The Gerald and Stanlee Rubin Center for the Visual Arts will be having a series of events to start off the New Year to celebrate their 10th anniversary. The goal is to increase their audience size and engagement to educate students about national and international art.

Kerry Doyle, director of the Rubin Center, said she hopes to double the involvement this year.

“We hope our new membership program helps in increasing our audience and encourages more people to come see great contemporary art and shows,” Doyle said.

The membership program will open in March to all students and community members.

“The membership is free and it’s an open program, so once it’s opened students have the liberty to join whenever,” Doyle said.

The membership is intended to provide students with access to galleries, exhibitions, public programs and family days. Members will be able to check out the Rubin Center’s projects throughout the year for free.

One of the projects scheduled to take place this year is “The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project,” created by  Los Angeles Nomadic Division.

The objective of “The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project,” is to have artistic billboards along I-10 from Florida all the way to California. This year, the billboards will be put up in El Paso and Las Cruces.

“If you were to drive from Clint to Las Cruces, you’d see 20 different artistic billboards,” Doyle said.

Ten of those billboards will be in El Paso and the other half in Las Cruces. They will all feature work by artist Jeremy Shaw.

The project will consist of around 100 billboards in total, going west from Florida to California. Ten artists will create and illustrate chapters of the history of territorial expansion.

The project is co-curated by Zoe Crosher and Shamim M. Momin. Billboards will be put up during spring of this year.

“We had artists from LA and Berlin come down to give the community a presentation and then had a gathering at Rosa’s,” Doyle said.

The second event is “Citizen Culture: Artists and Architects Shape Policy” exhibit. This event will be handled by the Santa Monica Museum of Art, held by Lucia Sanroman.

The exhibition will feature work by artists who hope to have a real impact on social and political policies. Art will be contributed from artists Suzanne Lacy, Tania Brugera and Teddy Cruz. The event will take place Feb. 5, from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

“It’s great because there are seven different artists whose goals are to connect issues and help their audience become more politically aware about issues such as prisons, race and troubled youth,” Doyle said. “We have a number of different talks scheduled as well.”

The opening reception for the CUADRO project archives will also be on Feb. 5. This exhibition will include photos, videos, documents and ephemera from the project. The CUADRO project was a three-month long project in Downtown El Paso that featured local artists.

“The CUADRO exhibition will take place downstairs on the second floor, and we hope to showcase photos and publications from the project we had Downtown,” Doyle said. “We had work from local artists and artists from LA as well, so it was pretty neat.”

The first week of May, The Rubin Center will open a gallery featuring work done by UTEP students.

“We usually open up a week at the gallery just for UTEP students. We don’t have designated curators yet, but we hope to get one faculty member from the graphic design department and another from fine arts,” Doyle said.

The Rubin Center is also working to make their space more relaxing and welcoming for its guests.

“I’d love to create a space that is more welcoming and has more than just these benches to sit on, something a little more appealing to students,” Doyle said.

Doyle said she is excited to continue  bringing contemporary art to El Paso and have more impact on students’ lives.

The Rubin Center is open Tuesdays through Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturdays from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call the Rubin Center at 747-6151.

Julia Hettiger may be reached at [email protected].