Patient US collectors display their prizes in contemporary Chinese arts

When the prodigious Miami collectors Don and Mera Rubell first visited China, in 2001, they found the artists they met fascinating, but they were frankly unimpressed by the art itself. "It was our most intense trip with the least amount of art," Don Rubell says. "Many of the artists seemed to be making work for export."

Seven years later, the pair returned to a new landscape: a vibrant art world filled with men and women making work that was relevant to social issues and mostly free of the clichés that had characterised contemporary Chinese art in the past.

What they saw inspired the Rubells to spend the next five years seeking out artists in Beijing, Shanghai and other mainland cities. And during the recent Art Basel Miami Beach, the Rubells, best known for supporting the works of young American artists, unveiled "28 Chinese", a new exhibition at their museum in Miami that displays for the first time their acquisitions from six trips to China. It runs through to August.

Mera Rubell, 70, equates finding artists such as He Xiangyu, who paints with boiled-down Coca-Cola, and Chen Wei, who photographs surrealistic scenes, to first encountering the now in-demand Californian artists Aaron Curry and Thomas Houseago.

Don Rubell, 73, a retired gynaecologist who now devotes most of his time to his boutique hotel business, says that after visiting He's and Chen's studios and those of dozens of other artists, "we realised we were seeing something different that blew us away".

The exhibition at the 45,000-sq ft Rubell Family Collection and Contemporary Arts Foundation, in the Wynwood Art District of Miami, features the work of 28 Chinese artists, each given a separate gallery.