FAMILY AFFAIR With their pioneering museum and all-for-one approach, the Rubells are the art world’s game changers. By Diane Solway Photographs by Rineke Dijkstra

In 1981, on their regular rounds of ’s East Vil- lage galleries and alternative spaces, the collectors Mera and Don Rubell struck up a friendship with a curator they’d met at the Mudd Club, a nexus of downtown cool. His name was , and he organized exhibitions upstairs. One day, in passing, he mentioned he was also an artist. At the time, Don, an obstetrician, and Mera, a teacher, lived on the Upper East Side with their two kids, Jason and Jennifer. Don’s brother Steve had cofounded , the hottest on the planet, and artists would often refer to Don as “Steve Ru- bell’s brother, a doctor who collects new art with his wife.” The Rubells had begun buying art in 1964, the year they mar- ried, putting aside money each week to pay for it. Their limited funds led them to focus on “talent that hadn’t yet been discovered,” recalls George Condo, whose work they acquired early on. They loved talk- ing to artists, often spending hours in their studios. When they asked Haring if they could visit his, he told them he had nothing ready for them to see. But a few months later, he invited them to his first solo show, at Club 57. Struck by the markings Haring had made over iconic images of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, the Rubells asked to buy everything, only to learn that a guy named Jeffrey Deitch, an art ad- viser at Citibank, had arrived just ahead of them and snapped up a piece. Still, they took the rest, and soon Haring was introducing the couple to friends like Jean-Michel Basquiat. Haring became so close to the Rubell family that he even illustrated the invitation to Jason’s The clan at the Rubell bar mitzvah­ —a drawing of two figures vaulting up stairs to a radiating Family Collection in Miami, on chairs by the number 13. The couple supported Haring until his death from AIDS Chinese artist He Xiangyu, in 1990 and even hosted the artist and his parents for dinner one night. from left: Michelle, Jason, Haring wanted his family to understand that he had made it, and what Samuel, Ella, Jennifer, better way, he thought, than to show them his work in a Manhattan Max Wyss Rubell (on lap), Mera, Stevie Kim-Rubell, townhouse owned by art collectors? Don, and Olivia. Sittings In the 50 years since the Rubells started acquiring the very latest art, editor: Esmé René. much has changed. Contemporary art is a glamorous commodity, the places to find it are proliferating around the globe, and the Rubells 1

“It’s like they’re one organism speaking out of different mouths,” said the former Art Basel director Sam Keller of the Rubells.

3 have become major players, with their own museum. Together with Jason, “We’ve been trying to figure out ‘How do we celebrate 50 years in a way 2 45, and Jennifer, 44, they have built the Rubell Family Collection and Con- that’s us?’ ” Mera said. “A gold bracelet wouldn’t do it, and going backward is 6 temporary Arts Foundation, which boasts some 6,800 works by 831 artists. not our thing.” Looking to the future, they have commissioned six rising art- One of the most ambitious private collections in the country, it is housed in a ists to create solo shows. The lineup includes painter Lucy Dodd; sculptor former Drug Enforcement Administration warehouse the Rubells bought in and painter Will Boone; and mixed-media artist Kaari Upson, who is casting 1993, in the once crime-ridden Wynwood Arts District of Miami. Though the couple’s mattress in silicone; as well as market darling David Ostrowski, a they like to think of themselves as “New Yorkers in exile,” as Mera put it, they painter known for his minimal compositions. The Rubells paid each artist a are keenly associated with Art Basel Miami Beach, which they helped initiate. flat fee in advance, essentially purchasing the work sight unseen. Their rotating exhibitions are timed to coincide with the fair’s opening week The idea for the solo shows was inspired by the Rubells’ experiment with in December, and their off-the-wall Basel breakfast, concocted by Jennifer, a Oscar Murillo, whose paintings they first encountered at the 2012 Inde- 7 hotelier–and–food–impresario–turned artist, is a must-attend event. pendent Art Fair in New York, in the booth of the London gallerist Stuart And yet, five decades on, the Rubells themselves still operate the way they Shave. Everything was sold by the time they arrived, but they pressed Shave always have: They work for a living, running Rubell Hotels, the family