Hours during Art Basel: Wednesday, Dec 1st through Monday, Dec 6th, 9am to 6pm
Regular hours: Wednesday through Saturday, 10am to 6pm

For immediate release (November 15, 2010)

The Rubell Family Collection/Contemporary Arts Foundation is pleased to announce Its upcoming exhibitions How Soon Now and Time Capsule, Age 13 to 21: The Contemporary Art Collection of Jason Rubell. How Soon Now will feature over thirty of the worldʼs most compelling contemporary artists including Cecily Brown, Thea Djordjadze, Huan Yong Ping, Matthew Day Jackson, Analia Saban, Ryan Trecartin, Kaari Upson and David Wojnarowicz. This exhibition, occupying 27 galleries, will be comprised of paintings, sculptures, photographs and videos never before exhibited in the Foundation. The artworks in this show, all of which are owned by the Collection and most of which are recent acquisitions, form disparate bodies of work from a range of generations and include established and emerging artists.

Time Capsule, Age 13 to 21: The Contemporary Art Collection of Jason Rubell is an exhibition that Jason Rubell first curated for his college thesis at Duke University in 1991. It contains 95 artworks he acquired between 1983 and 1991 and features 53 artists from this period, such as George Condo, Robert Gober, Andreas Gursky, Keith Haring, Cady Noland, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman and Rosemarie Trockel. This exhibition traveled to ten university art museums between 1991 and 1994. Jason Rubell’s experience presenting this exhibition to and for the public greatly informed the opening of the Rubell Family Collection in 1994 with his family. His collecting efforts since that time have been in collaboration with his parents Don and Mera Rubell. The exhibition is a time capsule illustrating Jason Rubell’s early collecting endeavors and bears witness to numerous artistic movements of the 1980’s.

Catalogs will accompany both exhibitions.


Our Process: How Soon Now

How Soon Now began as an exhibition of works not previously exhibited at the Foundation. We were determined not to have a strict thematic framework to allow the works to guide us. As we formulated the list of artists to be included, we noticed that our most recent acquisitions – those over the last three years – dominated the conversation. Deeper discussion of the newer works influenced our selection of older works and made a dialogue between generations all the more consequent and necessary.

A set of similar themes emerged: the handmade object; craft; studio practice; traditional artmaking techniques; materiality; engagement with modernism; personal subject matter. At the heart of our process was the feeling that many of these artists focused on identity in an age when identity can be constructed or manipulated. They grapple with the idea of real personal history in the context of fabricated or virtual versions of it and explore the consciousness that evolves from these histories.

These themes were front and center in our conversations with each other and gave shape to the exhibition. In choosing the words How Soon Now, we emphasize the urgency and relevance of these works, even though they do not necessarily have a context within the time that they were produced. Eventually, a generation emerges that creates a “now” for itself, that exists alongside the “now” of previous generations.


ARTISTS

 
Presenting Sponsor: Lanvin

As the world's oldest Parisian fashion house, Lanvin is delighted to be collaborating with the Rubell Family Collection in its support of young artists. Since his tenure, Artistic Director Alber Elbaz has used his keen artistic sensibility to preserve Jeanne Lanvin's understanding of art and fashion. Starting at ArtBasel and building over the course of the year, the conversation initiated between the Rubell Family Collection and Lanvin will bring to life a groundbreaking dialogue between contemporary art and fashion.

EVENTS

Just Right, an interactive food installation by Jennifer Rubell
Wednesday, December 1st through Sunday, December 5th, 9 am to noon
OFFICIAL OPENING: Thursday, December 2nd, 9am to noon

Just Right addresses the question: What if Goldilocks were an artist? The focus is on one element in particular: the fact that Goldilocks – trespasser, interloper, thief – assumes the authority to determine the perfect form of everything she encounters, one of the defining strategies of the contemporary artist. Located in a derelict house just behind the Rubell Family Collection, Just Right is accessible only through a hole broken through the back wall of the Collectionʼs courtyard, where the only indication that there is an installation beyond is the wall label naming it. Once viewers go through the overgrown backyard and enter the house, they encounter thousands of bowls, porridge, brown sugar, raisins and milk, all of which they are welcome to take. The temperature of the porridge, the size of the bowl, the shape of the spoon, and all the toppings are just right.

