Born in 1907 in New York to an American mother and French-Italian father, Alexander Girard and his family soon moved to Italy where he was raised in a Florentine villa surrounded by art and antiques. As a boy he filled notebooks with creative design sketches displaying an early attention to detail and interest in other cultures even imaging his own country with regional flags and unique symbolism. Inspiration from international folk art became a staple of his artistic legacy as he amassed thousands of artifacts from around the world. Girard studied architecture in Rome, London and New York as his influential and celebrated career began.




Girard designed and directed the groundbreaking show For Modern Living at the Detroit Institute of Fine Arts in 1949, a predecessor to the Good Design shows hosted by the Museum of Modern Art in New York which he eventually participated in and juried. While living in Michigan in 1952, he was hired by friend and collaborator Charles Eames at Herman Miller eventually establishing the company’s textile division as Director of Design until 1973. In addition to his collections of fabric and wallpaper, his “Environment Enrichment Panels” promoted humanization of the corporate workplace and in 1967 he released the “Girard Group” collection of furniture.




Girard applied vibrant color combinations, sensibility for arranging bold patterns, and passion for playful decoration to his work in textiles, interiors, furniture, graphics, communication and corporate design among many other disciplines. Throughout his career he lent his design to private commissions such as the high modernist Irwin Miller House in Columbus, Indiana with architect Eero Saarinen in 1957, the opulent Latin-American-themed restaurant interior of La Fonda del Sol that opened in 1960 inside the New York Time & Life Building, and a corporate redesign of all visual aspects of Braniff International Airways in 1965.




He challenged the modern aesthetic which rejected decoration and instead created a unique balance of craftsmanship and industry, expression and function, past and present. Known for his positive approach and thoughtful manner he elegantly melded different time periods and cultural backgrounds to create a distinct visual language.




Alexander Girard resided in Santa Fe, New Mexico until he died in 1993. His unique aesthetic vision and legacy is honored permanently by the Santa Fe Museum of International Folk Art’s Girard Wing and recently by a major retrospective from the archives at the Vitra Design Museum, Germany in 2016.

Born in York, Pennsylvania, Jeff Koons is an American artist renowned for his work in the realm of contemporary art. His creations are characterized by their vibrant colors, reflective surfaces, and themes that challenge traditional boundaries between high and low culture. Koons has emerged as one of the most influential and controversial artists of his generation, often polarizing critics and art enthusiasts with his provocative style and unabashed embrace of commercialism.




Koons' early interest in art was nurtured by his father, a furniture dealer and interior decorator and his mother, a seamstress. By the tender age of eight, he had begun making replicas of Old Masters paintings which he sold in his father’s shop. After graduating from high school Koons pursued formal education in art, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, and studying briefly at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.




In the 1980s, Koons gained prominence with his Equilibrium series, which featured basketballs suspended in tanks of water, and his Luxury and Degradation series, which critiqued consumerism through meticulously crafted stainless steel sculptures of liquor advertisements. However, it was his Banality series in the late 1980s that truly catapulted him to fame. This series included sculptures such as Michael Jackson and Bubbles and Pink Panther, which used kitsch imagery to challenge perceptions of taste and value in art. One of Koons' most iconic works is Balloon Dog, part of his Celebration series, which debuted in the 1990s. These larger-than-life sculptures of balloon animals, rendered in polished stainless steel with mirror-like surfaces, epitomize Koons' ability to blend childlike wonder with high art. Balloon Dog (Orange) famously sold for $58.4 million at auction in 2013, setting a record for the most expensive work by a living artist at the time.




Koons' work often blurs the lines between art and commerce, prompting debates about authenticity and originality. His approach to art-making is heavily influenced by the readymade concepts of Marcel Duchamp and the pop art sensibilities of Andy Warhol, and he has described his work as a celebration of the mundane and a reflection of contemporary society's values and desires. Despite his commercial success, Koons' work has not been without controversy. Critics often question the originality and artistic merit of his pieces, accusing him of prioritizing spectacle over substance. Nonetheless, Koons' influence on the art world is undeniable; he has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions and retrospectives, including a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2014, and his work is held in countless private and public collections worldwide.

Robert Rauschenberg was a seminal figure in American art whose innovative work bridged the gap between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, profoundly influencing the direction of contemporary art. Born Milton Ernest Rauschenberg on October 22, 1925, in Port Arthur, Texas, he grew up in a working-class family: his father worked for the Gulf State Utilities power company and his mother was a frugal woman who made her family’s clothes from scraps (possibly influencing Rauschenberg’s later work with collage and assemblage).




After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Rauschenberg enrolled at the Kansas City Art Institute on the G.I. Bill. He later studied at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he met fellow artist Susan Weil, who would become his first wife. In 1948, Rauschenberg returned to the United States to study at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, an experimental institution that emphasized interdisciplinary collaboration. Here, he worked alongside influential figures like Josef Albers, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham, who significantly impacted his artistic development.




Rauschenberg's early works were influenced by Abstract Expressionism, but he quickly began to diverge from the movement's focus on pure abstraction and emotional intensity. Instead, he developed a unique approach that combined everyday objects and images with traditional art materials. This approach culminated in his Combines series, which he began in the mid-1950s. These works blurred the boundaries between painting and sculpture, incorporating materials such as fabric, newspaper, photographs, and even taxidermied animals. Notable pieces from this series include Monogram (1955-1959), featuring a taxidermied goat encircled by a tire, and Canyon (1959), which includes a stuffed eagle.




In 1964, Rauschenberg won the first prize for painting at the Venice Biennale, solidifying his international reputation and marking a turning point in his career. His success helped pave the way for the acceptance of American artists on the global stage and contributed to the rise of Pop Art. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Rauschenberg continued to push the boundaries of art, experimenting with new techniques and technologies. This included a collaboration with engineers from Bell Laboratories on the Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) initiative, exploring the intersection of art and technology.




Rauschenberg's work was characterized by its playful, eclectic style and its embrace of chance and spontaneity. He often used silkscreen printing to incorporate photographic images into his paintings, creating layered, collage-like compositions. His use of found objects and everyday materials challenged traditional notions of what could be considered art. In addition to his artistic achievements, Rauschenberg was known for his philanthropic efforts. In 1984, he founded the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI), a project aimed at promoting cultural exchange and understanding through art. He traveled to countries with politically and socially volatile environments, creating and exhibiting works that reflected the local cultures.




Rauschenberg received many honors during his lifetime. The Whitney Museum of Art held a retrospective of his work in 1990, and he won the Commandant de l'Ordre des Lettres from the French government in 1992, followed by the National Medal of the Arts in 1993. He was the focus of another retrospective exhibition in 1997 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, which featured a staggering 467 works from the course of his career and took six years to prepare.




Rauschenberg created his eponymous foundation in 1990, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, to promote awareness of the causes he cared about. His legacy lives on in the foundation today as is evident in their powerful mission statement: “The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation primarily supports small to midsize arts and socially-engaged organizations that are contrarian and experimental, even courageous, in driving towards equity. In addition, the Foundation amplifies the creative life of artists and scholars across the disciplines through residencies, commissions, and accessible public platforms. Finally, the Foundation supports research, exhibitions, publications, academic partnerships and special projects across the globe that promote the legacy of Rauschenberg’s joyful, responsive, and irreverent approach to making work while living an empathetic and meaningful life.”