Sèyo's mural outside Studio 60 on NW 36th Street. / Photo by Michael Campina Will Allapattah Fall Victim to the Gentrification That Claimed Wynwood? DOUGLAS MARKOWITZ | DECEMBER 3, 2019 | 8:00AM Dressed all in black and wearing comfy sneakers, Mera Rubell surveys a ballroom- size gallery in her family's new museum. The 100,000-square-foot former warehouse in Miami's Allapattah neighborhood is still unfinished, but some of its immense artworks have been installed. A large painting by Kehinde Wiley, famous for his foliage-filled portrait of Barack Obama, takes up an entire wall. Others are still wrapped or nestled in boxes. A crate labeled "Yayoi Kusama Narcissus Garden" sits in the middle of the room. Down a hallway, a 15-foot-tall mural holds Keith Haring's unmistakable cartoon figures. "A lot of our installations are very complicated, so everybody is under a lot of pressure," Rubell explains. Nearby, her son Jason speaks with a curator. His outfit — polo shirt, jeans, and baseball cap — gives him the look of a man who'll be heading off to a backyard barbecue after he clocks out from a day's work organizing priceless cultural artifacts. One wouldn't think he and his mother own this building and everything in it. The Rubells — Mera, husband Don, and children Jason and Jennifer — possess one of the most extensive private collections of contemporary art in the world, boasting more than 7,200 works by over 1,000 artists. Since 1993, they've exhibited a portion of it at the Rubell Family Collection, housed in a former Drug Enforcement Administration warehouse on NW 29th Street in Wynwood. Now they're moving all of it into the new building, which will open as the Rubell Museum Wednesday, December 4, just in time for this year's edition of Art Basel Miami Beach. The family didn't set out to open a new art complex. Initially, they were just looking for storage. But when they found the Allapattah space, conveniently located a scant four blocks north of the Santa Clara Metrorail station, they thought it had too much potential to go to waste. They're financing its purchase and renovation by selling the old building. "People say, 'Why are you calling it a museum?'" Rubell says. "I agree: That title should not be taken lightly." Rubell makes the rounds through the galleries, consulting with staff members along the way. In the room just before the Haring mural, a massive, 30-foot-tall Sterling Ruby painting constructed from bleached and processed fabric lies in wait. "It's his version of the American flag," she remarks. Ruby was the Rubell Family Collection's first artist-in-residence in 2011; he's now the subject of a major retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, and his works now sell for millions. The museum will dedicate a gallery in the new building to works by the current resident; next up is Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo. Walking back toward the entrance, Rubell contextualizes the museum's architecture. Unlike the old Wynwood building, the new location is one story, rendering it fully accessible to the differently abled — no stairs or elevators to impede anyone. The main hallway was designed like a tree trunk, with galleries branching off and focusing on varied subject matter. One holds art from the '80s. Another offers an installation by Cady Noland made of Budweiser beer cans stacked atop one another. Says Rubell: "Each branch tells a story." The plan is to rotate artworks from the collection throughout the year so there's always something on view and the museum will never have to close for installation. In yet another room, a series of expressionistic paintings by Purvis Young — "the Michelangelo of Miami," Rubell calls him — leans against the wall, waiting to be hung. The Rubells met the artist in 1999 at a warehouse where he was working in pre- gentrification Wynwood. Young had made more than 3,000 paintings using scavenged material gathered from bicycle trips through Miami. After visiting with the artist for a few hours, the couple decided to buy all of it. Outside, a courtyard filled with native plants is already attracting birds and butterflies. Through a window, workers can be seen assembling what will become the museum's café. Nearby is a cavernous performance space, intended to host museum events and also available for rental. By all considerations, the Rubell Museum will be a substantial addition to the local art scene, a monumental art collection of the past half-century, displayed by the people who put the city on the global art map. It also happens to be opening in a neighborhood that's in the crosshairs of Miami's inexorable march of gentrification. Allapattah resident and the owner of Esquina de Abuela Fabian Martinez. / Photo by Michael Campina