Mera and Don Rubell began buying contemporary art in the 1960s. By the early 1990s, they had moved their impressive collection of works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, and Kara Walker (to name a few) into a repurposed U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency building in Miami, opening the two-story confiscated-goods facility to the public and helping to transform an industrial neighborhood into the lively Wynwood Arts District. A quarter of a century later, and together with their son Jason Rubell, they’ve made another curious choice to expand their exhibition capacity and outreach.
“We didn’t have a grand vision for a new museum. We were looking for more storage,” says Jason. But when they found the cluster of former produce warehouses, he recalls, “the space blew us away.” Now combined into the 76,000-square-foot Rubell Museum, the facility, which opens December 4, comprises six structures, including a small house, and occupies a full city block in Miami’s Allapattah District, an area known as a food-distribution and garment-manufacturing center just one mile from the old Rubell Family Collection building (which will now be rented out for events) but seemingly a world away.
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