Beyer Blinder Belle Completes Rubell Museum in Washington, D.C.
Last week, I attended the opening of the Rubell Museum in Washington, D.C., and had the good fortune to cover the opening for Architectural Record. It’s an exciting project, one that revitalizes a historic 1906 school building within the District’s Urban Renewal zone of the 1960s. The art collection is astounding, and the architecture makes great use of the existing spaces; it almost feels like being in an art classroom getting tutored by some of the biggest names in contemporary art, and the private ownership of the museum means that shows can be riskier, content edgier, and installations bolder than what the neighboring institutions along the Mall can pull off.
An excerpt from the piece:
On October 29, the Rubell Museum opened its doors to the public in the southwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. It is part of a development more than a decade in the making of an underutilized parcel formerly occupied by the Randall School and rehabilitated by Beyer Blinder Belle (BBB). Situated on the side of the freeway cutting through southwest DC away from the progression of Smithsonian museums that line the National Mall, the Rubell Museum offers a sizable influx of contemporary art that expands the city’s cultural center. The other part of the site’s development is Gallery 64, a 12-story apartment building immediately north of the museum that was designed concurrently by BBB. Museum founders Mera and Don Rubell, along with their son, Jason, had previously opened a Miami museum designed by Selldorf Architects in 2019; the DC location marks the second outpost for an art-collecting family whose collection has grown to nearly 7,500 objects.
Visitors to the Rubell Museum first encounter it as a row of brick school buildings—the 1906 Cardozo Elementary School and the 1927 additions that would transform it into the Randall Junior High School—along I Street SW, with a glass-and-steel entry pavilion facing an open courtyard between the museum and the neighboring Randall Recreation Center and Pool to the east. The taller apartment building, Gallery 64, serves as a backdrop (and highway noise buffer) for the Rubell Museum, with townhouse-style apartments at ground level surrounding an interior courtyard within the 492-unit mid-rise tower’s U-shaped plan; this courtyard bounces daylight into the museum’s north-facing gallery windows and reserves breathing room for the shorter building in perpetuity.
Read the full article at Architectural Record: https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/15934-beyer-blinder-belle-completes-rubell-museum-in-washington-dc