Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Plans to Sell the Artist’s Longtime NYC Home
7Aug. 6, 2026
Robert Rauschenberg’s home at 381 Lafayette Street in New York’s NoHo neighborhood islistedwith commercialreal estatecompany Newmark,Artnet Newsreports. The early-nineteenth-century town house, which Rauschenberg bought in 1965, once housed an orphanage and a convent. It has served as the headquarters of theRobert Rauschenberg Foundationsince the death of the painter—one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century—in 2008.
No price has yet been publicly revealed for the five-story, 9,200 square-foot building. The listing highlighted recent improvements to the structures facade and roof, and touted the “ability to convert property to luxury rentals or boutique condominiums.”
A spokesperson for the Rauschenberg Foundation, which has overseen the artist’s legacy and archives since 1990, stated that the foundation was “exploring range of options” in response to looming plans to build a nineteen-story residential building on a parking lot next door, at 375 Lafayette.
“If construction moves forward, the project will have a significant impact on the integrity, functionality, and day-to-day operations of our building,” said the spokesperson. Among the options the foundation has considered to date are a possible move to another space. The organization “is conducting a series of assessments to fully understand the scope and long-term implications of the proposed development.”
If the house is sold, it would be the second property offloaded by the foundation in recent months, after the artist’s twenty-two-acre compound on Captiva Island, Florida, which it sold to a resort earlier this year for $45 million. The foundation cast that sale as necessitated by “increasingly challenging environmental conditions” and “rising maintenance costs.” The Captiva Civic Association described it as a “grievous betrayal by the Rauschenberg Foundation.”