Art Basel in Hong Kong 2026, March 27

Conversations | Robert Rauschenberg and the velocity of art

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Presented in partnership with BMW  
Kathleen Ditzig, Curator, National Gallery Singapore Russell Storer, Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs, M+, Hong Kong 
Moderator: Prof. Dr. Thomas Girst, Global head of Cultural Engagement, BMW Group, Munich 

In 1953, while living in downtown Manhattan, 27-year-old Robert Rauschenberg asked his friend John Cage – one of the few people he knew who owned a car – to drive his Model A Ford over 20 sheets of paper laid along the road. The result was the 22-foot Automobile Tire Print, a work that brings many defining aspects of Rauschenberg’s art into play: movement, collaboration, trailblazing ideas, thinking across disciplines, and a fascination with machines. That outward-looking impulse is the focus of this conversation, presented in dialogue with the major Rauschenberg exhibition currently on view at M+ that marks the centenary of the artist’s birth. It also resonates with the presentation of Rauschenberg’s 1986 BMW Art Car, which will be shown at Art Basel Hong Kong as part of the BMW Art Car World Tour.  
Panelists examined how mobility – physical, intellectual, and geographic – shaped Rauschenberg’s practice, and why it continues to resonate across generations and regions today. 

Kathleen Ditzig is a Singaporean researcher and curator. Her research interests include exhibition histories of Southeast Asia, global histories of capitalism, and the enduring legacies and networks of the Cold War in cultural production. She is a curator at National Gallery Singapore, where she has worked on advanced technology projects.   
Russell Storer is Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs at M+. He was formerly Director (Curatorial, Research and Exhibitions) at National Gallery Singapore, and has held curatorial positions at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. He taught art history at the National University of Singapore and has published widely on Asian and Australian contemporary art.  
Prof. Dr. Thomas Girst is the former head of the Art Science Research Laboratory in New York. Since 2003, he has been Global Head of Cultural Engagement at the BMW Group. In 2016, he received the ‘European Cultural Manager of the Year’ award. He is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. His many books have been translated into various languages. Cultural Management: A Global Guide (Thames & Hudson) and What Would Duchamp Do? (Koenig) are forthcoming.  

Stage furniture by Porro and B&B Italia, courtesy of Salone del Mobile.Milano

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