The Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation is a New York City based foundation focusing on art, social justice and civic life in New York City and the Himalayas. [1] It was established in 1995 with Evelyn Rich as the first Executive Director. Following her 2004 departure, she was succeeded by Bruce Payne (2004-2013), Alexander Gardner (2013-2016) and Sara Reisman (2016-2021). [2]
The Rubins are art collectors whose primary projects are The 8th Floor and the Rubin Museum of Art, both located within a building owned by Donald Rubin in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. [3] [4] They launched an Art and Social justice grant program in 2015 following Sara Reisman's hiring. [5] [6] Among their other initiatives is a Queens College masters program called SPQ that focuses on social justice in the practice of art. [7]
Judith Ann Reisman was an American conservative author, best known for her criticism and condemnation of the work and legacy of Alfred Kinsey. She has been referred to as the "founder of the modern anti-Kinsey movement". Her commentary is currently featured by the conservative WorldNetDaily and the Christian magazine Salvo. She held a Ph.D. in communications from Case Western Reserve University, and was a visiting professor of law at Liberty University.
The John Jay College of Criminal Justice is a public college focused on criminal justice and located in New York City. It is a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY). John Jay was founded as the only liberal arts college with a criminal justice and forensic focus in the United States. The college is known for its criminal justice, forensic science, forensic psychology, criminology, and public affairs programs. The college has a 46% graduation rate within 6 years for Bachelors degree, one of the lowest in the CUNY system.
MoMA PS1 is one of the largest art institutions in the United States dedicated solely to contemporary art. It is located in Court Square in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, the Warm Up summer music series, and the Young Architects Program with the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA PS1 has been affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art since January 2000 and, as of 2013, attracts about 200,000 visitors a year.
The Rubin Museum of Art, also known as the Rubin Museum is a museum dedicated to the collection, display, and preservation of the art and cultures of the Himalayas, the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia and other regions within Eurasia, with a permanent collection focused particularly on Tibetan art. It is located at 150 West 17th Street between the Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City.
The Luhring Augustine Gallery is an art gallery in New York City. The gallery has three locations: Chelsea, Bushwick, and Tribeca. Its principal focus is the representation of an international group of contemporary artists whose diverse practices include painting, drawing, sculpture, video and photography.
Michelle Jaffé, a female American interdisciplinary artist working both in Tribeca in downtown Manhattan and Ridgewood, Queens. Known for experiential audio visual participatory installation art that use sound as a critical component of the work. She works with sound art to expand the sculptural experience, to forge new neural connections, within the mind and body. Sensuously stimulating, surrounded in sound and visuals, her work conjures a compelling aesthetic temporal experience.
Teresita Fernández is a New York-based visual artist best known for her public sculptures and unconventional use of materials. Her work is characterized by an interest in perception and the psychology of looking. Her experiential, large-scale works are often inspired by landscape and natural phenomena as well as diverse historical and cultural references. Her sculptures present spectacular optical illusions and evoke natural phenomena, land formations, and water in its infinite forms.
Simone Leigh is an American artist from Chicago who works in New York City in the United States. She works in various media including sculpture, installations, video, performance, and social practice. Leigh has described her work as auto-ethnographic, and her interests include African art and vernacular objects, performance, and feminism. Her work is concerned with the marginalization of women of color and reframes their experience as central to society. Leigh has often said that her work is focused on “Black female subjectivity,” with an interest in complex interplays between various strands of history.
Himalayan Art Resources (HAR) website is a "virtual museum" of Himalayan and Tibetan art, cataloging and exhibiting images of art from museum, university and private collections throughout the world. The website is hosted at the Rubin Museum of Art.
Maureen Connor is an American artist who creates installations and videos dealing with human resources and social justice. She is known internationally for her work from the 1980s to the present, which focuses on gender and its modes of representation.
Jaishri Abichandani is a Brooklyn-based artist and curator. Her interdisciplinary practice focuses on the intersection of art, feminism, and social practice. Abichandani was the founder of the South Asian Women's Creative Collective, with chapters in New York City and London, and director from 1997 until 2013. She was also the Founding Director of Public Events and Projects from at the Queens Museum from 2003-2006.
Elia Alba (1962) was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Queens, New York. Alba's ongoing project The Supper Club depicts contemporary artists of color in portraits, and presents dinners where a diverse array of artists, curators, historians and collectors address topics related to people of color and to women.
Fredericka Foster is an American artist and water activist known for oil painting and photography.
Chinatown Art Brigade (CAB) is a cultural collective of artists, media makers and activists creating art and media to advance social justice. Their work focuses on the belief that "collaboration with and accountability to those communities that are directly impacted by racial, social and economic inequities must be central to cultural, art, or media making process." Through art and public projections, CAB aims to share stories of Chinatown tenants to fight displacement and gentrification. Chinatown Art Brigade collaborates with the Chinatown Tenants Union of CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities, a non-profit organization that fights against tenant rights violation, evictions, and displacement of low-income pan-Asian communities.
Franklin Sirmans is an American art critic, editor, writer, curator and has been the director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) since October 2015. His initiatives there include ensuring that PAMM's art program reflects the community in Miami and securing donations. In his first six months at PAMM, he managed to secure the largest donation of works in the museum's short history, over a hundred pieces of art were donated by Design District developer Craig Robins.
Tuesday Smillie is an American interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work focuses on trans-feminist politics and the aesthetics of protest. Smillie has been recognized for her reinterpretation of protest banners through traditional craft materials. Writer Johanna Fateman describes work like Smillie's Street Transvestites 1973 (2015) as "ornate, meticulously sewn and painted trans-liberation banners" that "could not get their radical point across more lovingly."
Arlene Rush is a New York City-based multidisciplinary artist. Initially she created abstract metal sculptures, with her practice evolving to incorporate more conceptual work tackling gender and identity. Her current work centers on themes around gender, identity, socioeconomics, and politics, examining issues that impact the contemporary world.
Jane Benson is a British multidisciplinary artist. She is known for her immersive geopolitical and research based practice that spans across sculpture, installation, sound, video, institutional critique and collaborations with musicians.
Scott Stover is a philanthropy advisor specializing in arts and culture. He is known for his progressive venture philanthropy model and providing strategic planning and implementation services to cultural institutions, private art collectors, artists, foundations, and government and civic agencies. Most notably, Stover revived the Centre Pompidou Foundation in 2005. He is an art collector and a leading figure in international cultural conversation and arts media. Stover holds dual U.S. and French citizenship and has offices in Los Angeles and France.
The 8th Floor is an exhibition and event space established by Donald and Shelley Rubin in 2010. It is located at 17 West 17th Street in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood in the same building as the Rubin Museum. The space features a rotating selection of artists and exhibitions, many with a focus on social justice. In 2019 they launched a series of two-year exhibits under the theme Revolutionary Cycles.