busi- to arrange a meeting with the 26-year-old Colombian artist. “He’d stayed up ness they set up in the ’90s, with Jason; they relish being the first to dis- working 36 hours straight so he would have paintings to show us,” Mera said. 5 4 cover artists and drive hard bargains with galleries. And studio visits remain They bought the lot and invited Murillo to spend the summer in Miami, us- 8 their priority. “Art doesn’t come to you,” Mera says. “You have to go to the ing the Rubell Collection’s largest gallery as a studio. During Art Basel that art.” When the Los Angeles–based artist Aaron Curry was away on a day the December, they gave him his first U.S. solo exhibition, and, in due course, Rubells were in town in 2005, the couple was so eager to learn more about he was snapped up by the mega-gallerist David Zwirner. Understandably, From the Rubell Family Collection: 1. Franz him that his gallerist, David Kordansky, got permission to break into his stu- the Rubells feel a familial attachment toward Murillo, whose rapid ascent has West’s Goeschl, 2007, and Untitled (Note dio. “When I came back, I could tell that they had dug through everything,” already spawned a backlash. Speaking of Murillo’s Zwirner debut this past With Table), 2005 (from left), sit atop Curry recalls. “It was as if they were trying to figure out my brain, not just May, Mera told New York Magazine, “We have not had a sit-down with David the Rubells’ dining table; 2. Kaari Upson’s what I made.” Soon, Curry was on a plane to Miami, and the works the Ru- about Oscar. And it bugs the shit out of me. You’d think he would call us up Rubells, 2014; 3. ’s Untitled (Man’s Hand With Cigarette), 1980; bells commissioned from him were presented later that year in their 2006 and say, ‘Who is Oscar?’ We know him so well.” 4. Keith Haring’s Marilyn Monroe, 1981; “Red Eye” exhibition, alongside those by other emerging Los Angeles artists The visibility they give artists strengthens the Rubells’ bargaining power, 5. Haring’s Elvis Presley, 1981; 6. Pink like Sterling Ruby and Thomas Houseago. “The defining characteristic of because their exhibitions can raise profiles and prices. Since the Rubells rarely Nose, 2014, by Brad Jones (Brandi Twilley 10 9 and Jennifer Rubell); 7. Jason Rubell, their collecting is how much they look and how much they’ve seen,” says Jen- sell works, they are not the immediate beneficiaries of artists’ increasing val- Haring, and Don Rubell (from left) at nifer, recalling that she hated being dragged to galleries as a kid. ues, but the family is sometimes criticized for the kind of bartering it does. Haring’s opening at the Leo Castelli Fittingly, a two-story library packed with artist monographs and cat- Young artists are eager for the Rubells’ imprimatur, which can put pressure Gallery, New York, 1985; 8. Cady Noland’s This Piece Has No Title Yet, 1989. 9. Rashid alogs connects Don and Mera’s modest, sparsely furnished home to the on their gallerists to agree to the Rubells’ requests to buy in bulk or at steeply Johnson’s The New Negro Escapist 45,000-square-foot Rubell Family Collection. When I visited this past June, discounted rates. “Young dealers are afraid to say no to them,” a veteran said. Social and Athletic Club (Thurgood), 11 works by 28 contemporary Chinese artists occupied 26 of the 28 galleries, the They now buy upward of several hundred works a year, and every Rubell 2008; 10. Jason Rhoades’s Untitled result of six trips to China and 100 studio visits the family had made between knows the collection by heart. “It’s like a chip in our brain,” Jason said. Their (Chandelier), 2004; 11. ’s Untitled #304, 1994; 12. Polaroid for 2001 and 2012. Upstairs, in its own space, was one of the few pieces that is on hotel business supports their art habit, and, in both realms, everyone in the portraits of Mera and Don Rubell by permanent view: Charles Ray’s Oh! Charley, Charley, Charley…, a depiction family is an equal partner. (Jason’s gregarious wife, Michelle, 42, is also part Thomas Ruff, 1988; 13. ’s of an orgy made up of eight life-size mannequins, all in the artist’s likeness. of the team; her trial by fire came on her first trip to Art Basel in Switzerland Portrait of Steve Rubell, 1975; 14. Warhol’s Don, Mera, and Jason had seen the sculpture in 1992 at the international when Mera quizzed her nightly on the artists she’d seen that day.) Since com- Studio 54, 1979; 15. Steve Rubell with 16 Halston (center) and Liza Minnelli at exhibition “Documenta XI,” in Kassel, Germany, and couldn’t get it out of ing out as an artist in 2009, Jennifer, who