NEW YORK CITY (AP) - William Rubin, who as director of painting
and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art played a central role
in shaping the museum's collections and exhibitions, has died.
Rubin, whose health had been declining for some time, died at his
suburban Pound Ridge, N.Y., home on Sunday, January 22. He was
78.
Rubin joined the museum in 1967, and was named chief curator of
the painting and sculpture collection a year later. Among the
many influential exhibitions he organized was a Picasso
retrospective in 1980 that filled the entire museum.
"Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective,'' MoMA said, was one of the most
important and successful exhibitions in the museum's history.
Other exhibitions launched by Rubin included "Picasso and Braque:
Pioneering Cubism,'' "Frank Stella: Works From 1970 to 1987,''
"Henri Rousseau,'' "Primitivism in Twentieth Century Art:
Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern,'' "Cezanne: The Late
Work,'' "Dada, Surrealism and Their Heritage'' and two surveys of
Stella's work.
A show of Picasso portraits, organized by Rubin eight years after
his retirement in 1988, was criticized by some because the works
were arranged according to the artist's successive relationships
with women.
An art historian and curator, Rubin's tenacious pursuit of art he
believed MoMA should own resulted in his greatly expanding the
museum's holdings in abstract expressionism with works such as
Jackson Pollock's "One: Number 31, 1950'' and Barnett Newman's
1950-51 "Vir Heroicus Sublimis,'' and the work of contemporary
artists like Anthony Caro and Stella.
His acquisitions for the museum also included Picasso's
"Guitar,'' a metal construction sculpture from 1912-13 that the
artist gave to Rubin as a donation in the south of France.
Born in Brooklyn, Rubin earned a PhD in art history from Columbia
University. During the 1950s and 1960s, he taught at Sarah
Lawrence College and the City University of New York. He also
worked as an editor for Art International. At the time of his
death, Rubin was finishing a book on the art he acquired for the
museum.
He is survived by his wife, Phyllis Hattis, a daughter and two
brothers.
