MIAMI, FLA.- Designed by legendary architect Igor Polevitsky in the 1930s, this historic hotel was originally created to look like a glamorous ocean liner. Scott Sanders intended to bring back that glamour and the intimate socializing on ships. His interpretation is about reinventing the luxury of ocean travel for a new generation of travelers who never leave port. He has accentuated this fantasy with deep blues, bright whites, sunny oranges, mystical greys, and calming sands throughout the building. In addition, every room has nautical flag paintings that have been commissioned from Sabrina Baron. There are 500 flags in total, some of which will be for sale in the hotel gift shop. Sanders previously collaborated with the Rubells on the Beach House Bal Harbour Hotel.

Starting Monday, November 30, 2015, there is an exhibition of 85 paintings by Purvis Young that inaugurates the lobby as a rotating exhibition space. All of the artworks, previously never shown, are from the Rubells’ permanent collection. To celebrate this occasion, the hotel’s Repour Bar will have a complimentary Purvis Young Daiquiri, sponsored by Flor de Caña rum and American Juice Co., for the week of Art Basel Miami Beach (November 30 to December 6).

The Rubells first met Young in 1995. They saw his work in the home of the Antoni family in Miami. They were fascinated by the rawness and originality of the subject matter. To their delight, they discovered that his studio was a few blocks away from their newly opened museum in Wynwood and decided to visit him. Young had a 5,000-square-foot space that was occupied from floor to ceiling by thousands of works. He had to paint near the door because he had painted himself out of his studio. Although many of Young’s pieces had been collected over the years and presented in exhibitions and museums, the Rubells had a unique experience to see the thirty-year output of a single artist who worked incessantly and nonstop. Young was also someone whose public art had always been respected and cherished by his community in the neighborhood of Overtown.

On the day of the Rubells’ visit, unbeknownst to them, Young was dealing with an eviction notice from his landlord to leave the premises broom-clean or his work would be confiscated. Both the Rubells and Young felt it was fate that brought them together at that moment, and Young told them that he had had a premonition someone would be there to help. Within the next few days, the Rubells committed to acquiring his entire studio. They inventoried every piece with him, listening to his stories. The Rubells felt like they were dealing with a major talent and icon, and that they were learning the history of Miami, especially Overtown, through this artist’s memories, including of the extreme poverty he grew up with and his experience in jail as a young person.

It was in jail that Young found his calling as an artist. Thereafter, Barbara Young, (no relation) head of the Miami-Dade Public Library downtown, took an interest in his frequent visits to the library and became a scholarly mentor to him. He became familiar with the art and lives of famous artists, especially Leonardo da Vinci and Van Gogh, which informed his own work.

Through a monthly payment schedule over many years, they acquired thousands of works. Subsequently, they have donated pieces to over twenty museums around the country, including the Bass Museum of Art, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and the Perez Art Museum of Miami, with the stipulation that the institutions had to show the work. In 2008, the Rubells donated 109 works by Young to be permanently installed in the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Many of Young’s works were included in the Rubell Family Collection’s traveling exhibition 30 Americans, which has been seen by over one million people to date, including President Obama and the First Family.