RAUSCHENBERG BMW ART CAR DEBUTS IN ASIA AT ART BASEL HONG KONG

## The Drivable Museum Arrives Rauschenberg's Art Car (1986) will make its debut in Asia at Art Basel Hong Kong 2026, concurrent with the exhibition Robert Rauschenberg and Asia at M+. Seven feet of hand-painted Corten steel wrapped around a BMW 635CSi chassis. Silkscreened photographic images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection layered across every surface. No gallery walls. No velvet ropes. Just rolling sculpture that was built to be driven. He was the first to incorporate works by other artists onto his car, using silkscreen prints of pieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection in New York. This is the material fact that matters: Robert Rauschenberg transformed this sports car into a collage of art history, photography, and everyday culture. The 635CSi becomes canvas. The canvas becomes vehicle. The vehicle becomes museum. "This car is the fulfilment of my dream." Rauschenberg said this in 1986. Forty years later, the dream lands in Hong Kong. ## Market Signal Meets Institutional Weight Art Basel Hong Kong is one of the key international stops on the tour, which runs throughout 2025 and 2026. This is not accidental programming. BMW has been Art Basel's partner for over two decades. For more than two decades, BMW has served as a long-term partner of Art Basel, supporting the fair through cultural initiatives and its VIP car service. When a corporate collection gets prime real estate at the world's most important Asian art fair, the institutional signal reads loud. M+, Asia's global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District (WestK) in Hong Kong, is pleased to present Robert Rauschenberg and Asia, the first exhibition dedicated to art by Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925–2008) created during and in response to his travels across Asia. The exhibition will open to the public from Saturday, 22 November 2025 to Sunday, 26 April 2026 in the Cissy Pui-Lai Pao and Shinichiro Watari Galleries in M+. The timing is calculated. M+ gets the institutional prestige of the first major Rauschenberg Asia retrospective. BMW gets the cultural authority of presenting alongside one of the region's most important contemporary art institutions. Courtney J. Martin, Executive Director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, commented, "We are thrilled that Rauschenberg's Art Car (1986) will make its debut in Asia at Art Basel Hong Kong 2026, concurrent with the exhibition Robert Rauschenberg and Asia at M+." ## The 50 Year Trajectory The story of BMW Art Cars started in 1975, when the French racing driver and auctioneer Hervé Poulain came up with the idea of joining the 24 Hours of Le Mans in an artist-styled BMW. Twenty artists across five decades. The "rolling sculptures" – from Alexander Calder's first-ever Art Car to Julie Mehretu's latest – offer an impressive cross-section of art history over the past five decades. Rauschenberg sits at number six in the sequence. From 1982 to 1992, the BMW Art Car Collection opened up to the world, with artists transforming various standard production models: Ernst Fuchs, Robert Rauschenberg, Michael Jagamara Nelson, Ken Done, Matazo Kayama, César Manrique, A. R. Penck, Esther Mahlangu, Sandro Chia and David Hockney. His car bridged the early Le Mans racers and the global expansion phase. The 2025 leg of the BMW Art Car World Tour was a resounding success and reached over 2 million visitors across flagship art fairs, museums, motorsport events and cultural institutions worldwide. Two million people saw these cars in 2025. To mark the anniversary, the BMW Art Car World Tour features the largest exhibition programme in the history of the series, spanning all five continents. ## Process Over Prestige The 635CSi started as a production car. Rauschenberg treated it like any other material in his studio. Silkscreen technique transferred from canvas to automotive paint. Robert Rauschenberg transformed this sports car into a collage of art history, photography, and everyday culture. Same process, different substrate. The artist referred to the work as a 'drivable museum,' and like so much of his oeuvre, it blurs the boundaries between art and life, painting and sculpture, art and technology. This description comes from the Rauschenberg Foundation, not BMW marketing. The institutional validation matters. In a panel discussion entitled "Robert Rauschenberg and the Velocity of Art", set to take place on Friday, 27 March at 1:45pm, the BMW Art Talk brings together leading international experts to discuss the continued impact of Rauschenberg's innovative approach on culture, technology, and cross‑sector collaboration. Russell Storer, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs at M+ and curator of the exhibition "Rauschenberg and Asia" (until 26 April 2026), Dr Courtney J. Martin, Executive Director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and Prof Dr Thomas Girst, Global Head of Cultural Engagement at the BMW Group, will delve into the artist's legacy from curatorial, institutional, and corporate perspectives. ## What Comes Next Next stop of the BMW Art Car World Tour after Rétromobileinclude a presentation of Ernst Fuchs' and Jeff Koons' 'rolling sculptures' at RETRO CLASSICS in Stuttgart (February) as well as displays at Art Basel (Doha & Hong Kong), Turkey, Romania, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, and Germany. The tour continues through 2026. Furthermore, an exhibition of the BMW Art Cars is planned at the BMW Welt in Munich in summer 2026. This is corporate cultural strategy executed at museum scale. Twenty cars. Five continents. Featuring over 45 stops in more than 30 countries, the tour captivated hundreds of thousands of visitors with its iconic collection of 20 BMW Art Cars, each a masterpiece created by some of the world's most renowned artists. The Rauschenberg car will return to its Munich home after Hong Kong. But the institutional relationships built during this tour will outlast any single exhibition. BMW positions itself not as an automotive company that sponsors art, but as a cultural institution that happens to make cars. The distinction matters in a market where cultural capital translates directly to brand value.