''The Brooklyn Rail'' is a publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics. The ''Rail'' is based out of

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, critics, and curators, and reviews of art, music, dance, film, books, and theater. The ''Rail's'' print publication is published ten times a year and distributed to universities, galleries, museums, bookstores, and other organizations around the world free of charge. The ''Rail'' operates a small press called Rail Editions, which publishes literary translations, poetry, and art criticism. In addition to the small press, the ''Rail'' has also organized panel discussions, readings, film screenings, music and dance performances, and has curated exhibitions through a program called Rail Curatorial Projects. Notable among these exhibitions is "Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy: Mare Nostrum" co-curated by Francesca Pietropaolo and Phong Bui, an official Collateral Event of the 2019 Venice Biennale, which ran at Chiesa delle Penitenti, Venice from May to November 2019.

Mission

The ''Brooklyn'' ''Rail'' is committed to supporting artists in their journey and elevating the important role that the arts and humanities play in shaping our society.

History

Originally distributed as reading material for commuters on the L-train between Manhattan and Brooklyn, the ''Brooklyn Rail'' began as a small broadsheet with opinions printed in four columns in 1998. The founding editors included: Joe Maggio, Christian Viveros-Fauné, Theodore Hamm, and Patrick Walsh. The group first began publishing the paper as a weekly double-sided sheet. Smith designed the Rail's logo. By 2000, the journal had quickly grown into a full-format publication, with

Phong Bui Phong H. Bui (born September 17, 1964, in Huế, Vietnam) is an artist, writer, independent curator, and Co-Founder and Artistic Director of ''The Brooklyn Rail,'' a free monthly arts, culture, and politics journal. Bui was named one of the "100 ...

and then-editor Theodore Hamm sharing oversight duties. Bui comments that it's largely due to support from the arts community, and funding from art foundations, that has made it possible for the journal to maintain its creative autonomy. Hamm notes that the ''Rail's'' non-profit funding, largely provided by private donors, has preserved the magazine's original aspiration to publish "a crucible of slanted opinions, artfully delivered." Editors have included Williams Cole, Christian Parenti, Heather Rogers, Daniel Baird, Emily DeVoti, Alan Lockwood, Ellen Pearlman, Donald Breckenridge, Monica de la Torre, and many more. As of 2017, the ''Rail'' has interviewed over four hundred artists. A compilation of artist interviews, called ''Tell Me Something Good: Artist Interviews from The Brooklyn Rail,'' was published in 2017. Interviews include

Richard Serra Richard Serra (born November 2, 1938) is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, Urban area, urban, and Architecture, architectural settings. Serra's sculptures are notable for their material q ...

and

Brice Marden Brice Marden (born October 15, 1938) is an American artist generally described as Minimalist, although his work may be hard to categorize. He lives and works in New York City; Tivoli, New York; Hydra (island), Hydra, Greece; and Eagles Mere, Penn ...

Alex Da Corte Alex Da Corte (born 1980) is an American conceptual artist who works in painting, sculpture, installation, and video. Da Corte often uses surreal imagery and everyday objects in his practice and explores ideas of consumerism, pop culture, mytholo ...

and

House of Ladosha House of Ladosha is a New York City-based artistic collective and LGBT rap duo including Antonio Blair ("Dosha Devastation aka La Fem LaDosha") and Adam Radakovich ("Cunty Crawford"). Other members include Neon Christina Ladosha (Christopher Udeme ...

. The book was coedited by Jarrett Earnest and Lucas Zwirner and published through David Zwirner Books The collection includes an introduction by Phong Bui and a selection of hand-drawn portraits he has made of those he has interviewed over the years.

Notable contributors

Paul Auster Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American writer and film director. His notable works include ''The New York Trilogy'' (1987), '' Moon Palace'' (1989), ''The Music of Chance'' (1990), '' The Book of Illusions'' (2002), '' The B ...

John Ashbery John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic. Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...

Dore Ashton Dore Ashton (May 21, 1928 – January 30, 2017) was a writer, professor and critic on modern and contemporary art. Biography Ashton was born in Newark, New Jersey on May 21, 1928. She was the author or editor of more than thirty books on art, in ...

* Olivier Berggruen * Bill Berkson * Charles Bernstein *

Anselm Berrigan Anselm Berrigan (born 1972) is an American poet and teacher. Life and work Anselm Berrigan grew up in New York City, where he currently resides with his wife, poet Karen Weiser. From 2003 to 2007, he served as artistic director at the St. Mar ...

