Shelley FROST Rubin

Shelley Frost Rubin is a philanthropist and cultural leader who is recognized for her initiatives to expand public access to the arts and, through meaningful interactions with art, foster understanding between people in New York and throughout the world. Believing that art has the potential to change the status quo, she and her husband Donald established the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation in 1995 to provide opportunities for creative engagement with issues that affect all members of society, particularly underserved communities. In order to further this goal, the Foundation promotes art, education, and social well being, as well as partnerships between the public and private sectors and among cultural organizations and advocates of social justice. In 2010, the Rubins established The 8th Floor, a nonprofit exhibition and event space that explores art’s role as an instrument for social change in the 21st century. The following year, Shelley founded A Blade of Grass, the first grant-making nonprofit solely dedicated to nurturing socially engaged art.

The Foundation has incubated innovative projects such as Himalayan Art Resources, Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center, The Treasury of Lives, LaborArts, Music and Memory, and most recently Art and Social Justice, an initiative which aims at broadening artistic and cultural access in New York City in order to promote more cohesive and resilient communities, and greater participation in civic life. In 2004, the Rubins founded the Rubin Museum of Art, a public, nonprofit institution in New York City, to share and exhibit their collection of art from Tibet and Himalayan Asia. Shelley is a Trustee Emeritus of Human Rights Watch and the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center, an Honorary Board member of The Interfaith Center of New York, and a Life Trustee of WNET.

BASHA RUBIN

Basha Rubin is the CEO of Priori, the legal marketplace changing the way in-house teams find, hire, and manage outside counsel using data and technology. She writes and speaks extensively on how technology is changing and will change the marketplace for legal services. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Techcrunch, Entrepreneur, and Corporate Counsel, and she has spoken at ABA Techshow, Women in Legal Technology Conference, Clio Cloud Conference, SXSW, Reinvent Law, SOLID Conference, and Legal Geek. Basha has been named an ABA Journal Legal Rebel, Financial Times Top 10 Legal Business Technologist, and LTRC Woman of LegalTech, and is part of Baylor Law School's "The Braintrust." She holds a JD and BA from Yale University and is a member of the New York Bar. She also sits on the board of the Rubin Museum of Art.

Thomas P Mitchell

Thomas P Mitchell is President of RubinFrost LLC, a NY family office. Tom provides strategic vision and leadership across the financial, investment, fiduciary, philanthropic and administrative interests of the first-generation Principals and their descendants. He has decades of experience in the wealth management services industry, specializing in the administration of personal financial services for trusts, estates, and high net worth individuals and families.

Prior to joining RubinFrost in 2020, Tom served as Administrative Vice President, Managing Director and Senior Fiduciary Advisor/ Team Leader at Wilmington Trust, N.A. for 15 years. Prior to Wilmington Trust, Tom served as senior vice president for UBS, where he chartered the UBS Trust Company, N.A., and managed its US operations.  Previously, he was with Republic National Bank, N.A. as a Vice President and Senior Trust Officer responsible for the management of the trust administration staff as well as the Bank’s 401(k), Pension, and Deferred Compensation plans for key executives.  Earlier in his career, he was with Rockefeller Trust Company where he established the Delaware chartered trust company, served as the chief operating officer, and managed accounts for high net worth families.

Tom holds a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in Finance from St. John’s University. He is a Board Director for National Advisors Holdings, the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and 17W17th Street Enterprises, Inc. Tom is also a current member of the Committee of Banking Institution on Taxation, and has served as an instructor at New York State Bankers Association Trust School for fiduciary income tax.

Anjuli Nanda Diamond

Anjuli Nanda Diamond is Executive Director of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, organizing exhibitions relating to the Foundation’s mission of art & social justice. At The 8th Floor these shows include Reality Reframed: Recent Works by Todd Gray (2024), Bang Geul Han: Land of Tenderness (2023), Articulating Activism (2022), Kindred Solidarities: Queer Kinship and Chosen Families (2021), To Cast Too Bold A Shadow (2020), Revolution from Without… (2019), Sedimentations: Assemblage as Social Repair (2018), and The Supper Club (2017). She has also coordinated numerous exhibitions drawn from the Rubin’s extensive private collection of Contemporary Cuban art, including Unconscious Thoughts Animate the World at the Lowe Art Museum, Miami (2017); Gestures of Faith in Contemporary Cuban Art at the Rubin Museum, New York (2016); and Citizens of the World: Cuba in Queens at the Queens Museum, New York (2014). She received her Bachelor of Arts from the George Washington University and a Master’s in Art Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art, where her thesis examined the production and distribution of contemporary art from regions of political turmoil, with case studies on Cuba, Iran, and Lebanon. She edited the Foundation’s recent publication An Incomplete Archive of Activist Art, and was co-editor of the 2019 publication Elia Alba: The Supper Club.

George Bolster

George Bolster is currently Curator at the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. From 2014 to 2020 he served as part of the Foundation’s curatorial team, and was Director of Programs and External Affairs. Recent exhibitions he co-organized at The 8th Floor include Reality Reframed: Recent Works by Todd Gray (2024), Bang Geul Han: Land of Tenderness (2023), Articulating Activism: Works from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Private Collection (2022), Kindred Solidarities: Queer Community and Chosen Families (2021), and To Cast Too Bold A Shadow (2021). Previously, he worked at the Reversible Destiny Foundation as editor on Madeline Gins’ final book, and worked on her final architectural project, commissioned by Comme des Garçons at Dover St. Market, NYC. Bolster worked as an archivist on Shusaku Arakawa’s estate, and before that on those of artists Ray Johnson and May Wilson. He has curated numerous independent projects, including Tulca in Galway, Ireland; Urban Gothic at Dilston Grove, London, UK; Quartair Contemporary Art Initiatives, the Hague, Netherlands; and Multiplicity at Fota House, Cork, Ireland; Market Gallery, Monaghan, Ireland; and Context Gallery, Derry, Northern Ireland. In addition to working on numerous exhibitions, he co-edited the publications Elia Alba: The Supper Club (2019) and An Incomplete Archive of Activist Art (2022), both published by Hirmer Verlag. In 2021 Bolster contributed an essay on Allan Kaprow to the book XVIII – Stories of TULCA (2021).

Charles de Agustin

Charles de Agustin is the Programs and Engagement Manager at the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation and its gallery space, The 8th Floor. He leads the Sight/Geist series for local emerging film and performance artists, which in 2023 included solo performances by Li-Ming Hu, Zain Alam, and GOODW.Y.N. alongside three group film screenings. Charles supports the curatorial team on exhibition logistics and related programs, as well as managing Foundation communications and liaising with a range of external partners. Before joining the Foundation, he earned a BFA in filmmaking/philosophy from Rutgers University and an MFA in studio art from the University of Oxford. Charles’ work as an artist is shown internationally, also having taught at various universities.

Susan Szalai

Susan Szalai is the Grants and Operations Manager of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. In her role she coordinates the Foundation's administrative and operational functions, responsible mainly for the Art and Social Justice grants management and maintaining the Foundation's database. She also serves as an administrative liaison between applicants, reviewers, as well as accounting staff and the Foundation. Her ongoing responsibilities also include office management and being the primary point of contact for Foundation related inquiries. Prior to joining the Foundation, she worked at The Morgan Library & Museum, Department of Collection Information Systems as a Cataloging Assistant from 2005-2010, where her focus was record maintenance in the CORSAIR database, The Morgan Library's online public catalog. She holds an MA in Latin and Hungarian Language and Literature as well as in Library and Information Science.