Newport Art Museum Presents First Museum Solo Exhibition of Visionary Artist Bobby Anspach’s Immersive Sculptural Works Featuring a Restorative Space Designed by Lauren Rottet

Previews during Newport Design Week beginning June 18th 

Public Opening: June 21, 2025

Press kit linked here

April 22, 2025 (Newport, RI): ​ This summer, the Newport Art Museum will present the first museum solo exhibition celebrating the groundbreaking work of Bobby Anspach, emphasizing the late artist’s unique ability to create a sense of connection and community through his immersive, sculptural installations. The exhibition, titled Everything is Change, will feature Anspach’s Place for Continuous Eye Contact sculptures, known for their transformative use of light and sound, as well as a selection of his other innovative works.

This exhibition offers an artist’s perspective on an artist, shaped by Taylor Baldwin. His approach is deeply personal, informed by his first-hand understanding of Anspach’s evolution as his former professor and advisor at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), as well as his own artistic practice, providing an intimate look into Anspach’s work and emphasizing themes of connection, transcendence, and reflection.

Everything is Change centers around two of Anspach’s signature Place for Continuous Eye Contact sculptures—one designed as a solo experience for deep introspection, and another facilitating a shared experience between two people making eye contact. These works use carefully crafted optical and lighting effects to create an altered perception of space and time, immersing participants in a heightened state of presence. By fostering direct human engagement, these pieces highlight Anspach’s belief in connection as a means of healing and transformation. His approach, rooted in DIY aesthetics and high craft, blended common materials with a profound conceptual rigor, creating works that initially appear scrappy and chaotic but ultimately dissolve into seamless, otherworldly environments. Anspach’s work underscored the importance of shared experience and human intimacy, aligning powerfully with the Museum’s historic home setting.

“Bobby Anspach had an unfailing belief that art was capable of creating a sense of unity, empathy, and understanding in viewers,” said Taylor Baldwin, curator of Everything is Change. “That is the kind of optimism and faith in creative expression that the art world - and indeed the world beyond it - really needs more of in this exact moment."

Complementing the Place for Continuous Eye Contact sculptures are several works made in concert and conversation with these central pieces. Colorful paintings, preparatory drawings, a stop-motion animation, and surreal sculptures describe Bobby's vision of extravagant sensory experience, productive disorientation, and urgent social imperatives. The exhibition will also feature a new, ten-minute documentary film from Julia Barrett Mitchell. ​ Debuting as part of Everything is Change, the film will use archival footage to illuminate the life, inspirations, and creative vision of Anspach in his own voice.

Additionally, Eluvium, Anspach’s longtime collaborator and the composer behind the immersive soundscapes in his Place for Continuous Eye Contact sculptures, will serve as the sound curator for the exhibition. Eluvium will create an ambient soundscape for the relaxation room designed by Lauren Rottet which is an extension of Everything is Change, reinforcing the Anspach’s ethos of creative communion and sensory engagement. The room will reflect Rottet’s holistic approach to design—one that seamlessly integrates art, architecture, and sensory experience. Influenced by the Light and Space movement, Rottet carefully considers materiality, form, and illumination to craft an environment that transforms with shifting light, offering visitors a space to rest, reflect, and connect before and after experiencing Anspach’s work. Featuring pieces from her Rottet Collection—thoughtful products that can stand alone as functional works of art—the room will embody a symphony of design, where every element is composed with intention.

Set within the Museum’s historic John N. A. Griswold House—one of the first American Stick Style buildings and a National Historic Landmark—the exhibition underscores the synergy between the Museum’s architectural heritage and Anspach’s focus on human engagement and healing through art. The intimacy of a domestic space provides a compelling backdrop for a body of work centered on connection, reflection, and shared experience. 

“With Everything is Change, the Museum invites visitors to consider how art reflects and reshapes human connection,” said Danielle, Artistic Director of the Newport Art Museum. “Bringing Bobby Anspach’s work into this historic space underscores our mission to explore how contemporary art can spark deeper connections within our community. His work pushes the boundaries between technology and human intimacy, reminding us that even in a digital age, person-to-person connection remains essential and irreplaceable.”

The Museum will host a dynamic series of programs engaging the community and featuring leading voices across art, design, music, and wellness. Major programs include the events for Newport Design Week, a sound bath performance by Eluvium, and lectures from the exhibition’s curator Taylor Baldwin and Dr. Stephanie Hartselle, Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University.

