What’s Happening: Three years after significantly expanding their presence in Miami, Mera and Donald Rubell transform an abandoned schoolhouse near the National Mall into a history-laden hub for their giant trove of contemporary art.

The Download: The Georgian Revival–style building at 65 I Street, less than a mile away from the National Mall in Southwest Washington, D.C., has quite the backstory. It opened in 1906 as an elementary school serving the area’s primarily Black population and was repurposed two decades later as Randall Junior High School. Though it shut down in 1978, the building withstood the southwest redevelopment program that destroyed much of the neighborhood’s fabric in the decades prior. Since then, it has housed artist studios, spaces for arts educational programs, and even a men’s shelter. But years of neglect are giving way to its next chapter: an outpost for Mera and Donald Rubell’s enormous trove of contemporary art, which opened this past weekend to much fanfare.

The Rubell Museum D.C. arrives as an anomaly within the nation’s capital, a city rich in cultural institutions but not yet established as a center for contemporary art. But the Rubells are intent on moving the needle—their collection, which spans nearly 8,000 works, transforms the former schoolhouse into a world-class showpiece for today’s most celebrated artists. Mera aims for the setting to reveal art’s potential as a conduit for important discourse: “As a former teacher, I see artists and teachers playing parallel roles as educators and in fostering civic engagement,” she says. “With the preservation of this building, we honor the legacy of the Randall School’s many teachers, students, and parents.”

The mission is clear in the inaugural exhibition, “What’s Going On,” a tribute to the groundbreaking 1971 album by the late Motown legend Marvin Gaye, a Randall alum whose songs condemned the Vietnam War and social injustice. The show unites nearly 200 works by artists who, like Gaye, respond to pressing social and political issues. (Among them: Hank Willis Thomas, Tschabalala Self, Sylvia Snowden, Carrie Mae Weems, Kennedy Yanko, and Kehinde Wiley.) The show’s centerpiece is a pivotal series of 20 ink and gouache drawings that Keith Haring finished in one day while listening to Gaye on repeat and dedicated to Don’s brother, Studio 54 co-founder Steve, who succumbed to AIDS in 1989.

Converting the 32,000-square-foot structure into a museum with the help of architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle was no easy task. Though the original layout has been preserved, including the pine floors marked with footprints from desks, an entirely new HVAC system had to be installed in order to maintain appropriate conditions for high-value pieces. “It creates this kind of astonishing environment where the artists and the artwork on the walls become the teachers again,” Caitlin Berry, the museum’s newly appointed director, told the Washington Post. Ditto for the auditorium, where Gaye sang in the glee club and that will host ambitious large-scale installations and performances.

Seeing the project through turned out to be a 15-year endeavor that cost the family $22 million. Fortunately, they’re a patient bunch—amassing their prodigious collection took nearly half a century, and their endorsements helped gradually propel the careers of such blue-chip talents as Cindy Sherman and Elizabeth Peyton. The process is a familiar one for Rubells, who transformed a derelict warehouse in Miami’s once-overlooked Wynwood in 1993, the opening salvo of the area’s evolution into an art-rich district. When that space proved too small, they enlisted Annabelle Selldorf to design a sprawling new home for their growing collection in nearby Allapattah.

In Their Own Words: “The conversation that occurs in this city between culture and politics and international discourse is really unique to Washington,” Berry says. “If the museum opens its doors and [Capitol] Hill staffers walk through and something they see ignites something in them to think about policy differently, our job is done.”

Surface Says: If the Rubells were able to help turn the cultural backwater of Miami into an art mecca, we’re betting they can do the same for the fledgling art scene in our nation’s capital.

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As one of the defining artists of assemblage and contemporary printmaking, Betye Saar’s work has long interrogated and transformed racist portrayals of Black people in America. Debuting today is a new catalog that documents the artist’s extensive watercolor practice, and the inspiration she’s found in Black dolls as chronicled in “Black Doll Blues,” her 2021 exhibition at Roberts Projects.

“In the past, much of my work has explored racial injustice by reframing derogatory images of Black people. While some may view these dolls as derogatory representations of Black people, and I agree some of them are, I didn’t create these works in the same spirit of Empowering Aunt Jemima,” Saar said in reference to the relationship between “Black Doll Blues” and her seminal assemblage, which was a centerpiece in the Brooklyn Museum’s “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” exhibition in 2018. “These paintings purely depict the Black dolls in their purpose of providing love and comfort.” The catalog brings together Saar’s sketchbooks, watercolors, and photos of her own doll collection.