* Mei-mei Berssenbrugge * Carlos Brillembourg * Mahogany L. Browne *

David Carrier David Carrier (; born 1944) is an American philosopher of art and cultural critic. Education Carrier received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University, where he was a student of Arthur Danto, in 1972. He was a Getty Scholar (1999–2000), ...

* Dan Cameron *

Mary Ann Caws Mary Ann Caws (born 1933) is an American author, translator, art historian and literary critic. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita in Comparative Literature, English, and French at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, and o ...

Neeli Cherkovski Neeli Cherkovski (born Nelson Cherry; July 1, 1945) is an American poet and memoirist, who has resided since 1975 in San Francisco. Biography Born in Santa Monica, California, Cherkovski grew up in San Bernardino, California. In the 1970s he wa ...

Norma Cole Norma Cole (born May 12, 1945) is a Canadian poet, visual artist, translator, and curator. An Anglophone Canadian by birth, Cole learned French at an early age, and went on to translate the works of French poets Emmanuel Hocquard, Danielle Coll ...

* DJ Spooky *

Brian O'Doherty Brian O'Doherty (4 May 1928 – 7 November 2022) was an Irish-American art critic, writer, visual artist, and academic. He lived in New York City for over 50 years, serving as an art critic for ''The New York Times'' and NBC, as well as an edit ...

* John Elderfield * Thyrza Nichols Goodeve * Bob Holman * Joan Kee * Donald Kuspit * Ann Lauterbach *

Ralph Lemon Ralph Lemon (born August 1, 1952 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an American choreographer, company director, writer, visual artist and a conceptualist. Raised in a religious environment, he developed his artistic creativity as a child.Diana Stockon, � ...

Jonathan Lethem Jonathan Allen Lethem (; born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, '' Gun, with Occasional Music'', a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was publi ...

* Lucy Lippard * Barbara London *

Paul Mattick Jr. Paul Mattick Jr. (born 1944) is the son of German emigres Paul Mattick Sr. (1904-1981) and Ilse (Hamm) Mattick (1919-2009). He was involved in the council communist group ''Root and Branch'', which sporadically published a magazine/pamphlet seri ...

* Ann McCoy *

Jonas Mekas Jonas Mekas (; December 24, 1922 – January 23, 2019) was a Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, and artist who has been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema". Mekas' work has been exhibited in museums and at festivals worldwi ...

* W. J. T. Mitchell *

Robert C. Morgan Robert C. Morgan (born 1943) is an American art critic, art historian, curator, poet, and artist. Biography Robert C. Morgan received his M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1975 and his Ph.D. in art education ...

Eileen Myles Eileen Myles (born December 9, 1949) is a LAMBDA Literary Award-winning American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. No ...

* Marjorie Perloff * Harry Philbrick * Francesca Pietropaolo *

Robert Pincus-Witten Robert Pincus-Witten (April 5, 1935 – January 28, 2018) was an American art critic, curator and art historian. Biography Born in New York City, Pincus-Witten earned his undergraduate degree at The Cooper Union, in New York City in 1956. He wrote ...

Joachim Pissarro Joachim Pissarro (born 1959) is an art historian, theoretician, curator, educator, and director of the Hunter College Galleries and Bershad Professor of Art History at Hunter College of the City University of New York. Since 2002, Pissarro has ser ...

* Nancy Princenthal * Kristin Prevallet *

Carter Ratcliff Carter Ratcliff (born 1941 in Seattle, Washington) is an American art critic, writer and poet. His books on art include "John Singer Sargent" (Abbeville Press, 1982); "Robert Longo" ( Rizzoli, 1985); "The Fate of a Gesture: Jackson Pollock and Post ...

* Maura Reilly *

Barbara Rose Barbara Ellen Rose (June 11, 1936December 25, 2020) was an American art historian, art critic, curator and college professor. Rose's criticism focused on 20th-century American art, particularly minimalism and abstract expressionism, as well as S ...

Irving Sandler Irving Sandler (July 22, 1925 – June 2, 2018) was an American art critic, art historian, and educator. He provided numerous first hand accounts of American art, beginning with abstract expressionism in the 1950s. He also managed the Tanager Gal ...

* Barry Schwabsky * David Shapiro * Lowery Stokes Sims *

Pamela Sneed use both this parameter and , birth_date to display the person's date of birth, date of death, and age at death) --> , death_place = , death_cause = , body_discovered = , resting_place = , resting_place_coordinates = ...

* Robert Storr * David Levi Strauss * Cole Swensen * Cecilia Vicuña * Jasmine Wahi *

Anne Waldman Anne Waldman (born April 2, 1945) is an American poet. Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activ ...

