In 1977, after a party on a ranch near Fort Worth, the world-famous artist Robert Rauschenberg was arrested for public urination outside the bus that had brought him to the event. The Texas rangers turned out his pockets and found the key to the city, just awarded to him as a token of his favorite-son status. When the cops took it from him, Rauschenberg is supposed to have asked, “Does it open the jail?”

However much of it is accurate, this story gets at something deeply true about the Port Arthur native: Though he never lived in Texas as an adult, this son of a Gulf States Utilities lineman and a former Miss Splash Day beauty queen was widely beloved and celebrated in his home state. This month, in the latest proof of that love, the Menil Collection in Houston opens Robert Rauschenberg:

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