Guild Hall’s Student Art Festival, Rauschenberg 100, Launches This Weekend

Guild Hall’s Student Art Festival, an annual tradition since 1938, returns on November 15 with this year’s exhibition, “Rauschenberg 100,” on view until early 2026.

Every year, Guild Hall works alongside local artists, school districts and their students, from kindergarten to grade 12, to facilitate creativity and collaboration through workshops culminating in an exhibition of the students’ work at Guild Hall’s galleries.

This year’s participating schools include Amagansett School, Bridgehampton School, East Hampton High School, East Hampton Middle School, John Marshall Elementary School, Shelter Island School, Springs School, and Pierson Middle-High School.

Students from each school are mentored by 10 participating professional artists, including Linda K. Alpern, Scott Bluedorn, Peter Dayton, Eva Faye, Margaret Garrett, Candace Hill-Montgomery, Laurie Lambrecht, Bastienne Schmidt, Kevin Teare and Evan Yee.

In addition, each year’s festival has a special theme. For 2025, the theme is “Rauschenberg 100,” celebrating the centennial birth year of the late painter Robert Rauschenberg, who died in 2008. Rauschenberg’s artistic vision, to explore “the gap between art and life,” provided the inspiration for the more than 100 workshops between students and artists.

In a recent press release, participating artists Bastienne Schmidt, Peter Dayton and Margaret Garrett spoke about the festival with excitement.

Schmidt worked with Bridgehampton School’s third- and fourth-graders, and noted the kids’ “openness to ideas and process, that was very appealing.” When speaking about Rauschenberg, she explained that he “was always open and interested in taking in new materials and unexpected forms and objects into his artwork. The kids loved the freedom of process.”

Peter Dayton worked with older students at East Hampton High School, and facilitated experimentation at all levels.

“I let them control the situation,” he said. “We are surrounded by water in East Hampton so it was interesting how many students went in that direction.”

Margaret Garrett worked with students from Shelter Island School, and focused on mixed-media artwork.

“They made some really great unique pieces,” she said. “It was exciting to see the clarity of each person’s vision.”

Guild Hall’s Museum Director and Curator of Visual Arts, Melanie Crader, also spoke about the impact and process of this yearly festival, and what it means to get kids involved in the arts through local communities.

“What unfolds in Guild Hall’s galleries this fall and winter reflects months of creative exploration: students taking risks, experimenting with unexpected materials, and discovering what it means to create art that responds to the world around them,” she said.

Crader added that for many of the kids in the program, this showing will be their first time they see their own art hanging in a museum, made even more special by the fact that their work will be shown in conversation with pieces of Robert Rauschenberg’s work that reside in Guild Hall’s permanent collection.

Finally, Crader emphasized a goal for getting local youth immersed in the vibrant arts collective that the East End has to offer.

“We hope that students see that the community values the arts,” she said.

Guild Hall’s 2025 Student Art Festival, “Rauschenberg 100,” opens on Saturday, November 15, and is viewable through January 4, 2026. To view the exhibition, visit Guild Hall at 158 Main Street in East Hampton. For more information, visit guildhall.org.