University of California, Los Angeles. Fowler Museum of Cultural History, Kitnick-Alexander Library

Biography

Arnold Gary Rubin was born on July 24, 1937. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. In 1964 he earned an M.A. in Art History from Indiana University in Bloomington where he subsequently received his Ph.D. five years later. While at Indiana, he studied the arts of Africa, Oceania, and Pre-Columbian America, as well as the arts of ancient Greece and Rome, specializing in African Area Studies under the tutelage of Roy Sieber.

Rubin began his field research of the arts of the Middle Benue Valley of Nigeria in the summer of 1964, traveling to Europe to survey West African collections in major museums with a fellowship from the Ford Foundation. During the following 17 months Rubin was in Nigeria with his former wife, Barbara Rubin (nee Hudson), and young daughter. His field investigations included the traditional arts in their cultural and historical contexts, including sculpture, masks, architecture, ceramics, textiles, and vocal and instrumental music. The primary focus was on the Jukun-speaking peoples of the Benue River Valley with comparative studies of the Kutep, Chamba, Yukuben, Mumuye, Wurkun, Yergum, Tiv, and Idoma peoples. His objectives were to create a census of monuments, emphasizing the distributions of particular forms and styles; to collect oral and manuscript histories; and to study artists at work, as well as performances of masquerades and ceremonies. His larger goal was to reassess the Jukun history and the accepted view of the role of the Jukun in the history of Northern Nigeria. Rubin's concern was with the wider implications of the forms and styles of art for an understanding of the history of the Benue River Valley. He assembled a study collection now housed in the Federal Department of Antiquities of Nigeria and the Anthropology Museum at Indiana University. The Arnold Rubin Archives Collection at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has Rubin's diaries, field notes, photographic documentation, audiotapes, and publications from this period.

After his return, he spent a semester at Indiana University as a Lecturer in the Department of Fine Arts. In the fall of 1967 Rubin was employed as an Acting Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he remained until 1988. In 1969 he was promoted to Assistant Professor and then to Associate Professor five years later.

A Fulbright-Hayes African Area Studies Center Faculty Research Grant allowed Rubin to return to Africa in 1969, this time to study the peoples of the Upper Benue River Valley. During this 18-month period, he traveled to Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Ghana and throughout Nigeria spending time researching the collections in the Jos Museum. The Arnold Rubin Archives Collection at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has Rubin's diaries, field notes, photographic documentation, audiotapes, and publications from this period.

Back in Los Angeles, Rubin spent 1972 continuing his investigations of unconventional artistic phenomena in Southern California including gravestone decorations at Forest Lawn Cemetery, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses, urban murals, customized vehicles, tattoo and other forms of body art. Although grant funds were denied to create a major exhibition on body arts and tattoo, Marks of Civilization is a major contribution to the field. This catalog accompanied the "Art of the Body" symposium held at UCLA in late January of 1983. An exhibition exploring body art-related materials from the Fowler's collection complemented the symposium. Rubin was one of the first scholars to explore the relationship of tattoos between art, culture, history, psychology, and sociology, heralding the tattoo renaissance of the late 20th century. The Arnold Rubin Archives Collection at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has extensive photographic documentation, correspondence, newsletters, journals, and field notes from this period.

Rubin's interest in popular culture also manifested itself in the first serious field research of the Pasadena [California] Tournament of Roses Parade. He taught a graduate seminar in art history focused on temporary art, masquerade, and spontaneous gatherings in Western culture that focused on the annual Rose Parade ceremonies, parade floats, and costumes. These phenomena inspired subsequent investigations of the Rose Parade by some of Rubin's former students. The Arnold Rubin Archives Collection at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has Rubin's (and Rubin's students') diaries, field notes, photographic documentation, and publications from this period.

It was also during this year that Rubin wrote an essay entitled, "Art as Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern California." The ideas from this essay developed into a freshmen-level course at UCLA, "Art 55: An Introduction of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and Native America." The final result of the course and course reader for Art 55 was a published monograph entitled "Art as Technology." Many of the courses Rubin taught surveyed the arts of Africa, Oceania, and Pre-Colombian America. He also led graduate level seminars and methodology courses. The Arnold Rubin Archives Collection at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has Rubin's lecture notes, photographic documentation, and publications from this period, as well as the course reader and samples of student papers from Rubin's art history courses for undergraduate and graduate students.

Rubin traveled abroad three more times in order to continue his museum research in Nigeria; to investigate the representations of Black Africans in Indian/Islamic paintings and other evidence of Africans in Asia; to conduct tattoo and body-piercing research primarily in the Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra; and to gather information from museums and private collections in preparation of the Museum of Cultural History's "Sculpture of the Benue River Valley" exhibition and catalog. This major project was not realized in his lifetime. The Arnold Rubin Archives Collection at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has Rubin's field notes, photographic documentation, correspondence, and publications from this period.

Rubin died of cancer on April 9, 1988.

In a tribute to Arnold Rubin, Roy Sieber has written, " The contextual basis for the arts that delighted Arnold was anathema during earlier art historical studies in connoisseurship, in orthodox studies of style change, and in the biographies of artists.. . . Eclecticism---the bringing of all and any useful method and theory from any and all other disciplines to bear on the study of the context of the work of art -- has long been the rallying cry of Africanists and, combined with a concern for cultural pluralism, was Arnold's credo."

From the guide to the Arnold Rubin Papers, 1845-1989 (bulk 1964-1989), (University of California, Los Angeles. Fowler Museum of Cultural History, Kitnick-Alexander Library)