studied fine arts at Harvard and Studio 54, New Year’s Eve, 1977; 16. Paul their heads. Two weeks later, they asked to purchase it and learned that Ray lives in Manhattan with her two young kids, has removed herself from the McCarthy’s Cultural Gothic, 1992–1993. was eager for cash to buy a sailboat. “In those days, art didn’t sell at the speed buying process. Best known for her food-based installations—such as the 15 it does now,” Jason noted wryly. “We actually had time to think about it.” one for the Brooklyn Museum that involved a giant piñata of Warhol’s head In the open-plan living area, Mera was cooking gluten-free pasta and mar- and a baseball bat—she unveiled a series of oil paintings at the New York gal- inara sauce with clams and Don was setting the table. The walls were bare. lery Sargent’s Daughters in October. Under the name Brad Jones (to sug- “This is our thinking space,” she said. Mera, 71, puts you in mind of a Jewish gest a male painting phenom), Jennifer collaborated with the artist Brandi Yoko Ono, with her spiky black hair, pink-frame sunglasses, and fondness for Twilley, who painted her nude three afternoons a week for more than a year. Panama hats and black leggings. Inspired by Andy Warhol, she often wears Their resulting work explores the conversation between model and artist and a wig to openings. Don, 74, is her opposite. Tall and sporty, wearing a polo the evolving record they create. shirt, black pants, and sneakers with neon laces, he has a quipster’s wit and the No purchase is made unless Don, Mera, and Jason all agree. “It’s like air of someone who would prefer that you cut to the chase. A conversation they’re one organism speaking out of different mouths,” says former Art with the couple is never straightforward: Ask a question, and while one an- Basel director Sam Keller. “There are battles,” attests the painter Rashid swers, the other provokes a debate that can go on for some time. Johnson, whose first New York solo show, in 2008 at the Nicole Klagsbrun “We’ve become more comfortable with our eccentricity,” Don said at one gallery, seemed to be a bust until the Rubells walked in and bought all the point about their approach to collecting. “If something feels like it would be work. Their only stipulation was that Johnson join them for breakfast. “With 14 interesting, we take a shot at it. It just feels right.” them, you can’t just say, ‘I like this.’ You have to make clear why. They collect “It feels more than right, Don,” Mera interjected. “It feels compelling. Be- with the idea that the artists already in the collection are going to be affected cause it’s risky, you know?” by the artists they acquire—that it’s a shared home.” In fact, in the lead-up “It’s not risky,” Don demurred. “No one’s going to shoot us.” to “30 Americans,” their 2008 intergenerational survey of works by African- Recalling first glimpses of works by the artists they collect, they’ll unpack American artists, which looked at diverse perspectives on race, identity, and exhibition highlights the way baseball fans recount historic plays. “I can’t artistic legacy, the Rubells, Johnson recalls, engaged in soul-searching ses- think of anybody who loves to talk about art and ask questions more than sions with several artists to ensure they were behind the project’s premise. they do,” says Helene Winer, whose pioneering Metro Pictures gallery in- That she presides over such a vast collection still mystifies Mera, who in- troduced the couple to Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, and . sists she lacks the acquisitive gene so pronounced in her husband and son. The Rubell Family Collection has been open to the public for 20 years, Born in 1943 in Tashkent, then part of the Soviet Union, to Polish Jews flee- and plans for an anniversary exhibition opening at Miami Basel and dovetail- ing the Nazis, Mera lived in a refugee camp in Germany, and in Israel, before

1: DIJKSTRA; COURTESY OF THE RUBELL FAMILY COLLECTION (15); RUBELL, HALSTON, AND MINNELLI: RON GALELLA/WIREIMAGE/GETTY AND MINNELLI: RON IMAGES HALSTON, (15); RUBELL, COLLECTION FAMILY OF THE RUBELL COURTESY 1: DIJKSTRA; ing with the couple’s golden wedding anniversary were still being hatched. arriving in Brooklyn at age 12, speaking no English. “The narrative of my