Bordered by I-95 to the east, NW 27th Avenue to the west, the Airport Expressway to the north, and the Miami River to the south, Allapattah takes its name from the Seminole word for "alligator" and was settled in the 1850s by white farmers. Beginning in the 1950s, several waves of immigration shaped it into the mixed-race neighborhood it is today. First came black Americans fleeing displacement caused by the construction of I-95. Next came Cubans fleeing the revolution. In the 1980s, Haitians, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, and especially Dominicans began to settle in the area, eventually earning it the nickname Little Santo Domingo. Even as one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Miami, Allapattah enjoys a strong sense of community, united partially around a proud working-class sentiment. Fashion wholesalers, auto-repair shops, restaurants, and botanicas fill the bustling strip malls along NW 20th Street, the neighborhood's main commercial artery. On NW 36th Street, Club Tipico Dominicano dishes up longaniza and sancocho by day, bachata beats by night. A few streets over, kids play baseball and soccer in Juan Pablo Duarte Park. Allapattah also sits directly west of Wynwood, which began the 21st Century as a similar mix of homes and blighted warehouses, an urban landscape that lured Purvis Young and other opportunistic artists to set up shop. Over the past two decades, developers have displaced many of the residents and most of the artists while transforming the neighborhood into one of the hottest (and most expensive) entertainment districts in the nation. Luxury condo towers have already sprouted. Wynwood's gentrification means that both Allapattah and its northern neighbor Little Haiti have become, as urban planning expert Ned Murray puts it, "prime real estate." "Everybody wants to build in Miami, so it doesn't matter where — they're just looking for land," says Murray, associate director of Florida International University's Jorge M. Pérez Metropolitan Center. "These are the only areas left within the city limits, and they're relatively affordable from a developer's standpoint. So these are the areas they've been zeroing in on for the last year or so." Like Wynwood before it, Allapattah is attractive to developers partly for its commercial district, which runs the length of the neighborhood between 20th and 23rd Streets. It was formerly a corridor for the Florida East Coast Railway that stretched all the way through Wynwood — where the warehouses once stood, where the arts district stands now — and ended in a rail yard that is now the Midtown Miami development. Some of the warehouses here are disused, while others still house functioning businesses. This is where the Rubells found the location for their museum. "People like myself that are in the neighborhood just have to stand strong and give an example just to keep the real culture," says Fabian Martinez, an Allapattah resident and the owner of Esquina de Abuela, a hybrid art space, events venue, and hostel on NW 22nd Avenue at NW 27th Street. Martinez's contribution to the community involves arranging for street artists from around the world to work in the area. "There hasn't been any grant money; there hasn't been any private investors — it's just myself with anybody that's been able to contribute," he says. Martinez estimates he has brought more than 50 artists to Miami and hosted about 60 events at his space, including music-video shoots for the likes of Anuel and Rob G. His projects include murals at Club Tipico Dominicano, Jenny's Liquor and Wines on NW 28th Street, Comstock Elementary School on NW 18th Avenue, and the neighborhood nightclub Studio 60 on NW 36th Street. Esquina de Abuela (which translates to "Grandma's Corner") opened in 2016, when Martinez left his job in real estate. The property belonged to his grandmother; after she died, he fixed up the place and renamed it in her honor. A mural on the property, painted by local artist Claudia La Bianca, features a likeness of Martinez's abuela brandishing two pistols and the phrase "Soy la guerra" ("I am war"). "The core of Esquina de Abuela was the fact that my grandmother was a captain in the Cuban Revolution, and then she did contrarevolución — so she helped Fidel get into power and then she went against him," Martinez explains. "So I have pictures of her with guns, rifles — just a very valiant, strong woman. That's the core of the place; the place has a very strong female energy." Wynwood's identity as an arts district was built primarily by galleries and developers such as Tony Goldman, whose establishment of Wynwood Walls kick-started heavy investment in the area. But in Allapattah, residents are trying to create something of their own.