19 Facts About William Rubin

William Stanley Rubin was an American art scholar, a distinguished curator, critic, collector, art historian and teacher of modern art.

From 1968 to 1988, Rubin was a curator at The Museum of Modern Art located in New York City and, from 1973 to 1988, he served as director of the Painting and Sculpture Department.

William Rubin played a key role in building MoMA's collection, in particular acquiring work of abstract expressionism, and organized many groundbreaking exhibitions.

William Rubin's younger brother Lawrence Rubin was an art dealer in NYC and in Europe.

William S Rubin was born in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest of three children.

William Rubin's father was a textile merchant who owned several factories.

William Rubin was educated in public schools in Brooklyn before the family moved to Riverdale, New York, where he attended the Fieldston School.

At the time, William Rubin was not interested in pursuing a career in the visual arts, for he aspired to become an orchestra conductor.

William Rubin's studies were interrupted by a stint in the army.

William Rubin consequently became interested in both fields and wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Church of Assy in the French Alps with an interior that was decorated by modern artists in the years after World War II: Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Georges Rouault, Marc Chagall, Jean Lurcat, and others.

William Rubin graduated from Columbia College in 1949 with a bachelor's degree in Italian language and literature.

William Rubin studied musicology at the University of Paris for a year before returning to Columbia, earning a Ph.

In 1952, William Rubin began teaching art history at Sarah Lawrence College and at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

From collectors such as these, or through direct purchases by the museum, William Rubin managed to acquire some of the most important works of art in the museum's collection: Marcel Duchamp, The Bicycle Wheel, Constantin Brancusi, The Endless Column, Pablo Picasso, Charnel House, Henri Matisse, Memory of Oceana and The Swimming Pool, Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31.

William Rubin even gave the museum David Smith's Australia from his own private collection.

In 1971, the artist gave him for the museum's collection his Cubist Guitar, an iconic metal and wire sculpture and, over the years, William Rubin was instrumental in acquiring many other important works by the artist for the museum.

William Rubin made it a habit of installing these shows while circulating around the galleries in a wheelchair, directing the placement of work like the conductor of a symphony orchestra, the career to which he had earlier aspired.

Late in his career, William Rubin said that he had hoped his exhibitions had a meaningful influence on the artists who saw them.

In 2005, William Rubin was depicted by the artist Kathleen Gilje in the guise of Picasso, as he appeared in a photographic portrait by Henri Cartier-Bresson.