13 12 Every Rubell knows the 6,800-work collection by heart. “It’s like a chip in our brain,” Jason said. family was ‘If you want to survive, don’t get attached to objects,’ ” she told me. commercial real estate broker, and there were deals to be had: The Rubells “Don and Jason love the pursuit. For me, collecting art gives me an insight bought the DEA warehouse; a largely vacant office complex on Lincoln Road into the culture and how to live my life.” Her father was a Sunday painter that they turned into the Sony Building; and the boarded-up Greenview Ho- in Central Park, and both parents worked in the hairdressing salon that he tel in then down-at-the-heels Miami Beach. Mera renovated the hotel,­ and opened in Brooklyn after being fired from a tony Manhattan salon for refer- Jason and Jennifer ran it. ring, in his Yiddish-accented English, to a customer’s “hor.” In Miami at that time, contemporary art was far from the center of the Mera met Don in the library of Brooklyn College when she was 19 and he conversation. The Miami artist Mark Handforth, the Rubell collection’s first was 21, and the two married soon after. With a math degree from Cornell, director, recalls his astonishment at seeing trucks deliver provocative art to Don headed to medical school, with stints in the Army Reserve to pay for it, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in town, and the impact of spend- and Mera became a teacher for Head Start, a program for low-income fami- ing time with heavy hitters like Paul McCarthy and the reclusive Cady No- lies. Don’s mother was a Latin teacher, and his father, a postal worker, taught land, who came to install their works. Other key visitors included the Art tennis to his sons and to the neighborhood kids. The family passion for ten- Basel director Lorenzo Rudolf, who was considering a winter location for the nis almost rivals that for art. Don and Mera play every day at dawn on the prestigious art fair. “We were driving him around South Beach,” Jason told court behind their house; Don has won numerous amateur championships; me, “and I said, ‘Why don’t you do some cool beach thing here?’ He loved Jason was the star of the Duke University tennis team; and Jason’s son, Sam, the idea.” Mera not only organized the first trip to Basel for Miami city offi- was ranked the No. 2 under-12 player in Florida. There are always rackets in cials to convince them of the fair’s value but, as Sam Keller recalls, also talked the trunk of their car in whatever city they happen to be. up Miami to the galleries with which they dealt. In those early days, Don and Mera bought Picasso and van Gogh post- Now that Miami is an essential stop on the global art go-round, the Ru- ers on visits to MoMA, as well as pieces they discovered in storefront artist bells have also turned their attention to other cities. In Baltimore, they re- studios. But in the late ’70s they started collecting with greater focus. Their cently renovated the once grand Lord Baltimore Hotel, where they hope to opening-night party for the Whitney Museum’s Biennial, which they began enlist the filmmaker and artist John Waters to program its speakeasy. And hosting in 1977, drew most of the artists and curators in town, in part, be- in Washington, D.C., in 2010, they bought an abandoned historic school cause there were no competing events. “You’d see artists who had the kinds of from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, across the street from the Capital Skyline career you hoped to have,” Cindy Sherman says. That first year, Jeff Koons Hotel, which they also own. They are partnering with a developer to build arrived a day late by mistake and was invited to join the family for dinner. He apartments, a hotel, and a second Rubell museum. Twenty percent of the 400 sent an inflatable plastic flower he’d made to thank them, the first of several apartments will be designated for emerging artists. “It’s our most ambitious Koons pieces they acquired until his prices spiraled beyond their reach. project,” Mera said of the $150 million venture. “By a lot,” Don added. They “We were thought of as this crazy couple who bought this crazy art,” Mera expect to break ground in 2015. recalled. “And we thought, If we had one or two pieces by someone, we ‘had’ an artist.” Lacking vast resources, they were forced to make choices, “so we The Rubells led the way in opening their private collec- chose Haring, not Scharf; Clemente, not Chia; Kiefer, not Baselitz.” With tion to the public back in 1994. “Their model was a game changer,” says the ’80s came escalating prices and dominating collectors of new art, like the Tom Eccles, the executive director of Bard College’s Center for Curatorial ad magnate Charles Saatchi. Wall Street wolves arrived to openings in limos Studies, noting that many major contemporary collectors followed suit. The and fell over themselves