Reading the Art World: Francine Snyder
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Listen to our latest podcast episode featuring Francine Snyder, Director of Archives at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, discussing her book I Don't Think About Being Great: Select Writings by Robert Rauschenberg, co-published by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and Yale University Press.
Snyder reveals a side of Rauschenberg that many don't know: his relationship to language and writing. Despite self-identifying as dyslexic, Rauschenberg kept a substantial body of written work—correspondence, artist notes, testimony, speeches, and fragments—which he labeled in his own hand as "file RR writing." These materials, separated from project files and preserved together, show that writing was central to his creative process.
Our conversation addresses Snyder's editorial choice to preserve Rauschenberg's misspellings, cross-outs, and grammatical idiosyncrasies rather than correct them. These visual elements function like collage—intentional word play and phonetic experimentation that would be erased by standardization. The book presents 100 writings selected from nearly 900 in the archive, organized into three sections: art and practice, friends and collaborators, and politics and activism.
We discuss several key texts, including Rauschenberg's 1963 artist statement declaring "it is extremely important that art be unjustifiable"—a phrase he arrived at by crossing out "justifiable" in earlier drafts. This refusal of explanation aligns with his resistance to fixed meaning and his insistence that viewers bring their own interpretations. Our conversation also addresses Rauschenberg's activism, from founding Change Inc. in 1970 to provide emergency support for artists, to advocating for artist resale royalty rights and NEA funding, to launching ROCI (Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange) in the 1980s to foster artistic dialogue across borders.
For anyone interested in postwar American art, artist archives, or how foundations steward intellectual legacy, this episode offers insight into an artist whose relationship to language was as experimental as his visual work.
"Rauschenberg also never wanted to explain his art. He wanted that for the viewer and he wanted everyone to bring their own interpretation in."
– Francine Snyder
About the Author
Francine Snyder is Director of Archives at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, where she has worked since 2015. She specializes in artist and museum archives and in fostering research and scholarship on contemporary cross-disciplinary creative practices. Major initiatives under her leadership include the foundation's Fair Use Policy to reduce barriers to image use, the Archives Research Residency program, and expanded digital archives.