30 Americans.

30 Americans. Text by Franklin Sirmans, Glenn Ligon, Robert Hobbs, Michele Wallace. Rubell Family Collection, 2009. 232 pp., Illustrated throughout, 9x12¼".

The Rubell Family Collection was started in 1964 as a private collection of art work, collected by Don and Mera Rubell.

The collection became open to the public in 1996, and can be viewed at the RFC museum in Miami (US). It features rotating exhibitions of work by artists such as Maurizio Cattelan, Marlene Dumas, David Hammons, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, Jeff Koons, Kerry James Marshall, Paul McCarthy, Takashi Murakami, Neo Rauch, Charles Ray, Gregor Schneider, Cindy Sherman, Rosemarie Trockel, Luc Tuymans, Kara Walker and Lisa Yuskavage. Amongst other the museum also has an extensive research library.

In an interesting approach the RFC museum only exhibit artworks that are owned by the Rubell Family Collection.


30 Americans is a book that was published to coincide with the exhibition 30 Americans.

The exhibition put together "the best possible portrait of contemporary African-American art that our physical, financial and intellectual limitations allow.

The result is a show of more than 200 works of art, exhibited in 27 galleries occupying the entire 45,000-square-foot exhibition space of the Rubell Family Collection.

As the show evolved, we decided to call it '30 Americans'. 'Americans', rather than 'African Americans' or 'Black Americans' because nationality is a statement of fact, while racial identity is a question each artist answers in his or her own way, or not at all.

And the number 30 because we acknowledge, even as it is happening, that this show does not include everyone who could be in it. The truth is, because we do collect right up to the last minute before a show, there are actually 31 artists in '30 Americans'.

-- read more from the exhibition statement here.