SCRIBBLE AT THE WATERMILL CENTER REFLECTS THE ENDURING LEGACY OF ROBERT WILSON

SCRIBBLE AT THE WATERMILL CENTER REFLECTS THE ENDURING LEGACY OF ROBERT WILSON

The Watermill Center’s 2025 Summer Benefit, SCRIBBLE, arrived as a celebration of experimentation, collaboration, and community—but in retrospect, it also became an inadvertent homage to the institution’s founder, Robert Wilson, who passed away just five days later, on July 31, 2025.

For over three decades, Wilson shaped The Watermill Center into one of the world’s most forward-thinking spaces for interdisciplinary art. A pioneering force in contemporary performance, design, and theater, Wilson founded the Center in 1992 as a laboratory for creative development, fostering an environment where emerging and established artists could come together across disciplines, geographies, and generations. His commitment to experimentation without hierarchy and his belief in the collision of visual and performing arts made The Watermill Center a sanctuary for radical artistic inquiry.

That ethos was fully alive in this year’s gala, themed SCRIBBLE, a two-day program that brought together more than 700 attendees and over 30 international artists. Co-chaired by Robert Wilson alongside Isabelle Huppert, Adam D. Weinberg, and Carolina García Jayaram, the event featured a Friday night Artist Dinner and a Saturday Benefit that unfolded across the Center’s 10-acre grounds. The event honored actress, ethologist, and conservationist Isabella Rossellini and architect Francis Kéré for their contributions to film, performance, and socially engaged design. Van Cleef & Arpels returned as the Presenting Sponsor, underscoring the Center’s longstanding relationship with the world of design and craftsmanship.

The international program of artists included Harris Allen (USA), Carmen Alonso (Spain), Alex Bard (USA), Virginia Benini (Italy), Brian Belott (USA), Nixon Beltran (Colombia, USA), Alexander Carra (Bulgaria), Tom Dulou (France), Pam Evelyn (United Kingdom), Dario Felli (Italy), Cassiel Gaube (Belgium), Simon Gautier (France), Lydia Grey (USA), Petrit Halilaj (Kosovo), Mylan Hoezen (Netherlands), Thorsten Hoppe (Germany), Lucie Jansch (Czech Republic, Italy), Natalia Kapitan (Poland), Tara Khozein (Hungary, USA), Krisztián Kiliti (Hungary, Romania), Christiana Kosiari (Greece), Lina Lapelytė (Lithuania), Noah McWilliams (USA), Elena Meoni (Italy), Nick Otto-Bernstein (USA), Hyunjin Park (Republic of Korea), Flavio Pezzotti (Italy), Pope.L (USA), Olga Rabetskaya (Belarus, USA), Frank Raso (USA), Ugo Rondinone (Switzerland, USA), Isabella Rossellini (Italy), Silver Roostik (Estonia), Flavia Ruggeri (Italy), Endi Ruiz (Argentina), Thuthuka Sibisi (South Africa), Cristi Simon (Romania), and Alba Vinton (Spain, USA).

Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno series was installed in a cluster of small, vividly painted birdhouse-like structures tucked into the trees, offering viewers a quirky, immersive detour. Known for her acclaimed film career and later pivot into ecology, Rossellini uses handmade costumes and ironic interpretation to embody animals and explore their mating rituals with equal parts wit and rigor. The installation was both humorous and oddly intimate, merging performance, science, and fantasy in a way that felt perfectly in step with the Watermill Center’s celebration of interdisciplinary experimentation.

From Ugo Rondinone’s haunting sunrise. east. sculptures to Lydia Grey’s performance of Pope.L’s Under the Milk, and Thuthuka Sibisi’s immersive sound installation AKULAHLWA IMBELEKO NGOKUFELW, SCRIBBLE pulsed with the intensity, risk, and intimacy that have long defined The Watermill Center. Kelsey Lu’s luminous musical finale, and performances by artists such as Olga Rabetskaya, Petrit Halilaj, and Christiana Kosiari extended Wilson’s vision of the stage as a site of rupture and revelation.

What made the event especially poignant, in hindsight, was how seamlessly it embodied the core of Wilson’s philosophy. The Watermill Center has never been simply a venue or a summer residency—it is a conceptual engine built around the idea that performance is a tool for knowledge, transformation, and social exchange. Wilson’s aesthetic was never limited to the stage. It infused the very architecture of Watermill and the collaborative structures he built within it.

Robert Wilson’s passing marks the end of an era, but SCRIBBLE affirmed how profoundly his presence continues to shape the Center’s identity. His legacy extends not just to the performances he directed or the sets he designed, but to the platform he created for others to imagine freely. The new and experienced artists who gathered this year worked within a framework Wilson had established, one that privileges process, multiplicity, and the unknown.

In its timing and spirit, SCRIBBLE offered a fitting tribute to a man whose work irrevocably changed the landscape of contemporary performance. Even as the Center looks to the future, Robert Wilson’s imprint remains everywhere—etched into the gardens, the studios, and the ever-unfolding possibility of what art can become.

Over 700 guests attended, including Cleo Ahn, Valentina Akerman & Joe Bradley, Stretch Armstrong, Brian Belott, Karolina Blaberg, Bill Campbell, Pietro Cicognani, Jeremy Dennis, Roger Ferris, Jonah Freeman, Jamee & Peter Gregory, Miles Greenberg, Cheryl Henson, Daniella Kallmeyer, Evan Ross Katz, Noah Khoshbin, Helen King, Serge Laurent, Kelsey Lu, SK Lyons, Katia Mead, Benjamin Millepied, Iván Pol, Katharine Rayner, Charles Renfro, Ugo Rondinone, Enric Ruiz-Geli, Elaina Scotto & Brett Yormark, Anastasyia Siro, Oliver Schultz, Annabel Thompson & Jed Walentas, Nicola Vassell, Christine Wächter-Cambell, Rufus Wainwright & Jörn Weisbrodt, Kevin Walz, John Wrazej, Arden Wohl, Ku-Ling Yurman, and UNTITLED’s Indira Cesarine.

View our curated slideshow of images from the gala, with photos by Madison McGaw/BFA.com. For more on The Watermill Center visit them online.

There will be memorials for Robert Wilson held in the near future in locations that were especially meaningful to him, to be announced.