trying to acquire Schnabels and Salles. The market- Rubell Family Collection, along with its educational programs and library, ing of young talent moved into high gear, and increasing competition led the is run by a not-for-profit foundation, though the majority of the artworks Rubells to Europe, where they discovered the work of Neo Rauch, Rosema- are owned by the Rubells. Some detractors contend that while these private rie Trockel, and others. Jason, meanwhile, had become a collector himself. At collections have the semblance of public museums, the art they present is 14, he used savings from his bar mitzvah to make a deposit on a painting he privately owned and increases in value the more widely it is seen. The Ru- saw at Pat Hearn’s gallery by the then emerging George Condo. He began a bells readily loan works to museum exhibitions and send their shows on tour, racket-stringing business to pay off the rest. “Mera called me up and said, ‘Ja- but they are sometimes criticized for not serving on boards or donating key son just bought his first work, and it was one of yours!’ ” recalls Condo, whose pieces to institutions, as many high-profile collectors do. “It’s not our mis- piece Immigrants became the cornerstone of the exhibition of his own collec- sion to give works to museums,” Mera replied when I asked why that is. Un- tion that Jason curated at Duke University—while still a senior. like museums, she said, they have the agility to respond and take risks in a fast-moving art world. “And we have zero social aspirations.” Jason and Jennifer’s formative years were spent The Rubells, in fact, do seem happy to keep their own company. “The under the spell of Steve Rubell. Warhol sketched 13-year-old Jennifer on most beautiful thing is our grandson Samuel is now obsessed,” Mera told me a napkin the night she accompanied her uncle to Halston’s apartment. In in Aspen, where the Rubells holiday in July with their five grandchildren: the early days of Studio 54, she and Jason would watch rehearsals for the ex- Sam, 13; Ella, 12; Olivia, 9; Stevie, 9; and Max, 2. The whole crew was back travaganzas planned for that night in the club before heading home to do from Art Basel in Switzerland, where Sam, Don said proudly, “blew his bar their schoolwork. “Steve never let us go into the basement,” said Mera of mitzvah money” on a skateboard by Josh Kline. “It was his first purchase!” the disco’s drug den. “We were the working stiffs. He would tell us to save When I met up with them again in Miami in August, it was Don and Mera’s our money and not spend it on art. And Andy [Warhol] would defend us.” 50th wedding anniversary. Assorted works from the collection were being In 1980, Steve and his business partner, , went to prison for tax photographed for their anniversary exhibition catalog, and open crates lay evasion; when they got out, they moved the scene into hotels and made Jen- everywhere. In the kitchen, Jennifer’s daughter Stevie was decorating cup- nifer the concierge at the Royalton. cakes, and Jennifer was leading Max around the galleries. Mera, meanwhile, Steve Rubell died from AIDS in 1989, at 45, leaving the family devastated. was providing updates on Sam’s progress in a tennis tournament via texts Jason abandoned his plans for a tennis career, a move it took him years to ad- she received from Jason. Earlier in the summer, she had proudly recounted mit that he had regretted. The family had grown up with Schrager, and Don a story about the night she told her grandchildren that the Miami Art Mu- Ménage à trois: Mera and Don, with and Mera imagined that he would welcome them into the business, but as seum had just become the Pérez Art Museum Miami, after a gift worth $35 Charles Ray’s Male they tell it, he turned away from the family, and the relationship ended. “Ev- million from the billionaire Jorge Pérez. They were all eating pizza when she Mannequin, 1990, eryone thinks our inheritance from Steve accelerated the collecting,” Don suggested that, since it was no longer being used, they should consider taking photographed in the said. “But he died during a recession, so it’s not the amount people think.” the name Miami Art Museum for themselves. “What do you mean?” Olivia Rubell Family Collection on August 30, 2014, In the early ’90s, Jason moved to Miami to begin what turned out to be a had replied. “This is our museum.” Mera proposed they take a vote, and it their 50th wedding brief career as a gallerist; the family followed in 1993. Mera had become a was unanimous. The Rubell Family Collection was not changing its name. anniversary.