche’s documentary Never Records: You Are Not Listening closely follows Riederer, features performances by some of the UK’s most talented musicians, and deftly illustrates just what is possible when the all-mighty dollar (or British Pound) is taken out of the art and music equation.

You can view the official trailer for Never Records: You Are Not Listening at https://vimeo.com/46362406.

The work of Ted Riederer has been presented internationally in exhibitions at PS1, Prospect 1.5, Goff and Rosenthal/Berlin, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, Jack Hanley Gallery (San Francisco), Marianne Boesky Gallery, Context Gallery (Derry, Ireland), David Winton Bell Gallery (Brown University), The University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum/Tampa, the Liverpool Biennial, and the Dhaka Arts Center, Bangladesh. Following the film screening of Never Records: You Are Not Listening, the artist will present a new performance of his solo “Drums & Roses” (this time inspired by the floral elements prominently featured in the Dave Muller: Everything Sounds Good Right Now mural/installation currently on view in the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery).

This event is open to the public, free of charge. However, first-come, first-served, seating is limited. For additional information please call: 239-489-9313 or visit www.RauschenbergGallery.com.

_________________________________________________________________

Next ArtSPEAK@FSW lecture to feature Laurie Anderson on Saturday, January 24 in Rush Library Auditorium (01-23-15)

The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Florida SouthWestern State College has announced that Laurie Anderson, one of America’s most celebrated, innovative and influential artists, will be presenting an ArtSPEAK@FSW lecture this Saturday afternoon, January 24, at 1 p.m. in Rush Library Auditorium. On the final day of the RAUSCHENBERG: China/America Mix exhibition (now “remixed” – with works repositioned using chance operations and reinstalled for the New Year), the highly-revered Ms. Anderson will present a one-off artist’s talk on her current projects and recent work.

A seminal figure in contemporary art and music, Ms. Anderson has produced pioneering works that defy categorization and have blurred the boundaries of performance, theater, visual art and experimental music/sound.  Since the 1970’s, Ms. Anderson has published numerous books (and been the subject of several), produced videos (for PBS and MTV), films (including her feature-length Home of the Brave), radio pieces (for National Public Radio and BBC) and original scores for dance – including her groundbreaking collaboration in the 1980’s (on Set and Reset) with choreographer Trisha Brown and Robert Rauschenberg.

With the unanticipated popular appeal and U.K. radio chart success of her One Ten Records (and later Warner Brothers) single “O Superman,” Ms. Anderson’s recording career was launched in 1981 and unintended celebrity-status secured. Her live shows range from simple spoken word to elaborate multi-media stage performances such as Songs and Stories for Moby Dick (1999).  In 2002, Ms. Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her 2004 touring solo performance The End of the Moon. In 2007 she received the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for her outstanding contribution to the arts. In 2008 she completed a two-year worldwide tour of her performance piece, Homeland, which was released as an album on Nonesuch Records in June 2010.

The subject of a 2003 retrospective entitled The Record of the Time: Sound in the Work of Laurie Anderson that was organized by The Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon which travelled from France to Milan, Düsseldorf, Dublin and Tokyo through 2005, and a more recent survey of visual and installation art presented at CCBB in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in 2010, Ms. Anderson has had work acquired for the permanent collections of major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art/New York and has recently announced a partnership and extended loan that will provide a long-term home for exhibiting and presenting various “works-in-progress” at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts.

The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery was founded as The Gallery of Fine Art in 1979 on the Lee County campus of Florida SouthWestern State College/FSW (then Edison Community College). On June 4th 2004 the Gallery of Fine Art was renamed the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery to honor and commemorate its long time association and friendship with the artist. Over more than three decades until his death, the Gallery worked closely with Rauschenberg to present world premiere exhibitions including multiple installations of the ¼ Mile or Two Furlong Piece.  The artist insisted on naming the space the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery (versus the “Robert Rauschenberg Gallery”) as it was consistent with the intimate, informal relationship he maintained with both our local Southwest Florida community and FSW.

This event is open to the public, free of charge.  The first-come, first-served seating is limited.

For additional information please call 239-489-9313 or visit www.RauschenbergGallery.com. The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery / Florida SouthWestern State College is located at 8099 College Pkwy, Fort Myers, FL 33919

____________________________________________________________________________________

Next Rauschenberg Gallery ArtSPEAK to feature author and cultural provocateur Dave Hickey (09-16-14)

The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Florida SouthWestern State College is honored to announce that Dave Hickey, perhaps the most highly-revered, widely-read and provocative writers addressing cultural issues today, will be presenting a “one-off” ArtSPEAK@FSW lecture on Saturday afternoon, October 4, at 1 p.m. in the Rush Library Auditorium.  In celebration of the 10-year anniversary of the Gallery’s renaming in Mr. Rauschenberg’s honor and in advance of the gallery’s “RAUSCHENBERG: China/America Mix” exhibition opening on the artist’s October 22nd birthday, Dave Hickey will speak publicly for the first time on “The Rauschenberg Legacy (sans Bob).”

Author of popular books such as Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy and The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty, Hickey’s latest endeavor is the much-celebrated Pirates and Farmers: Essays on Tast,  a collection of enlightening writings on cultural phenomena in a time when the commoditization and oversimplification of art seems most prevalent. Having served as Executive Editor for Art in America magazine and as a contributing editor to The Village Voice, Dave Hickey has written for publications as wide-ranging as Rolling Stone, Art News, Artforum, Harper’s Magazine, Andy Warhol’s Interview, Vanity Fair and Playboy, and been the subject of lengthy profiles in Texas Monthly, U.S. News and World Report, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Once described by Newsweek as “exhilarating, deeply engaging… and a provocation to reignite the conversation about the purpose of art,” Hickey’s books – much like his lectures – both stimulate and provoke thought and debate. The College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award winner in 1994 (the “Oscar” for art criticism) and a 2001 recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation (so-called) “Genius Award” (a $625,000, no-strings-attached grant for those deemed “exceptionally creative”), this is an extraordinary/one-time-only opportunity to hear Dave speak about Bob.

The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery was founded as The Gallery of Fine Art in 1979 on the Lee County campus of Florida SouthWestern State College/FSW (then Edison Community College).  On June 4th 2004 the Gallery of Fine Art was renamed the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, to honor and commemorate our long time association and friendship with the artist.  Over more than three decades until his death, the Gallery worked closely with Rauschenberg to present world premiere exhibitions including multiple installations of the ¼ Mile or Two Furlong Piece.  The artist insisted on naming the space the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery (versus the “Robert Rauschenberg Gallery”) as it was consistent with the intimate, informal relationship he maintained with both our local Southwest Florida community and FSW