When Manhattan’s Rubin Museum of Art (RMA), a museum of art from the Himalayas and the surrounding regions, celebrated its third anniversary, several Oberlin graduates were featured participants. The celebration, the first annual Nine Rivers Gala, will be held Tuesday, October 2, at the museum.

Author Ishmael Beah ’04, who began writing early drafts of his New York Times best-selling book, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, while he was a student at Oberlin, was honored with RMA’s first annual Skye Cultural Exchange Award. Named for the Tibetan word for birth or growth, the award is presented to an individual or group who has exhibited an early commitment to, and is positioned to further advance compassionate exchange in, universal arts and culture. Beah was on campus earlier this September to deliver the first convocation, in Finney Chapel, of the Oberlin Convocation Series. He worked as a guide at RMA from 2004 to 2006.

Chinese-born composer Huang Ruo ’00, a frequent winner of the ASCAP Concert Music Award and cofounder of the International Contemporary Ensemble, was commissioned by RMA to write an original piece of music that would reflect one of the museum’s most striking architectural details—French designer Andree Putman’s steel and marble spiral staircase, which was retained from the building’s prior incarnation as Barneys department store. Circle of Steps: Vertical Installation for a Staircase and Six Musicians, pays homage to the dramaticstructure that curls its way through the building’s six-story gallery tower.

In his program note for the piece, Ruo writes that most written music is normally “horizontal,” with the musicians staged from left to right or front to back. Circle of Steps, designed as it is for the six-floor spiral staircase, displaces the musicians—each is positioned on a different level—creating what Ruo calls “a vertical and spiral sonority.”
The musicians symbolize what is known in Buddhism as the guardians of the six levels of reincarnation. According to Tim McHenry, producer at RMA, Ruo’s work also “addresses the duality in our lives of commercialism and spirituality”—various ring-tones from five cellular phones ornament the composition, which is scored for flute, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, viola, percussion, and conch.

McHenry commissioned the piece from Ruo in April 2007.

Adding yet another Oberlin dimension to the evening was the presence of Dr. Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Dr. Yunus, considered a pioneer in the microcredit movement, was awarded an Oberlin honorary doctor of humanities degree in 1993. RMA honored Dr. Yunus with its inaugural Mandala Arts and Humanitarian Award, which symbolizes illumination, focus, and the striving for perfection, and is presented to an individual who exemplifies these qualities through his or her life’s commitment to Himalayan art or humanitarian service to benefit the global community. Dr. Yunus established the Grameen Bank (“village bank”) in Bangladesh, which loaned small amounts of money to people too poor to qualify for credit at traditional banks. Since its founding in 1983, the Grameen Bank’s practices have been adopted by more than 50 countries, including the United States.

Shelley and Donald Rubin founded RMA, and the museum’s programming includes a substantial number of concerts. Last August, Theo Croker ’07 performed at the museum with his quintet. “It was spectacular,” says Donald Rubin of the concert. It does not surprise him that many of the musicians who find their way to perform at his museum are Oberlin-trained: “Oberlin is probably the best undergraduate program in the country for music,” he says.

Croker earned a Bachelor of Music degree in jazz trumpet performance at the Conservatory, where he was a member of the Oberlin Jazz Septet.

The October convergence of Oberlin with the Rubin Museum of Art was rather serendipitous, says Dean of the Conservatory David H. Stull, given the fact that it occurred independent of discussions that he has been having with officials at RMA, which, interestingly enough, counts seven Oberlin alumni working in its education department since the opening of the museum in 2004. One of them is Asha Kaufman ’04, manager of RMA’S Guide Program, which offers wide-ranging educational programming for everyone from first-graders to seniors. Having so many Obies work “in a small education department in a small to middle-sized museum in three years … is really quite remarkable,” says Kaufman. “I think this statistic speaks very well of the RMA and the kinds of minds that it attracts.”

The magnetic field surrounding the RMA seems to be an irresistible force for Oberlin and its alumni.

“Oberlin is embarking on a very promising and fulfilling relationship with the Rubin Museum of Art,” says Dean Stull. “We have had talks with Shelley and Donald Rubin, the museum’s founders, about sponsoring alumni events and concerts at the museum.”

In Kaufman’s position at the Rubin Museum of Art, she has, she says, “the honor of working with the curatorial staff and scholars in the New York City region to create training and workshops that will equip the guides to speak about the art in compelling ways.” A religion major at Oberlin, she also minored in studio art. “I’m always referring to my notes from Paula Richmond’s and James Dobbins’ classes. A lot of my interests and scholarship from my time at Oberlin, including my work with the public schools and my summer jobs, are applied to my job here. I always thought of being an educator, of bringing together my education, love of art, and study of religion. This job is a wonderful melding of my interests.”

As for the discussions of a regular performing relationship being forged between Oberlin and RMA, the future looks bright: Donald Rubin describes the prospects as “very exciting. There are many Oberlin alumni living in New York City, and we would love for them to view RMA, with programming featuring Oberlin alumni and students, as a destination spot. We are absolutely working together to make it happen.”

For more information about RMA, please visit www.rmanyc.org.