The Rubin, a small and elegant Chelsea museum which features art from the Himalayas, was launched and bankrolled in 2004 by a couple of art collectors, Shelley and Donald Rubin, who made their fortune in healthcare insurance. In a noisy and often over stimulating city, it provided an elegant, spacious sanctuary space, a pause place for beauty, reflection and reckoning with art and religions. Writes Holland Cotter, in the New York Times, “It was the place you ended up lingering in just because it felt good to be there, in an atmosphere that felt calm but charged, that discouraged hurry, encouraged quiet.”
Recently the museum announced that it will be closing. (I mean, they plan to continue in some form online but, um, raise your hand if you’re interested in an online museum.)
When seemingly sturdy arts institutions make plans to vanish, it unsettles. And I feel for the people who will be laid off. The museum world, like Hollywood, theater and publishing, is rife with fear and contraction these days and even the most talented and accomplished people I know are having unprecedented difficulty. We’re in a dark passage. But things change and things end. Institutions that rely on a single family’s generosity are uniquely nimble and uniquely vulnerable, even the highest achieving of them.
I loved the Rubin. I was an intermittent member and took my kids a dozen times and went to the events and journaled in the cafe and bought presents from the gift store and always made time to sit in the shrine room. The museum even came through for me during during the darkest days of the pandemic when they posted to Youtube the recording they use in the shrine room of monks chanting. The recording goes on loop from children chanting to throat singing, lightness and youth looped with deep depth and wisdom, from the sky to the core of the earth and back again, and I meditated with it every day - on some days, three times a day.
Recently I took my older daughter’s third grade class to The Rubin as a kind of parting ritual - they all meditate in school so there was some familiarity with what was on offer, and it was wonderful to see the kids soak in the elegance of the place. They couldn’t believe how soft the carpet was on the stately circular staircase that winds up and down six floors. I can’t either - how audacious to make something that soft available for public feet.
So many philanthropic gifts in the arts amount to little more than an ego boost for the giver. The Rubin was much, much, more, and twenty years is a very long run.
It won’t close its brick and mortar museum until October 6th. Make sure you visit before it’s in the ether.
Tour Guide
My student Bill O’Neill asked me what he should do when he visits New York City over Labor Day weekend and my answer is: go to The Rubin, see Stereophonic on Broadway, take the ferry to Governors Island, eat dinner at Houseman, have udon at Raku, have a glass of wine and an appetizer at the end of the bar at Foul Witch, go for coffee and a long hang at one of the communal tables at Abraco, have a pastry at Librae, get a to-go bagel and lox at Russ & Daughters and eat in Washington Square Park, use Citi Bikes, take yoga at Sky Ting and get a massage at Great Jones Spa.
I won’t be humble: this is a truly great itinerary.
Seedlings
Many of you inquired about what happened to all of those seeds that went into the air and on to a pile and back into pots as mystery seedlings after I tripped over a violin on the staircase and scream expletives. Well, over the past six weeks, they have been growing together very happily by a window in the city, and this week we transported them upstate where we will put them into the earth. If they thought it was confusing to be mixed around with one another, just imagine how confused they’ll be when they first enter the earth, with all of those bugs and the wind and the changes in temperature! “It’s gonna be survival of the fittest,” my nine year old said. So true. Wish them luck!
Thank you for reading and thanks especially to my paying subscribers.
I will leave you with this gem.
xo Lizzie
PS - My Sonoma County Writers’ Retreat will take place Jan 3-8, 2025. Five days and nights of writer heaven. For more details and to register, go here. Paying subscribers get a 10% discount if they register before May 31ST with the discount code SUBSCRIBER10.
Oh no! I was shocked to read your story about the Rubin closing in part because I assumed it had forever funding. I photographed many of the Buddhas from their collection in 2014 for 15,000 Buddhas, a long term project I was working on. Your words about the difference between an online museum and the physical reality are dead on, but since the physical is going away I made a video to capture the feeling I had of being in the space. It's very different from a virtual tour of the museum. I hope you like it and it takes you back. https://youtu.be/CN2v38b4tQQ
So sad to know the Rubin will be closing. So many visits there with the girls who loved the museum, the cafe and the sweet gift store.