Exhibition Details

About Bobby Anspach

Bobby Anspach was an American artist whose work centered around the creations of sculptural installations designed to deliver transcendent experiences to viewers, all part of a series titled Place for Continuous Eye Contact. ​ As much a sculptor as an inventor, these devices are currently undergoing a patenting process. ​ Employing a DIY-technique through all of his work, Anspach was focused on creating brilliant, unexpected, and sublime experiences that blend common objects with high craft, ranging from pom-poms to hand-blown glass to medical beds, aiming to inspire viewers to look within and discover everyday beauty and the natural world. ​ These works create an experience that at first appears scrappy and chaotic, and quickly blends into a seamless, all-encompassing, and otherworldly space. ​ His work was informed by a deep respect for the environment and meditation, and founded on a belief of the interconnectedness of all things that was aimed to create a cared experience between all viewers of his work.

During his lifetime, Anspach’s work was celebrated and exhibited across the United States, most notably at the Spring/Break Art Show, New York, 2018 and 2020, the 2019 BRIC Biennial: Volume III. Brooklyn, NY, and the 2019 Governor’s Island Art Fair, as well as in numerous gallery exhibitions across Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and California. In the public sphere, he presented his Place for Continuous Eye Contact installations and made them available for visitor experiences at a pop-up space in Beacon, NY in 2021; in a Walmart parking lot in Newburgh, NY in 2022; and on Fifth Avenue outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2022.

Bobby Anspach was born in 1987 in Toledo, OH, and died in 2022 in Beacon, NY. He received his BA from Boston College in 2011, studied at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and received an MFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017. There, he produced the earliest versions of the Place for Continuous Eye Contact series of sculptural works. 

About the Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation

The Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation (BASF) is a not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to preserving and providing access to the work of Bobby Anspach, who built sound and light sculptures with, on the one hand, the ambitious aim of preventing the world from destroying itself and, on the other hand, the more modest aim of providing individuals with singular aesthetic experiences. 

Continuing Bobby’s mission, the foundation grounds itself in the same principle that fueled Bobby’s work: a conviction regarding the power of meditation and art. Alongside continuing to preserve and share Bobby’s work, the foundation engages and supports artistic and mindfulness programming, as well as artists, educators, and meditation practitioners, all with the aim of offering people the opportunity to encounter and express something singular in their human experience. 

About the Newport Art Museum

Founded in 1912 as the Art Association of Newport, the Newport Art Museum is a creative community and gathering place for seasonal visitors and residents alike. As a cultural cornerstone in Newport, Rhode Island, the museum offers dynamic, multigenerational programming and showcases a diverse collection of classic and contemporary art spanning centuries, styles, and perspectives. Discover more at www.NewportArtMuseum.org. 

About Taylor Baldwin

Taylor Baldwin an artist working primarily in sculpture, video, and installation and an associate professor and Graduate Program Director of Sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he taught Bobby Anspach. 

Baldwin has had solo exhibitions with International Waters Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Wayfarers Gallery (Brooklyn, NY) Conner Contemporary Gallery (Washington D.C.), Land of Tomorrow Gallery (Louisville, KY), and Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA) as well as groups shows at the Queens Museum of Art (Queens, NY), Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art (Tucson, AZ), the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (Norfolk, VA), the Kentucky Museum of Arts and Craft (Louisville, KY), and P.P.O.W. Gallery (Manhattan, NY). He is currently based in Providence, RI.

He received a BFA from RISD in 2005 and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2007. He has been a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, among others.

About Lauren Rottet

Lauren Rottet is one of the most celebrated interior designers and architects in the world today, known for her groundbreaking work and historic achievements. As the Founding Principal of Rottet Studio, she is the first woman elevated to Fellow status by both the American Institute of Architects and the International Interior Design Association. Her career has been honored with multiple Designer of the Year Awards, induction into the Interior Design Hall of Fame, the Platinum Circle designation by Hospitality Design, and the IIDA Icon Award. Since founding Rottet Studio in 2008, she has expanded the firm globally, with five offices and a client roster that includes the world’s most prestigious brands—from Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton to the New York Stock Exchange and Disney.

In 2017, Rottet launched the Rottet Collection, a furniture and accessory line that has earned numerous GOOD Design and Best of Year Awards for its timeless, sculptural pieces. Her design philosophy centers on solving functional needs while creating visually impactful, emotionally resonant spaces—often shaped by her deep interest in light, materiality, and form. Influenced by Light and Space artists, she transforms environments into immersive experiences that blend calm and crescendo. As architecture critic Paul Goldberger observed in Authentic Design, her ability to move fluidly across styles is a testament to her vision and versatility.

Media contact

Sara Griffin

sara@griffinprny.com

+1-917-656-6348