At Art Basel Miami Beach next week, Robert Rubin will be looking for some friends –– specifically, ones with an interest in modern art, a love of Paris, and, not least, substantial assets — who want to become supporters of the Centre Georges Pompidou, the iconic, Renzo Piano-designed museum of modern and contemporary art in Paris.

The Georges Pompidou Art & Culture Foundation, of which Mr. Rubin was named president earlier this year, is a group of American friends whose central purpose is to raise money to acquire American art for the Pompidou, as well as to generate gifts of art from among its ranks. The foundation was started in 1977 by the collector Dominique de Menil but became dormant after her death in 1998. It was revived in 2005 under the executive directorship of a former investment banker, Scott Stover, who runs the foundation out of offices in Los Angeles.

As the group’s new figurehead and New York presence, Mr. Rubin, a former commodities trader who is a doctoral candidate in the history of architecture at Columbia University, cannot be matched for enthusiasm for the Pompidou’s collection and its curators’ acumen. “Other than MoMA, there isn’t a museum around with the depth and breadth of modern art,” he said in a recent interview at the Lotos Club. And in Mr. Rubin’s own area of interest –– architecture and design –– he said, “of all the museums around, the Pompidou does the best job of paradigm-shifting shows.” He added, “They’re not afraid to do exhibits that they think are important, even if they’re ‘difficult'” –– meaning they won’t be popular.

Mr. Rubin wants to increase membership in the foundation, which is national, from approximately 30 couples to closer to 50. To that end, he and Mr. Stover have organized an exhibition to coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach. Called “French Modern Sources,” the exhibition, which opens in Miami next Friday, is a selection of around 50 objects from the Pompidou’s design collection, centered on a diverse movement from the 1930s called the Union of Modern Artists, which included Le Corbusier, Pierre Chareau, and Jean Prouvé.

“I’m looking at ways to raise the profile of the Pompidou here, and I thought Art Basel Miami was the place to find, in a small number of days, a large number of bodies who would be interesting in participating in a group like ours,”Mr. Rubin said. (An exhibit of works from the Pompidou’s New Media collection will be on view simultaneously at the Miami Art Center.)

Mr. Rubin made the first major gift to the Foundation: the so-called Tropical House, designed by Jean Prouvé. The Tropical House is a prototype for a prefabricated steel-and-aluminum house that could be shipped in parts to France’s colonies. It was not successful, partly, Mr. Rubin argues, because Prouvé’s modernist design did not appeal to the expatriate bureaucrats for whom it was intended. Mr. Rubin’s house, which was originally sent to Brazzaville, Congo, in 1951, was one of three prototypes. The other two, in the intervening years, were disassembled and are now stored as parts in a warehouse in Paris. Mr. Rubin’s suffered corrosion and acquired a few bullet holes in the Congo Republic’s civil war. Mr. Rubin started investigating the house in the late 1990s and eventually purchased it and had it shipped to France for restoration. It has been exhibited at Yale and at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. It is on long-term loan to the Pompidou Center, where it will go on exhibit in January.

Although Mr. Rubin’s own passion is for architecture and design, he and Mr. Stover want to recruit people with diverse artistic interests. One board member, Anthony Ganz, is a significant collector of drawings. The board’s executive secretary, Deborah Irmas, is a photography curator.

Mr. Rubin thinks that the seriousness of the group, as well as its intimacy and, at least at this stage, informality, will appeal to potential members. “It’s not a fully cooked infrastructure yet,” he said. (If Mr. Rubin’s personal style is any indication, the group will remain relatively informal. A thin man with slightly unruly gray hair, he wore a tie with his rumpled suit to conform to the Lotos Club rules, but he also wore sneakers.)

Mr. Rubin wants to keep the group small to allow for intimate gatherings. For example, when the group meets in Paris in June to see the Tropical House, he and his wife will have the members to dinner at their Paris home, which happens to be another architectural gem: Chareau’s Maison de Verre. “We’re looking for people who are interested in learning,” Mr. Rubin said. “We’re not looking to create a party environment.”

Mr. Rubin described the Pompidou as being less corporate and less focused on blockbuster exhibitions than its American counterparts. For example, he said, when the museum began planning for a show called “Los Angeles 1955–1985,” which opened this April, it wanted to highlight an L.A. architect. Where another museum might have chosen a big international name like Frank Gehry, the Pompidou curators chose the L.A. firm Morphosis, run by the architect Thom Mayne. “This was before he won the Pritzker” –– the Pritzker Architecture Prize, which Mr. Mayne won in 2005 –– “so it showed a certain amount of foresight,” Mr. Rubin said. “A museum that was strictly focused on selling tickets would have gone with the tried-and-true.” (As one example of its activities, the foundation financed the printing of the English translation of the catalog for the “Los Angeles” show.)

Still, Mr. Rubin thinks that French and American institutions can learn from one another. European cultural institutions, since they are primarily state-funded, don’t have as much experience stimulating private philanthropy (although there is a French “Friends of the Museum” group, which has supported some acquisitions). The Pompidou’s annual acquisitions budget –– 4.2 million Euros, or approximately $5.5 million a year –– is hardly adequate for making significant acquisitions, particularly in the current art market. By contrast, MoMA spent $42 million on acquisitions in fiscal 2004 and $17 million in 2005.

“In some ways, I view this Pompidou project as a quest for a ‘third way,'” Mr. Rubin said. “American museums have become way too corporate for my taste, and that corporateness has affected curatorial initiatives adversely. And, on the other hand, the Pompidou, which is an example of a world-class museum that is not corporate in its programming, could use a boost of energy –– an injection of American creativity.”

Mr. Rubin will be hanging around Miami next weekend, looking for other philanthropists with a similar vision. With the lure of trips to Paris and access to the staff of a venerated museum, no doubt he’ll find some takers.