Cyma Rubin Papers 1942-present

The majority of materials in this collection are in English, but some correspondence is in French or Spanish.

Cyma Rubin is an award-winning director, producer, writer and curator. She is currently the president of Business of Entertainment Inc., in New York. Rubin graduated from North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering (later North Carolina State University) with a degree in textile management in 1947.

Born Cyma Saltzman in Brooklyn, New York, Rubin grew up in South Carolina after her father's shirt factory moved south. Rubin attended North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering (later North Carolina State University) in 1944, when women were still in the minority, and was a cheerleader and the business manager for the school's yearbook, the Agromeck. She was a member of Sigma Tau Sigma. According to an interview she gave to NC State, the University's alumni magazine, in 1997, Rubin majored in textile management at the request of her father, who wanted her to take over the family business when she graduated. Rubin, however, moved back to New York to study at The New York School of Interior Design. She married Dr. Martin Ackerman, a New York ophthalmologist, with whom she had one daughter, Loni. She also founded her own interior and industrial design company, Cyma Ackerman, Inc.

Rubin and Ackerman later divorced, and Rubin married Samuel Rubin, founder of the major cosmetics firm, Faberge Perfumes. The two were highly active in civic events in New York and dedicated to fund-raising for arts and cultural programs. Along with conductor Leopold Stokowski, the Rubins founded the American Symphony Orchestra in 1962 and hosted the orchestra's opening season party for several years afterward. Cyma Rubin also served on the board of the New York Shakespeare Festival, was the chair of the United Nations Hospitality Committee, and was a member of the American Film Institute. She was and still is a member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and other organizations.

In 1969, Rubin founded Pyxidium, Ltd., a theatrical production company. In 1971, she produced the hit Broadway musical revival, No, No, Nanette!, which had six nominations and won four Tony Awards. In 1972, she produced the film, Greaser's Palace, written and directed by Robert Downey, Sr. A parable of the life of Jesus Christ set in the American West, the film won a London Film Festival Award. In 1975, Rubin returned to Broadway with her original musical, Doctor Jazz. Although the show had a short run, it was nominated for three Tonys. In 1978, Rubin produced a third musical, Oh, Kay! at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Her last musical, Mike, a tribute to the theater and film producer Mike Todd, opened in Philadelphia in 1988.

Since the 1980s, Rubin has produced movies for Warner Brothers and CBS, A Few Days in Weasel Creek and Welcome Home Bobby; multimedia shows for Pepsi-Cola, America Dances and The Shape of Things to Come; Porgy and Bess for the Houston Grand Opera; and the documentaries, The Making of Porgy and Bess and The Joseph Pulitzer Story for Japanese television. She was the cultural producer for Nippon TV International for nine years. In 1991, she founded the Business of Entertainment Inc. (BEI), which produces live theater, films, documentaries, and photography exhibitions; she continues to serve as BEI's president. In 1998, she produced and curated the first Pulitzer Prize photography exhibition, which opened in Tokyo. In 1999, Rubin produced and directed the television special, Moment of Impact: Stories of the Pulitzer Prize Photographs for Turner Network Television, which won the Emmy and Telly Awards for best documentary. Capture the Moment, a traveling exhibition of Pulitzer Prize photographs, opened in New York in 2000. It traveled across the United States, Korea, and Taiwan for 15 years and was seen by over 3 million people. She curated, wrote and edited the book, Capture the Moment: the Pulitzer Prize Photographs. In 2007, Rubin curated, edited, and produced a new exhibition and book, The American Soldier: A Photographic Tribute from the Civil War to the War in Iraq, which is shown at Presidential Libraries, museums and universities throughout the United States. In 2015, Rubin curated and produced The Forgotten War: Korea, 1950, a photographic exhibition of the Korean War. It opened in Korea in 2014 and was visited by 250,000 people. It will soon be seen in the United States.

Along with her current exhibition work, Rubin continues to support cultural programs and the arts. She is a member of The National Academy of Arts and Science, the Overseas Press Club, and the National Press Photographers Association; is the founder and sponsor of The Cyma Rubin Women in Science Lectureship at Weill Cornell Medical College, the sponsor of the Overseas Press Club annual Feature Photography Award and the sponsor of the Cyma Rubin Photography Fund at the North Carolina Museum of Art; and a trustee at the North Carolina Society of New York. Rubin has also served as president of the Friends of the Library Board of Directors at North Carolina State University and has been particularly supportive of the NC State University Libraries Fellows Program. She is a member of the scholastic honor society of Phi Kappa Phi. She received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from North Carolina State University, as well as a Distinguished Alumni Award, in 2003.

The Cyma Rubin Papers, 1942-2016, document many of the projects Rubin has produced during her career, including interior design work; hosting events for the United Nations and for the American Symphony Orchestra; producing Broadway shows, movies, multimedia productions, television shows, and cultural productions for Nippon TV; and curating photographic exhibits and books. Included are correspondence, legal documents, photographs, programs, press releases, press clippings, scripts, promotional merchandise, research material, audiovisual material, and costumes related to theatrical and film productions and other projects.

While materials in this collection are grouped together by type of project, Rubin sometimes worked on more than one endeavor in the same year. The following timeline shows when Rubin was most involved in the projects represented in this collection.

This collection is organized into series:

• 1. Theatrical Production Files, 1970-1992, 2004
• 2. Film Production Files, 1969-2000
• 3. Japanese and American Cultural Production Files, 1988-1998
• 4. United Nations and American Symphony Orchestra Papers, 1961-1970
• 5. Educational Production Files, 1979-1981
• 6. Correspondence and Other Project Files, 1950s-2000s
• 7. Pulitzer Prize Photographs, 1942-2016
• 8. The American Soldier, 1975-2009

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The University Archives operates in accordance with the State Public Records Act, with unrestricted access to records not covered by state and federal statutes and regulations.

[Identification of item], Cyma Rubin Papers, MC 00543, Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, NC

Cyma Rubin papers, JPB 12-04. Music Division, The New York Public Library.

Costumes, objects 2000.017.0001 through 2000.017.0031, Kent State University Museum.

North Carolina State University, Libraries, Assistant Director for Capital Management and External Relations Records, UA 012.070, Special Collections Research Center, NC State University Libraries, Raleigh, NC.

Gift of Cyma Rubin, January 2015 (Accession 2015.0011); June 2015 (Accession 2015.0140); July 2015 (Accession 2015.0157; Accession 2015.0159 and 2015.0161); August 2015 (Accession 2015.0184, 2015.0185 and 2015.0198); December 2015 (Accession 2015.0298); June 2017 (Accession 2017.0163; Accession 2017.0177 and 2017.0188); July 2017 (Accession 2017.0206); and August 2017 (Accession 2017.0241).

Processed by Rose Buchanan, 2015 May; additions processed by Susan C. Rodriguez, 2016 April; additions processed by Phillip MacDonald, 2021 June; Collection guide updated to include addition of born-digital material by Alexander Daniels, 2023 October; addition processed by Katelyn Cuomo, 2023 February; Unprocessed Materials series processed by Noah Anderson, 2024 August; Digital materials processed by Kate Phillips, 2024 November.

File count of digital media may exclude system files; hidden, deleted, or excluded files; and duplicate files.