* Amei Wallach * McKenzie Wark *

Lawrence Weschler Lawrence Weschler (born 1952) is an author of works of creative nonfiction. A graduate of Cowell College of the University of California, Santa Cruz (1974), Weschler was for over twenty years (1981–2002) a staff writer at '' The New Yorker'', w ...

* Peter Lamborn Wilson *

John Yau John Yau (born June 5, 1950) is an American poet and critic who lives in New York City. He received his B.A. from Bard College in 1972 and his M.F.A. from Brooklyn College in 1978. He has published over 50 books of poetry, artists' books, fictio ...

Octavio Zaya Octavio Zaya is an art critic and curator, born in Las Palmas ( Canary Islands), and living in New York City since 1978. He is Director of Atlántica, a bilingual quarterly magazine published by CAAM (Las Palmas, Spain); he is Curator at Large and ...

Projects

Rail Curatorial Projects

In 2013, the ''Brooklyn Rail'' established Rail Curatorial Projects, an initiative to manifest the journal's goals within an exhibition context. That same year, the ''Brooklyn Rail'' was invited by the Dedalus Foundation to curate an exhibition which resulted in ''Come Together: Surviving Sandy, Year One'' (2013, Industry City), a momentous exhibition of hundreds of New York and Brooklyn artists. ''Come Together'' was named the #1 exhibition in New York City by

Jerry Saltz Jerry Saltz (born February 19, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois) is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and columnist for ''New York'' magazine. Formerly the senior art critic for '' The Village Voice'', he received the P ...

in ''New York Magazine'' and in the ''New York Times'',

Roberta Smith Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position. Early life Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas. Smith studied a ...

wrote, “This egalitarian show makes palpable the greatness of New York’s real art world.” In 2014, the exhibition was commemorated in a hardcover catalogue. Since then, the Rail Curatorial Projects has curated a number of shows including ''Ad Reinhardt at 100'' at TEMP Art Space; ''Spaced Out: Migration to the Interior'' (2014, Red Bull Studios); ''Bloodflames Revisited'' (2014, Paul Kasmin Gallery); and ''24/7'' (2014, Miami Beach Monte Carlo); ''Intimacy in Discourse: Reasonable and Unreasonable Sized Paintings'' (2015, SVA Chelsea Gallery and

Mana Contemporary Mana Contemporary is a cultural center in Jersey City, New Jersey, United States with affiliated centers in Chicago and Miami. History and Founder Opened in May 2011, the center was founded by moving company mogul Moishe Mana. Shai Baitel ...

) as well as ''Social Ecologies'' at Industry City; Patricia Cronin's Shrine for Girls at the Venice Biennale in 2015; ''Hallway Hijack'' at 66 Rockwell Place in 2016. In 2017, Rail Curatorial Projects curated ''Occupy Mana: Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy;'' ''Hallway Hijack'' (2016, 66 Rockwell Place); ''OCCUPY MANA: Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy, Year 1'' (2017, Mana Contemporary). In May 2019, the ''Rail'' was invited to curate an exhibition for the 2019 Venice Biennale. The show was a continuation of 2017's ''OCCUPY MANA,'' curated by the Rail's

and Italian art historian, critic and curator Francesca Pietropaolo, the show consisted of 73 different artists; with works discussing the social and ecological climate of our reality titled 'Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy: Mare Nostrum '' (2019, Venice Biennale)''.'' The Rail Curatorial Projects opened ''OCCUPY COLBY: Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy, Year 2'' (2019, Colby Museum of Art). The show was on the same lengths of ''OCCUPY MANA'' as well as ''Social Environment''.

We the Immigrants

We the Immigrants is a project that at promotes and elevates immigrants in the many communities across America. It honors the artists and innovators who have immigrated to the U.S. and made an impact across the sciences, arts, and humanities. It is an ongoing online project, featuring links to Wikipedia pages and organizes immigrants along with their name, country of origin and year of birth in a checkered layout inspired by Zoom.

The New Social Environment

In March, 2020, as the

COVID-19 pandemic in New York City The first case of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City was confirmed on March 1, 2020, though later research showed that the novel coronavirus had been circulating in New York City since January, with cases of community transmission confirme ...

forced arts organizations and museums around the world to close their doors, the team at the Brooklyn Rail shifted their operations online and started hosting daily conversations with artists, writers, poets, filmmakers, dancers, and musicians around the world. Called The New Social Environments, these daily lunchtime conversations wink at artist

Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( , ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthroposophy. He was a founder of a provocative art mov ...

