News Article

FSW Gallery Director Heads Up Venezuelan Cultural Exchange

May 31, 2016

Jade Dellinger, Director of the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Florida SouthWestern State College, traveled to Venezuela this spring to discuss artist Robert Rauschenberg under the U.S. State Department’s Fulbright-Hays Program.

An expert on Rauschenberg and contemporary art, Dellinger was invited by the Venezuelan government to establish a cultural exchange on the arts. Besides lecturing about Rauschenberg, he also had the opportunity to describe the artist’s intimate relationship with FSW. Many students and art enthusiasts came to listen to him. His appearance at the Metropolitan University in Caracas made the front page of Venezuela’s major newspaper, El Nacional.

For Dellinger, the trip was inspired by the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI).  In the 1980s, Rauschenberg purposely traveled to places in the world where it’d be difficult for outsiders, or Americans, to visit. Under ROCI he traveled to countries like China, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and Venezuela using art to transcend borders and connect people. Rauschenberg also produced art at each of his ROCI locations. Last year the Rauschenberg Gallery exhibited one of these pieces, “Chinese Summerhall,” a 100-foot photograph of life in China created in 1982.

The pieces Rauschenberg made in Venezuela for the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas in 1985 are still on display today, but whether visiting Americans are able to see them is a different story. Relations between the two countries are tense. Dellinger witnessed an anti-U.S. demonstration in downtown Caracas during his stay, but like Rauschenberg he considered art as a vessel to connect all different kinds of people.

Dellinger did get the chance to tour the national museum in Caracas and had the opportunity to meet with its former director, Sofia Imber. A journalist and art lover, Imber founded the museum and was primarily responsible for Rauschenberg’s 1985 exhibition under ROCI. Considered one of the most influential supporters of the arts in Latin America, she was dismissed from her position as director of the museum by President Hugo Chávez in 2001.

During his lectures, Dellinger found that young people were especially interested in hearing about “The Moon Museum,” a secret art mission to space between Rauschenberg and five other significant artists of the last century. He carried a copy of the tiny ceramic museum with six drawings that had been surreptitiously attached to the Apollo XII lunar module in 1969. The same exhibition appeared at FSW in the fall of 2014, where visitors could see a copy of the miniature museum and other paraphernalia connected to the Apollo XII mission.

Learn more about the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at FSW by visiting www.rauschenberggallery.com.

Last Updated: May 31, 2016