After returning from years of war coverage, Peter van Agtmael tries to piece together the memory, identity, race, class, and family, in a landscape which has become as surreal as the war he left behind.
Founded in October 2000 and currently published 10 times annually, the Brooklyn Rail provides an independent forum for arts, culture, and politics throughout New York City and far beyond.
Our journal, in addition to featuring local reporting; criticism of music, dance, film, and theater; and original fiction and poetry, covers contemporary visual art in particular depth. In order to democratize our art coverage, our Critics Page functions with a rotating editorship, which such luminaries as Robert Storr, Elizabeth Baker, Barbara Rose, Irving Sandler, and Dore Ashton have helmed.
The Rail further fulfills its mission by curating art exhibitions, panel discussions, reading series and film screenings that reflect the complexity and inventiveness of the city’s artistic and cultural landscape. In 2013, Rail publisher Phong Bui curated Come Together: Surviving Sandy, Year 1, an exhibition that collected over 300 contemporary artists to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy. Come Together was named the #1 exhibition in New York City by Jerry Saltz in New York Magazine, and in the NY Times, Roberta Smith wrote, “This egalitarian show makes palpable the greatness of New York’s real art world.”
Other Rail initiatives include our small press, Rail Editions, and our recently launched curatorial endeavor, Rail Curatorial Projects. Rail Editions publishes books of poetry, experimental fiction, prose meditation, artists’ writings, and interviews with artists in addition to art and literary criticism. Rail Curatorial Projects seeks to establish dialogues between artists, curators, dealers, critics, collectors, and art historians via rigorously conceived and researched exhibitions and events.
After returning from years of war coverage, Peter van Agtmael tries to piece together the memory, identity, race, class, and family, in a landscape which has become as surreal as the war he left behind.
William Eggleston is one of the most influential photographers of the latter half of the 20th century, credited with pioneering fine art color photography in his iconic depictions of the American South. (more…)
Over the last two decades, Nairy Baghramian has created sculptures, photographic works and drawings that explore the relationships between architecture, everyday objects, and the human body. (more…)
Ingel Vaikla is a visual artist and filmmaker from Estonia. She studied photography in Estonian Academy of Fine Arts (BA) and film in Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Gent (MA). In her work she questions the relationship between architecture and its users, and the representation of architecture in camera based mediums. (more…)
Jasper Johns was an artist that came onto the scene in the 1950s. Much of the work that he created led the American public away from the expressionism form, and towards an art movement or form known as the concrete. (more…)
Dia Center was founded in New York City in 1974 by Philippa de Menil, Heiner Friedrich, and Helen Winkler to help artists achieve visionary projects that might not otherwise be realized because of scale or scope. (more…)
Once again we arrive at the end of another year. 2021 was a year replete with contradictions and conflict, tension and turmoil. Two years since the start of the pandemic, a return to normal eludes us.
(more…)
The Mostra de Arte da Juventude (MAJ – Youth Art Show) is an initiative that has been held at Sesc Ribeirão Preto on a regular basis for the last 32 years, since 1989. It was created within the municipal context, in Ribeirão Preto (São Paulo), a city located inland, with the aim of lending visibility to the production of young artists (more…)
This year, and for the first time, the opening of the Horst exhibition, titled The Act of Breathing, is coinciding with the three-day Horst Arts & Music festival, from April 29 – May 1, 2022. After the festival weekend, the exhibition reopens from May 12 – July 31, 2022. (more…)