Caitlin Berry Appointed Director of Rubell Museum DC

The Rubell Museum today announced that Caitlin Berry will be inaugural Director of its new museum located in Washington, DC. Berry will work closely with the Rubells and Director of the Rubell Museum in Miami, Juan Valadez, in bringing to life the vision for sharing their extensive collection of contemporary art with the people who live, work in, and visit the nation's capital. Opening October 29, 2022, the Rubell Museum DC will reinvigorate the historic Randall Junior High School in the Southwest neighborhood as a place for the public to engage with the most compelling national and International Artists of our time.

Berry brings a depth of experience working with art communities across the DC metro region to the Rubell Museum DC. Prior to joining the museum, she served as Director of the Cody Gallery at Marymount University in Arlington, VA. A champion of local artists, Berry curated the 2019 and co-curated the 2020 editions of Art Night, an annual exhibition and fundraiser to support the Washington Project for the Arts (WPA). She serves on the board of Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art in Reston, VA and is a member of the Washington, DC Chapter of ArtTable. She holds a Post Baccalaureate in Gallery Management and a B.A. in Communication and Art History from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Berry, who begins her new position in August, will be responsible for engaging the greater DC community, developing public programming, and overseeing the operations and staff of the museum. Berry will also work with the Rubells and Valadez, to oversee the Rubell Museum DC's installations and exhibitions.

"Caitlin's knowledge and passion for the DC arts community make her the perfect partner for weaving the museum into the city and surrounding region," said Mera Rubell. "She is deeply committed both to artists and to making art accessible to a wide range of audiences, which is our goal in creating this museum."

"It is my honor to work with the Rubells in adding a new resource to the city's tremendous landscape of museums. The Rubell Museum DC will exclusively focus on the art of today and invite the public to encounter new ideas inspired by the nuanced expressions and lived experiences of the artists on view," said Berry. "I look forward to expanding my work of fostering collaboration in the art ecosystem in DC and contributing to the dynamic cultural conversation that takes place here."

Berry's areas of focus include the Washington Color School, Mid-Century African American, and contemporary art. She has served as an independent contemporary art advisor to various private and public collections. Berry also held the role of Director at Hemphill Fine Arts, one of DC's leading art galleries with an emphasis on local emerging, mid-career, and established artists. At the Cody Gallery, she has curated exhibitions including Nekisha Durrett: Magnolia, Dave Eassa: People and Places You Don't Know How to Know, and co-curated Jennie Lea Knight: Women of Jefferson Place, alongside John Anderson and Meaghan Kent. Independently, she curated Eric Uhlir: Before, After and In Between, and Joseph Shetler: Pursuit of Nothing at Culture House DC.

The opening of the Rubell Museum DC builds on past initiatives aimed at sharing the Rubells' collection with audiences across the DC metro area. In 2011, the Corcoran Gallery of Art became one of the first institutions to present 30 Americans, a wide-ranging survey of works by many of the most important African American artists of the last three decades. This acclaimed exhibition, which is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue, has toured for over 10 years to 20 museums around the country. Additional Rubell Museum exhibitions that have traveled to DC include No Man's Land: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection (2016) at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and Life After Death: New Leipzig Paintings (2006) at American University Museum's Katzen Arts Center. Loans from the collection have been featured in Juan Muñoz (2001), Robert Gober: Sculpture + Drawing (2001), and Directions: Sherrie Levine (1998) at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; as well as Alexis Rockman: A Fable for Tomorrow (2011) at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Additional loans have been showcased at the National Portrait Gallery, including a work by Kehinde Wiley in Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture (2008) and by Njideka Akunyili Crosby in the museum's forthcoming presentation of Kinship (opening October 28, 2022), which will bring together eight contemporary artists whose work explores the closeness that bonds us.

About the Rubell Museum DC

Located at 65 I Street in the Southwest neighborhood, the Rubell Museum DC brings the Rubells' extensive contemporary art collection to the nation's capital. After nearly 30 years as the Rubell Family Collection, and with the 2019 expansion to a new location in Miami, the Rubells decided to put museum in its name to emphasize its public mission and expand access for audiences.

Shortly after Don and Mera Rubell married in 1964, they started visiting artists' studios and collecting art in New York, when Mera was a Head Start teacher and Don was in medical school. The collection has since grown into a multi-generational family passion for connecting, engaging, and supporting many of today's most compelling artists.

The 32,000-square-foot museum is housed in the former Randall Junior High School built in 1906. Its adaptive reuse into a museum preserves this deteriorating building, a historically African American public school listed in the National Register of Historic Places and brings it back to life as a public resource.

The Rubell Museum's collection is distinguished by its unprecedented range and depth that has enabled the Museum to organize over 50 exhibitions during the last three decades drawn entirely from its holdings in painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installation. These have included such groundbreaking and diverse exhibitions as Life After Death: New Leipzig Paintings (2004), Richard Prince (2004), Red Eye: Los Angeles Artists (2006), 30 Americans (2008), Against All Odds: Keith Haring (2008), Beg Borrow and Steal (2009), 28 Chinese (2013), NO MAN'S LAND (2015), Still Human (2017), Purvis Young (2018), and Yayoi Kusama (2020). Many of these exhibitions have toured to museums internationally and have been accompanied by catalogues.

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