The Rubell Collection @ Wynwood

There are certain routines to which I am attached during the Art Basel week in Miami, one of them being the Sunday breakfast at The Rubell Collection. A private scenario that becomes public as in everyone is invited to partake and experience one of the world’s largest private collections of contemporary art. The distance between audience and closed doors is cancelled every year for a week during which time the Rubells enjoy partaking their patrimony.

What seemed another usual weekend morning, was serendipitously kissed by the coincidence of a special visit by Baltimore’s mayor, Mrs. Stephanie Rowling-Blake, that required a private tour given by founders Donald and Mera Rubell in person. We stuck to the caravan. The couple toured us with passion and pride, impeccable manners, and exquisite demeanor from other times, in other words there was no “upstairs downstairs’ vibe.

“This is the ugliest painting in the whole collection” exclaimed Mrs. Rubell in front of a piece by Cecily Brown.
“Yet it ended up in your collections?” this was almost an echoing statement from all of us, by us meaning a continuously enlarging group of onlookers.
“You must know that when I at first said that it was the ugliest painting I had ever seen, I wasn’t aware I was in front of the artist. She thanked me for that row expression of genuine feelings and that’s how our friendship begun. Art is made not to be pretty hanging on a wall inaccessible to the most, it’s supposed to generate feelings and induce who experiences them to sharing them.”
“The story behind the painting” she continued, “is about an ex-boyfriend of the artist, so overall causing a not-positive reaction was part of the game”.

The following couple of hours as far as I was concerned were two minutes, as much as I enjoyed the enthusiasm and proclivity for sharing their collection with unknown people like us.
Like this I like remembering closing the festivities of Miami Art Week: an unexpected perspective of one of the most coveted amassment of art, like seeing Santa Claus coming through the chimney and depositing the gifts.

Francesca