From its two-acre plot in the heart of Marrakech’s medina, El Fenn has garnered international adoration since first opening in 2004 thanks to its eccentric design, co-owner Vanessa Branson’s blue-chip art collection, and an intoxicating bohemian energy best experienced on the candle-lit rooftop terrace where sundown cocktails are served to a soundtrack of a DJ’s low-bpm beats and the call to prayer. The intimate nature of the property is part of its appeal, though nabbing a room during high season can prove challenging.

It may have just become a little easier. El Fenn is unveiling an expansion that connects the annex down the road to the original property. Architect Sylvain Ragueneau looked to the ancient royal palaces of Morocco for inspiration when designing the new riad, which hosts 10 additional idiosyncratic suites. True to form, local artisans decorated the interiors with hand-carved cedar wood ceilings and tadelakt walls in vibrant jewel tones using pure pigments from the medina. For anyone who has stayed at the hotel, the traditional open fireplaces, stained-glass windows, and vintage clawfoot tubs will feel familiar. In other words, it’s more El Fenn. What could be better than that?

Ever since Qatar won the bid for the 2022 FIFA World Cup back in 2010, the Middle Eastern country has been on a building tear. Qatar has been racing against the clock to realize zealous plans for new development that include eight state-of-the-art soccer stadiums designed by a roster of acclaimed architects, several high-profile cultural institutions, a 47-mile-long rail system, dozens of luxury hotels, an expansion to Hamad International Airport, and a star-studded public art program featuring Yayoi Kusama and Damien Hirst.

The latest artwork to be unveiled comes from Olafur Eliasson, the environmentally minded Danish-Icelandic artist who has long explored the interplay between human perception and the natural world. His installation, Shadows Traveling on the Sea of the Day (2022), gently disrupts the rugged desert north of Doha with 20 circular shelters arranged in a pentagram pattern. Each is supported by semicircular rings that, when viewed from the structures’ mirrored undersides, form a perfect circle and impart the illusion of staring down at the earth. “It’s an invitation to resync with the planet,” Eliasson says. “It’s a celebration of everything being in and moving through the desert—animals, plants, and human beings; stories, traditions, and cultural artifacts; wind, sunlight, air, and shimmering heat.”

When: Until Jan. 7

Where: Gemini G.E.L at Joni Moisant Weyl, New York

What: With “Dialogues Across Time,” curator Susan Dackerman examines the connections between the work of printmakers living hundreds of years apart. The exhibition pairs the works of contemporary artists like Richard Serra and Roy Lichtenstein alongside Old Masters like Rembrandt Van Rijn and Albrecht Dürer. The show also coincides with the opening of the studioMDA-designed Print Center New York, which shares a building with the gallery.

Exuberant colors and daring forms have long defined the furniture of Moroso, so when creative director Patrizia Moroso was eyeing an expansion of the Italian design mainstay’s presence in New York to celebrate its 70th anniversary, she envisioned an all-encompassing showroom that would give its growing repertoire of finely crafted furnishings ample room to thrive. Spearheading the redesign was none other than Patricia Urquiola, the Spanish-born architect whose relationship with Moroso spans 25 years and includes such memorable launches as the Scandinavian-inspired Lilo armchair and plush Redondo sofa.

True to Moroso’s vision, Urquiola devised a stripped-back interior that serves as a supportive backdrop. Visitors enter a large double-height space enveloped entirely in warm terracotta and wood tones before snaking through a pathway of galleries, where artful vignettes convey Moroso’s lifestyle-driven approach. Currently on display are nature-inspired collections by Swedish designers Sofia Lagerkvist and Anna Lindgren of Front, a mezzanine display of the brand’s ongoing collaboration with Diesel Living, and Square tables and armchairs by Jonathan Olivares. Expect the offerings to change periodically, especially in the newly appointed “Gallery of Wonders” that presents works of collectible design.

Founded to reconnect consumers to value, Laurea handcrafts pure 24-karat gold into beautiful wearable form. Designed and crafted by a highly skilled team of artisans in both Palm Beach, Florida, and Veneto, Italy, Laurea connects old-world crafting techniques with modern investing. Sold by weight and at prices linked to the current price of gold, Laurea jewelry lives digitally in online client portfolios, allowing customers to track the value of their investment pieces in real-time and the ability to sell back their jewelry at any time for its current gold value.

Surface Says: Laurea brings a rare mindset to the world of high-end jewelry in that each piece is treated as an asset whose value can be tracked in a digital portfolio. More than a beautiful bauble, every purchase can be sold back or traded up.

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