Muse Magazine

Basel blogging: 30 Americans

Arguably the most beautiful (and most talked about) show going during Basel week, the Rubell Family Collection exhibition, “30 Americans,” was so good that I went to see it twice during the same day. Don and Mera Rubell along with their kids Jennifer and Jason have collectively amassed one of the most significant collections in contemporary art, which they show in rotation at a Miami warehouse that is larger than some museums. This week, they’ve enlisted 30 black artists including Kara Walker, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, Kalup Linzy, Barkley Hendricks and Kehinde Wiley to create a “portrait of African-American” art, which amounts to three floors’ worth of amazing intensity. After my first visit of the day, I went downstairs to buy the exhibition book and discovered that they hold sold out of all copies but the two on display. The small crowd of people trying to talk the sales staff at the register into selling the display books gave me flashbacks to the lines of women scrambling to snap up copies of the black edition of Vogue Italia at newsstands in New York a few months back. The heightened interest in an “all-black” moment felt similar. Fortunately, I found an extra copy of the book tucked away on another shelf (it looked like someone tried to hide it in order to purchase it later.) The saleswoman I spoke to mentioned that they would order more copies of the book, which reminded me of Condé Nast’s reprints of the magazine and of The New York Times’ reprints of its election day papers. Who knew black would sell so well in 2008?

I went back later in the day to hear Kehinde, Glenn Ligon, Rashid Johnson, Wangechi Mutu, Kalup and Thelma Golden talk about the show in a group discussion. Some of my favorite images from the show are below but the aspect of it that I liked most were the essays written by the artists explaining why they do what they do, what it is exactly they do, and whatever else moves them. (Read Glenn’s contribution here.)

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