’s concept of Social Sculpture, where making art is less fleeting and precious and more woven democratically into our lives. There have been over 200 archived conversations as of January 2020 and guests have included Kent Monkman,

Kay Gabriel Kay Gabriel is an American essayist and poet. In 2019 she joined the editorial collective for the ''Poetry Project Newsletter, a'' quarterly publication for reviews, essays, interviews, poems, remembrances and arts criticism''.'' Gabriel is the ...

Njideka Akunyili Crosby Njideka Akunyili Crosby (born 1983) is a Nigerian-born visual artist working in Los Angeles, California. Through her art Akunyili Crosby "negotiates the cultural terrain between her adopted home in America and her native Nigeria, creating collag ...

, Giuseppe Penone,

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...

Thelma Golden Thelma Golden (born 1965 in St. Albans, Queens) is the Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, United States. Golden joined the Museum as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs in 2000 before succeeding ...

, Ai Wei Wei,

Rosa Barba Rosa Barba (born 1972, Agrigento, Italy) is a German-Italian visual artist and filmmaker. Barba is known for using the medium of film and its materiality to create cinematic film installations, sculptures and publications, which inquire into th ...

, ordan Casteel, Paul D. Miller,

Luca Buvoli The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is the most recent population from which all organisms now living on Earth share common descent—the most recent common ancestor of all current life on Earth. This includes all cellular organisms; th ...

, ric Fischl, and Yvonne Rainier.

Rail Editions

Rail Editions is a press imprint of the ''Brooklyn Rail'' which publishes books of art, poetry, fiction, artists’ writings, works in translation, and more. Previous titles include: ''On Ron Gorchov,'' (2008) edited by

; ''Pieces of a Decade: Brooklyn Rail Nonfiction 2000–2010,'' (2010) edited by Theodore Hamm and Williams Cole; ''Texts on (Texts on) Art,'' (2012) a collection of essays by the art historian Joseph Masheck; ''The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology 2,'' (2013) edited by Donald Breckenridge; ''Oh Sandy! A Remembrance,'' (2015), a collection of poems commissioned in the wake of superstorm Hurricane Sandy; ''Cephalonia,'' (2016) a narrative poem by Luigi Ballerini; ''Swept Up By Art,'' (2016) the second memoir of the art historian and critic

; and ''Our Book: Florbela Espanca Selected Poems,'' (2018) the first translation into English of Portuguese poet Florbela Espanca's poetry. ''Words Apart and Others''(2018) by Jonas Mekas as well as a companion of responses, ''Message Ahead'' (2018) were published in 2018. ''Bending Concepts'' features a collection of 26 artists, writers, and critics thoughts on visual culture and society during the mid-2010s. Edited by Jonathan T.D., ''Bending Concepts'' includes notable works by Claire Bishop, David Levi Strauss,

Ariella Azoulay Ariella Aïsha Azoulay ( he, אריאלה עאישה אזולאי; born Tel Aviv, 1962) is an author, art curator, filmmaker, and theorist of photography and visual culture. She is a professor of Modern Culture and Media and the Department of ...

, Sheila Heti, and many more.

Special editions

* River Rail (January 2018) *I Love John Giorno (June 2017) *On the State of Art Criticism in Europe (May 2014) * Ad Reinhardt (January 2014)

Reception

Robert Storr has called it "the murmur of the city in print." Former ''

Nation A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture and/or society. A nation is thus the collective identity of a group of people understood as defined by th ...

'' publisher Victor Navasky considered it "a non-establishment paper that questioned the establishment's assumptions without falling victim to the counterculture's pieties." For the late Nancy Spero, the paper was "an eminently readable, informative, and intellectually wide-ranging publication, alert to current trends, controversies, and ideas, and filled with necessary information." Poet

has written: "how wonderful to have a new newspaper that cares about literature and the arts and isn't afraid to say so. The ''Brooklyn Rail'' is a welcome addition to the New York scene." American painter

Alex Katz Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints. Early life and career Alex Katz was born July 24, 1927, to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of an émigré who ...

has said that the ''Rail'' "has the young energy that goes with the young people who come to New York to grow in the arts. It would be a bad city without it. If it wasn't for the Brooklyn Rail, the city would be a desert.” In 2013 the ''Rail'' was awarded the Best Art Reporting by the International Association of Art Critics, United States Section (AICA-USA).

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Brooklyn Rail, The 1998 establishments in New York City Alternative magazines Visual arts magazines published in the United States American contemporary art Literary magazines published in the United States Modern liberal magazines published in the United States Monthly magazines published in the United States Contemporary art magazines Magazines established in 1998 Magazines published in New York City Ten times annually magazines Poetry magazines published in the United States Non-profit organizations based in New York City