The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum has announced that its newly renovated Flight and the Arts Center will open on July 1, 2026, with two inaugural exhibitions: “The Ascent of Rauschenberg: Reinventing the Art of Flight” and “The Art of Air and Space: Interpretations of Flight.” The Rauschenberg exhibition, timed to the artist’s centennial, will present 30 of his artworks related to flight, including the monumental lithograph “Sky Garden (Stoned Moon)” (1969), and will run for one year. The exhibition is curated by Carolyn Russo and features loans from the Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.
This exhibition matters because it marks the first time a museum has focused specifically on Robert Rauschenberg’s lifelong engagement with flight as a metaphor for human ambition and imagination, and it opens during the artist’s centennial year. The new Flight and the Arts Center represents a major renovation of the National Air and Space Museum, integrating art with the museum’s core mission of aviation and space history, and signals a growing institutional commitment to exploring the intersection of art and science.