Shelley Rubin
Co-Founder, Rubin Museum of Art
www.rmanyc.org
Their love of Himalayan art led Shelley Rubin and her husband, Donald, to amass a huge collection… a passion that created a sizeable problem: where could they protect and showcase the artwork for posterity?
Shelley and Donald, who founded MultiPlan, Inc., a managed health-care network, had the financial means, but not the know-how, to create a museum.
That didn’t stop them from figuring it out… and transforming a former department store in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York into what is now the Rubin Museum of Art (RMA), the premier museum in the Western world dedicated to art from the Himalayas and the surrounding regions. The RMA (www.rmanyc.org ) houses a growing collection of about 1500 paintings, sculptures, textiles and other objects dating from the second to the 20th centuries.
Understanding Art by Making It
Shelley: “I was a painter as a child. I was brought up in Manhattan and then on Long Island. I left Long Island and went to the University of Chicago when I was 17. I understand in that unconscious way if you’ve made art yourself… where the wellspring comes from inside to create, to paint, to sculpt. I think that that gives me a tactile understanding, not an intellectual understanding, but a tactile understanding and pleasure in art.”
How They Stumbled Upon Their Passion
‘The story of how we found our first piece… in about 1975 we were simply taking a walk on Madison Avenue. We happened to see a painting in the back window of a gallery. At that time, we had very little money. We ended up buying it. We brought it home and hung it on our bedroom wall and somehow it possessed us.”
Love at First Sight
“I would have to say neither one of us could have found Tibet on the map. We didn’t know it was Tibetan art… the reason we loved it had nothing to do with the philosophy of Buddhism. We loved how compelling it was - it touched us on many levels. We continued to collect (more paintings) as we could afford to.”
No Room for the New Stuff
“Then there was a time when life was kind to us and we had much more money. We had 50,000 square feet of empty office walls and (my husband) wanted to surround people with art by filling those walls. Every time he came home from a trip, he had three or four more paintings. He became the obsessive collector of the two of us. His enthusiasm forced me to begin looking for a new home so that we would have enough wall space for all our new art.”
Starting in Cyberspace
“We founded the Himalayan Art Web site . The idea was to digitize and make public all the Himalayan art in the world. We became aware as the collection grew… we had become responsible for a public trust. We didn’t know why the art had found us. We had become responsible for it. We were clear that the purpose of art is not to put it in drawers and closets.
“In the beginning, it was very slow going because who were we? Now www.himalayanart.org has over 25,000 images on it. So that was our first try at making things public.”
Expanding to 70,000 Square Feet of Space
“Then we became aware that seeing things on the computer is not as wonderful as seeing them in the flesh. RMA opened in 2004.
“We were looking for a small space to show things and we lost two spaces. One day my husband was coming to meet me at the Lincoln Center and he was driving past what was Barney’s department store. There was a sign in the window that said ‘bankruptcy sale.’ He fell in love with (the space) when he went in. He arranged for me to meet him and we said, ‘We have to have it. That’s it.’”
Now What?
“Neither one of us had done anything with museums beside walk in, have coffee, look at the art and leave. We began learning what it is first to build a museum. People had to be educated, enticed and entertained. There had to be a shop, There had to be food for people. And we wanted it to be a lovely shop and we wanted to have delicious food.”
More to a Museum than Putting Up Art
“I’m definitely a nester. I have brought that to the museum. It was deliberately created to be a place that people enjoy being in and that they’re comfortable being in… that gives them a sense of calm, but also excitement.
“It’s very easy to walk into a room of Himalayan art and do a 360-degree spin and say, ‘Gee, that was beautiful,’ and walk out. The challenge is to get people to stop, because the art is so rich in detail and there are stories in every painting.”
Greatest Challenge
“There are so many challenges, I don’t know what the greatest challenge is. In the building and design and construction - one challenge was to learn as fast as possible what it took to run an institution, what it meant physically in terms of environmental controls. One of the biggest costs was taking a department store and turning it into a museum. There’s an enormous cost to create an environment that’s controlled.”
Words of Advice - On Risk-Taking
“I think the thing that I have learned and that I have to still consciously talk to myself about… is risk-taking. First of all, you have to think big enough to have a dream about something, and then, you can’t be risk averse. I’m naturally inclined to be risk averse. I’m naturally inclined to do things perfectly rather than make mistakes. That can’t work in the world. You have to take the leap.
“I have a husband who has no problem taking risks. If I had a husband who was like me, it would be very difficult (to build a new venture). Donald is just the opposite from me. I say, ‘Slow down, let’s think about this,’ and he says, ‘C’mon, let’s get going.’”
Recommended Resource
“RMA’s affiliated Web sites come into my mind. One is a wonderful Web site called ExploreArt which received generous support from the (National Endowment for the Humanities) and started being built before the museum opened. I believe it will grow over time to be an important way of looking at art through the humanities. It’s important to look at art as an expression of being human and to use the art to bring people together and bring people to understand the basic humanity of each other. To save the world through art, one person at a time.”
What’s the Deal with the Wrathful Deities in Himalayan Art?
“They are the pieces of ourselves that are about ego, jealously, lust and ignorance. What the entire culture behind (Himalayan art) seems to understand better than many others is that the human psyche is a complex thing. We all have hate, revenge, lust and selfishness. Their idea is to look at it straight, own it, and conquer it as a piece of yourself.”
