The Butler Institute of American Art had plenty of options when looking for artists influenced by the work of Robert Rauschenberg.

“What art today hasn’t been influenced by Rauschenberg or Jasper Johns,” Butler Executive Director Louis A. Zona asked rhetorically.

Rauschenberg (1925-2008) is one of the most acclaimed post-war American artists and one whose body of work spanned subjects, styles, materials and techniques.

“Touched by Rauschenberg: The Art of Eric Forstmann, Don Gummer, Diana Levinson and Robert Rauschenberg,” one of two exhibits opening Sunday at the Butler, was curated by Jane Coats Eckert of Eckert Fine Art and features Rauschenberg’s creations alongside artists who all have a history with the Youngstown museum.

That includes Rauschenberg himself, who exhibited at the Butler in 1999 and visited the museum.

“I remember word got out to the various colleges that Rauschenberg was going to be speaking at the Butler,” Zona said.

“The entire museum was just filled with college students asking him questions. I sat in a chair beside him, and my goodness, what a brain. What a creative entity.”

Zona also remembered touring the Beecher Center expansion of the museum with Rauschenberg while it still was under construction.

“He said, ‘What’s this room?’ and I said it’s going to be a room for large-scale works and maybe even video. He said, ‘I have an idea. Why don’t you do a work of art that isn’t seen but only heard.’ And then he started laughing. I said, ‘Let’s do it,’ then he laughed even louder. It never materialized. That would have been something.”

Early this year, Gummer’s mass steel and glass sculpture, originally installed at the Butler’s former Howland branch, was erected outside of the Youngstown museum.

Forstmann previously exhibited at the Butler, and his work also has been shown at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri; Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science in Evansville, Indiana; and the Mattatuck Museum of Waterbury, Connecticut.

Levinson, who studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and the Art Students League of New York, previously exhibited at the former Howland branch, the Katonah Museum in New York and at Eckert Fine Art.

The press release for the Rauschenberg show included comments from the other three artists about Rauschenberg’s work and influence.

Gummer described his compositions as “beautiful, mysterious, topical, thoughtful and ironic.”

Levinson praised how Rauschenberg combined painting and printmaking and his “openness to materials, to contradictions, to the unexpected.”

According to Forstmann, “His work was, is and will be singular in the influence and permission given to generations of artists. Myself included.”

Also opening Sunday is “Shepard Fairey: Facing the Giant — 3 Decades of Dissent,” a traveling exhibition put together in 2019 marking the 30th anniversary of his career making activist street art.

It includes 30 large silkscreen and mixed collage works on paper by an artist who has been described as a propagandist, arch manipulator, inciter and provocateur.

Fairey first gained mainstream attention in 2008 with his Barack Obama “Hope” poster, which now is part of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Fairey also has created more than 110 large-scale murals across six continents.

“The Shepherd Fairey is a knockout, just a magnificent exhibition,” Zona said.

“It gives you a good sense of why he has been so popular over the years.”

If you go …

WHAT/WHEN: “Touched by Rauschenberg: The Art of Eric Forstmann, Don Gummer, Diana Levinson and Robert Rauschenberg,” Sunday through Aug. 24 with opening reception from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday; and “Shepard Fairey: Facing the Giant — 3 Decades of Dissent,” Sunday through Aug. 31. Hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday.

WHERE: Butler Institute of American Art, 524 Wick Ave., Youngstown

HOW MUCH: Admission is free. For more information, go to www.butlerart.com or call 330-743-1107.