MEET DAVID

In 1977, Rubin returned to his hometown of Los Angeles to assume the dual roles of Assistant Director of the Galleries of the Claremont Colleges and Assistant Professor of Art History at Scripps College, positions he held until 1982. During his Claremont years, Rubin organized numerous exhibitions, continued to write for Arts Magazine, and also Art in America and California-based Artweek and ArtScene, and fell in love with the vibrant Los Angeles art milieu. Although he completed 3½ chapters of his doctoral dissertation (now housed in the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art), he ultimately withdrew from the doctoral program to focus on his contemporary art activities. Following his departure from the Claremont Colleges, Rubin organized an exhibition for Security Pacific National Bank in downtown Los Angeles, was curator for the 2nd Annual Los Angeles Visual Arts Festival, and took on a halftime position as gallery director at Santa Monica College.

Rubin received an offer in 1994 to serve as Curator of Twentieth Century Art at the Phoenix Art Museum, working with an exceptional curatorial team under the expert leadership of Director James K. Ballinger.  Ballinger had seen the “Old Glory” exhibition when he interviewed Rubin in Cleveland, and decided to bring the exhibition to Phoenix where, in 1996, it created a national controversy. Ballinger was also interested in another Rubin project, “It’s Only Rock and Roll: Rock and Roll Currents in Contemporary Art.” Originally conceived by Rubin while the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum was under construction in Cleveland, the exhibition’s administrative duties were taken over by Exhibition Management, Inc., which toured the exhibition to Phoenix and twelve other American museums from 1995-98. While working at the Phoenix Art Museum, Rubin was selected as the U.S. Commissioner for the 1996 Cuenca Bienal of Painting in Ecuador. He also organized the “1998 Phoenix Triennial,” for which he visited 200+ artist studios in four states over a nine month period, and oversaw production and contributed an essay to a monograph on Phoenix artist Philip C. Curtis. Rubin devoted much of his time in Phoenix to working with Contemporary Forum, the museum’s contemporary art support group, and functioning as the museum’s liaison to local artists.

Although Rubin enjoyed his time in Phoenix, a dream job in the enchanting city of New Orleans lured him there at the turn of the Millennium. From 2000-2006, Rubin served as Curator of Visual Arts at the Contemporary Arts Center, a cutting-edge multidisciplinary arts venue in the Big Easy’s warehouse district. Among Rubin’s major achievements at the CAC was organizing major exhibitions for Louisiana artists Douglas Bourgeois and Willie Birch, with accompanying monographs. He curated numerous solo exhibitions for other New Orleans artists, as well as significant projects for nationally and internationally prominent figures such as Al Held and Christian Marclay. He also produced three biennial exhibitions of Louisiana artists and curated the thematic exhibitions “Photography Now,” “Chelsea Rising,” “Birdspace: A Post-Audubon Artists Aviary” and “The Culture of Queer: A Tribute to J.G. Harter.” Rubin remembers the arts community in New Orleans as ingratiating and loving, and he credits local artists with convincing him to begin exhibiting his drawings. According to Rubin, “New Orleans was really the Camelot of my career, until everything changed with Hurricane Katrina.” After the 2005 hurricane, several of the staff members were laid off and Rubin returned to the venue in 2006 to join a staff of about nine people who remained.  Due to water damage from an overturned water tower on the roof, the upstairs offices needed repair, and the gallery was being used for storage. So Rubin joined the others who worked together in the former cybercafé.  It was there, in the spring of 2006, that Senators Mary Landrieu and Barack Obama came to see how the CAC was holding up.  When the senators walked through the door, Rubin was installing wall reliefs dedicated to John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., which he had the pleasure of pointing out to the obviously delighted Senator Obama. Early during his tenure in New Orleans, Rubin was invited to serve on the international jury for the Florence Biennale, a position that he held four times between 2001 and 2007.

Rubin’s final stop at a major museum was in San Antonio, Texas, where he served from 2006-2014 as Curator of Contemporary Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art.  Among his notable achievements in that capacity were the 2010 exhibition and book, “Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art since the 1960s,”and an ongoing series of Artist Conversations. Rubin also organized annual exhibitions for FotoSeptiembreUSA and several projects devoted to local artists, as he had done in New Orleans. During his San Antonio years, Rubin was an active member of the Art & Architecture Committee of the San Antonio River Foundation. He credits the San Antonio Latinx artist community with offering him essential guidance and support during this period. In 2016, Rubin was invited to donate his curatorial papers (files, photos, correspondence, etc.) to the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art.

In 2017, Rubin returned to his hometown of Los Angeles once again. Since that time, he has organized several exhibitions for Carole Sorell Inc. and he continues to contribute regularly to Visual Art Source, Artillery, and Hyperallergic. He is also devoting more attention to his drawing practice and in 2021 he had a solo exhibition at the California State University Northridge Art Galleries.