On an October afternoon in 1989, artist Keith Haring repeatedly performed Marvin Gaye’s 1971 album What’s Going On as he created a set of 20 drawings. Completed in Sumi ink on Dutch linen paper, these works ponder local weather change and the destruction of our planet within the title of capitalism.

In a single, a globe with a gap in it bleeds oil behind a snake that’s severed at its head. In a handwritten notice that opens this collection, Haring writes about how Gaye’s music “questions the way forward for the planet. … Generally music is a ‘background’ for drawing, however generally it turns into a necessary a part of the creation of the work. These drawings are concerning the Earth we inherited and the dismal activity of making an attempt to reserve it—in opposition to all odds.”

This suite of drawings is likely one of the first belongings you see on the Rubell Museum DC, a brand new department of the Miami-based household’s personal museum. The works get a gallery to themselves the place “What’s Going On” performs on repeat. That music radiates by way of the room and out into the three ranges of the museum, whose constructing was as soon as residence to the historic Randall College in Washington, D.C.’s Northwest neighborhood.

Fittingly, Gaye was one of many Randall College’s most notable alums, and Haring devoted this suite to his longtime good friend Steve Rubell, the brother of the museum’s cofounder Don Rubell. Steve died in July 1989, only a few months earlier than Haring made the collection. On this room, Gaye, Haring, and Steve Rubell’s presences are all palpable.

That gallery units the tone, not just for this inaugural exhibition on the Rubell Museum DC, which borrows “What’s Going On” as its title, but in addition for the enterprise as an entire, which had been within the works for over decade. Although the Rubells commissioned the Haring works, which have been exhibited extensively, together with in main retrospectives in Europe, it wasn’t till just lately that Don and Mera Rubell realized the affect of Gaye’s music on the creation of the piece.

“I don’t know after we realized it, however the textual content was proper in entrance of our eyes,” Mera, who has been married to Don since 1964, informed ARTnews forward of the museum’s opening final week. “We have been like: Wait a minute, Marvin Gaye, Keith Haring, ‘What’s Going On.’ Howdy! After you have ‘What’s Going On,’ it turns into a roadmap. It’s such a robust framework.”

She continued, “Absolutely the fact is that each artist in our assortment might be on this present. What’s occurring is up to date artwork. That’s the definition.”

The works from their assortment, which incorporates 1000’s of items, are on view throughout the museum’s 4 flooring vary. They vary from historic items by Haring, Carrie Mae Weems, Cady Noland, Barkley L. Hendricks, El Anatsui, Jenny Holzer, and Kehinde Wiley to works produced up to now few years by artists like Cajsa von Zeipel, Genesis Tramaine, Tschabalala Self, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, and Natalie Ball.  

One thematic room appears to be like at pictures of girls in portray by artists by the likes of Lisa Yuskavage, Cecily Brown, Marlene Dumas, and Mickalene Thomas, whereas an adjoining gallery explores comparable considerations within the work of artists like Self, Chase, and Christina Quarles, who contemplate representations of the physique by way of the lens of race, gender, and queerness.

Yet one more area is devoted to Hank Willis Thomas’s groundbreaking “Unbranded” collection (2006–08), which appears to be like on the illustration of African People in promoting between 1968 and 2008. The Rubells offered early assist to that mission, which has been extensively exhibited throughout the U.S. Close by is a gallery full of works by Chase Corridor, whose work the Rubells solely started buying about two years in the past and had not but exhibited. The collectors recalled that Corridor had stated he was looking forward to them to be displayed within the new D.C. area.

“I believe that’ll be what’s dictating issues: the place the artists really feel like they need to see their work and have interaction with it,” Jason Rubell, Don and Mera’s son, stated. “I believe artists are tuned into this as a spot of activation.”

This can be a way more intimate museum expertise than the Rubells’ Miami area, and one by which the preservation of a historic constructing is additive fairly than distracting. The school rooms, in addition to the smaller corridor-size instructor’s room, present a distinct scale and vibe than has turn into the white-cube strategy that has turn into the norm for up to date artwork areas.

“After I take individuals on a tour,” Mera stated, “I at all times say, ‘Put your fingers behind your again so that you don’t freak out the safety guard, and go actually near the portray.’ As a result of once you see a portray from again right here it’s totally different than when it actually, actually shut. Right here, I don’t even to inform them that as a result of the minute they stroll from the classroom into the instructor’s room, the works are proper in your face.”

She added, “I’m completely infatuated with this constructing, with the sensation of it. It’s like having one other baby. I like each youngsters.”

Like their Miami area, the D.C. museum is supposed to permit for a nimble in what they’ll present, with the power to exhibit works they’ve bought solely months earlier. The Rubells acquired the work of Sylvia Snowden, who is predicated within the metropolis, after visiting her studio earlier this 12 months. Snowden’s works are abstractions with thick layers of vibrant hues of paint—pinks, reds, golds, blacks—which are constructed up to some extent the place they turn into sculptural. Within the first gallery is a 2020 tapestry, titled Earth, by Christopher Myers that displays on the pandemic, particularly how New York’s Hart Island grew to become a burial website for individuals who died as a result of Covid however whose our bodies have been unclaimed.

Equally, when the Rubells have been in New York in September for the Armory Present, they noticed Juanita McNeely’s four-panel Girl’s Psyche (1968), created 5 years earlier than abortion grew to become authorized within the U.S. with the 1973 Supreme Courtroom choice in Roe v. Wade. In a single panel, a girl offers delivery to a blue fetus. In ache, she grasps onto two phallic-like objects.

Because the Supreme Courtroom’s choice this previous June in Dobbs v. Jackson Ladies’s Well being Group, which overturned the constitutional proper to a authorized abortion, McNeely’s work has taken on new poignancy. Mera stated that the selection to exhibit the piece was “handed to us on a silver platter.”

The Rubells are among the many most prodigious collectors within the nation—they’ve ranked on every version of the ARTnews High 200 Collectors listing since 1993—and so they have lengthy been recognized for recognizing expertise and supporting rising artists lengthy earlier than they get wider recognition. Whereas there would possibly some skepticism across the want for one more personal museum for a collector to indicate off their holdings, notably in Washington, D.C., what the Rubell Museum represents is one thing extra private than simply one other up to date artwork establishment. As a substitute, it’s a love letter to the artists they gather and to town of D.C.

The collectors haven’t any ambition aside from to indicate the artwork they’ve been accumulating since 1964. Their strategy since then has been “artist-first, at all times,” as Mera put it. Now, she’s hoping that exhibiting these artists will put them on the monitor towards larger recognition in a metropolis with among the nation’s finest museums.

“It’s an out of physique expertise as a result of it’s D.C.—it’s slightly intimidating,” Mera stated. “Individuals actually count on us to do one thing essential right here. We didn’t notice how hungry the neighborhood was for one thing like this, however there’s a lot need to convey a vitality right here.”