Just Right has been generously sponsored by illycaffè. Complimentary espresso from illycaffè will be provided in the sculpture garden. www.illy.com


Learning from LA
Presented by Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945 - 1980
Thursday, December 2nd, 10 am to noon

Panel discussions with Los Angeles artists from How Soon Now and the upcoming Getty initiative, Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980.

10 am to 11 am - Artists John Baldessari and Analia Saban in conversation. Moderator, Glenn Phillips, Principal Project Specialist and Consulting Curator, Getty Research Institute

11 am to noon - Artists Eleanor Antin and Kaari Upson in conversation. Moderator, Ali Subotnik, Curator, Hammer Museum
These conversations will be held in the sculpture garden at the Rubell Family Collection.

“Pacific Standard Time fosters an understanding of Southern California art and demonstrates the integral place and impact it had on national and international artistic movements. Through these intergenerational conversations and various ongoing programs, Pacific Standard Time hopes to elicit and document a fundamental reappraisal and reinterpretation of postwar art in Los Angeles.” Andrew Perchuk, Deputy Director, Getty Research Institute and co-curator, Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945 - 1980.

About Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945 – 1980

Pacific Standard Time is a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California, coming together for six months beginning in October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene and how it became a major new force in the art world. Each institution will make its own contribution to this grand-scale story of artistic innovation and social change, told through a multitude of simultaneous exhibitions and programs. Exploring and
celebrating the significance of the crucial years after World War II through the tumultuous period of the 1960s and 70s, Pacific Standard Time encompasses developments from modernist architecture and design to multi-media installations; from L.A. Pop to post-minimalism; from the films of the African-American L.A. Rebellion to the feminist happenings of the Womanʼs Building; from ceramics to Chicano performance art, and from Japanese-American design to the pioneering work of artistsʼ collectives.

Initiated through $10 million in grants from the Getty Foundation, Pacific Standard Time involves cultural institutions of every size and character across Southern California, from Greater Los Angeles and Orange County to San Diego, Santa Barbara and Palm Springs.
www.PacificStandardTime.org

The Rubell Family Collection is pleased to announce an Outdoor Living Room in collaboration with DEDON in the collection’s sculpture garden. www.dedon.de

Also, through a new partnership with Nobu Miami, there will be a Nobu Sushi Bar offering exquisite tastes of the restaurant from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday, December 1 through Sunday, December 5. www.noburestaurants.com

About the Rubell Family Collection and Contemporary Arts Foundation

The Rubell Family Collection (RFC) was started in New York in 1964 when Don and Mera Rubell were married. Since 1993 it has been displayed in Miami at its current, 45,000 sq ft location; a former Drug Enforcement Agency confiscated goods facility. RFC first opened to the public in 1994. In 1998 the non-profit Contemporary Arts Foundation (CAF) was created to expand the collection’s public mission inside the paradigm of a contemporary art museum. 

Each year CAF presents thematic exhibitions drawn from the collection with accompanying catalogs. These shows often travel to museums around the country. Recently, CAF exhibitions have been presented at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York and the Palm Springs Art Museum in California. To date, CAF has published 15 catalogs. Sponsors for recent exhibitions have included US Trust, Bank of America, Puma and Audi.

CAF maintains an extensive artwork loan program to facilitate exhibitions at museums around the world and it has an ongoing partnership with Miami-Dade Public schools that enables thousands of schoolchildren to visit and engage with the foundation every year.  In addition, CAF maintains a publicly accessible research library containing over 40,000 volumes and a comprehensive contemporary art bookstore on site.

Since opening in 1994, RFC has been recognized as the pioneer of what is often referred to as the “Miami model,” whereby private collectors create a new, independent form of public institution, displaying art within their own facilities. RFC was also instrumental in the establishment of the arts district that now surrounds it as well as Miami’s hosting of the annual Art Basel Miami Beach show which began in 2002. 

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