Inside the Rubell Museum’s Miami Art Week Refresh

Contemporary art collectors Don and Mera Rubell made Miami history when they opened their eponymous museum in 1993, several years after moving to the city from New York. While living in Chelsea, they started doing studio visits with local artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, acquiring early works by many eventual superstars on shoestring payment plans.

Today, the Rubells’ collection is one of the most impressive of its kind, with more than 7,700 works by some of the most coveted artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. And in 2022, the pair opened a second museum in Washington, D.C. to showcase “the unique role of artists as teachers.”

In what has become a tradition, the Rubell Museum in Miami updates its lineup of artworks on view every December, just before Art Basel Miami Beach. This year’s rehang is especially substantial, overhauling half of its 36 galleries. Several spectacles have been stationed, such as Zhu Jinshi’s Boat (2012), an immersive sculpture of 12,000 suspended rice paper sheets.

In the context of their continuously evolving collection, Mera Rubell told Artsy that the couple sometimes make acquisitions with audiences in mind. “I have to confess, we do,” said Mera. “It's not like we pander to the audience, but we like to surprise our audience—we like to make them see the magic we see.”

Inside the Rubell Museum refresh

This year’s new display emphasizes artists active in the East Village throughout the 1980s. Basquiat and Haring feature, as do comparatively lesser-known artists including Luis Frangella, Stephen Lack, and Rick Prol. The Rubells were a huge part of this heyday: They weren’t just early patrons of these artists, they were friends (Haring introduced them to Basquiat).

At the same time, this year’s refresh prioritizes the present. The couple has maintained a reputation for collecting cutting-edge art and this year, seven young artists are making their Rubell Museum debuts: artist Emmanuel Louisnord Desir, figurative painter and sculptor Omari Douglin, installation artist Patrick Goddard, interior painter Michelle Uckotter, portraitist February James, sculptor Murjoni Merriweather, and illustrative artist Slawn. For many of these names, this month also marks their first institutional showcase.

Painting, Mera Rubell’s favorite medium, still dominates the museum. “I love how it’s applied, the magic of this brush stroke, the way the artist figures out light and emotions,” she said. “It’s like an endless mystery.” Emblematic examples by the storied likes of Cecily Brown, Henry Taylor, and Yoshitomo Nara abound.

Nonetheless, the family finds sculpture seductive—and knows it delights their guests. Cady Noland’s Budweiser stockpile This Piece Has No Title Yet (1989) has been up since the Rubells bought it in 1996. Cajsa von Zeipel’s larger-than-life techno-Amazons have also returned to the display after an absence.

“She is inventive,” Mera raved of von Zeipel. “She brings humor. She really takes you into the culture of our time, the social, sexual culture—the internet alienation we all are participating in, this loss of human contact.” Above all, they like artists that capture the changing human condition.

The evolving influence of the Rubell collection

The Rubells continue to buy a lot of art. Even though their purchases have skyrocketed in value over the years, they notoriously never sell. As such, new and longstanding holdings blend seamlessly across the museum’s solo and group shows—as well as its loose themes.

In the first gallery, one of Richard Prince’s monumental joke paintings is back on view for the first time in 15 years, behind Not afraid of love (2000) by Maurizio Cattelan, who Mera called “the biggest joker of all.” She and Don lent this sculpture of an elephant hiding under a sheet for Cattelan’s controversial, entirely string-suspended 2011 Guggenheim retrospective.

The Rubells also occasionally collect en masse. Not only did they just send the Guggenheim numerous works for Rashid Johnson’s forthcoming retrospective—but they’ve also transformed their museum’s second gallery from a group show to a spotlight on the artist. One mystifying work of black soap, wax, and paint on red oak retains its longtime post, alongside scores of Johnson’s other looming wall-mounted assemblages, many featuring record and book collections. “I was amazed that we could put together such a lovely gallery,” Mera reflected.

After a room themed around female nudes and another around tapestries, an especially colorful, enchanting gallery harmonizes debut artist February James’s loose, electric portraits with Murjoni Merriweather’s braided busts. Later on, a different gallery that previously paired paintings by Haring and Sterling Ruby is now split into two spaces. That first space now highlights Haring’s works on paper. “It’s precious to see the rawness of his line on just paper,” Mera said. The following gallery now bears four of Ruby’s massive, mesmerizing sunsets. “It’s like a Rothko chapel,” she remarked.

Ruby produced these moody works during the Rubells’ inaugural artist residency in 2011. This week, the Rubells will unveil a new exhibition of paintings by their 2024 resident, Vanessa Raw.

In 2024, Don and Mera celebrated 60 years since they got married—and started collecting together. In that time, Mera said, the way they find artists has remained the same: It’s all organic. They found Raw, for instance, because Tracey Emin chose her for Frieze London’s Artist on Artist section in 2023.

In those 60 years, though, Mera has come to marvel at how many have flocked to contemporary art “from every point of view,” she said, “opening galleries, collecting, making art.”

“The good thing is that more artists can make a living from art,” Mera continued. “The bad thing is that it becomes very commercial and opportunistic.” She wants everyone to remember that “art has profound contributions in terms of what it teaches us about who we are and what the world is.”