 | |
 Cover of the April 2020 issue | |
| Categories | Art, culture, literature, politics |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Monthly |
| First issue | 2000 (26 years ago) (2000) |
| Country | U.S. |
| Based in | Brooklyn, New York |
| Language | American English |
| Website | brooklynrail |
| ISSN | 2157-2151 |
The Brooklyn Rail is an American publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics, based inBrooklyn, New York. 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.
TheRail'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.[1] TheRail operates a small press called Rail Editions, which publishes literary translations, poetry, and art criticism. In addition to the small press, theRail 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.
TheBrooklyn Rail's website states that the publication "provides an independent forum for arts, culture, and politics throughout New York City and far beyond," and that it is "committed to supporting artists in their journey and elevating the important role that the arts and humanities play in shaping our society."[1]
 | This articlerelies excessively onreferences toprimary sources. Please improve this article by addingsecondary or tertiary sources. Find sources: "The Brooklyn Rail" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(October 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Originally distributed as reading material for commuters on the L-train between Manhattan and Brooklyn, theBrooklyn Rail began as a small broadsheet with opinions printed in four columns in 1998.[2] 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.[3]
By 2000, the journal had quickly grown into a full-format publication, withPhong Bui and then-editorTheodore 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 theRail'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."[4]
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, theRail had interviewed over four hundred artists. A compilation of artist interviews, calledTell Me Something Good: Artist Interviews from The Brooklyn Rail, was published in 2017. Interviews includeRichard Serra andBrice Marden toAlex Da Corte andHouse of Ladosha. The book was coedited by Jarrett Earnest and Lucas Zwirner and published throughDavid 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.[5]
The Miami Rail is an editorially independent expansion ofThe Brooklyn Rail founded byNina Johnson Milewski withBrooklyn Rail editorPhong Bui and support from theKnight Foundation.[6][7]
In 2013, theBrooklyn Rail established Rail Curatorial Projects, an initiative to manifest the journal's goals within an exhibition context. That same year, theBrooklyn Rail was invited by the Dedalus Foundation to curate an exhibition which resulted inCome 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 byJerry Saltz inNew York Magazine[8] and in theNew York Times,Roberta Smith wrote, “This egalitarian show makes palpable the greatness of New York’s real art world.”[9] In 2014, the exhibition was commemorated in a hardcover catalogue.[10]
Since then, the Rail Curatorial Projects has curated a number of shows includingAd Reinhardt at 100 at TEMP Art Space;[11][12]Spaced Out: Migration to the Interior (2014, Red Bull Studios);[13][14][15]Bloodflames Revisited (2014, Paul Kasmin Gallery);[16][17][18] and24/7 (2014, Miami Beach Monte Carlo);[19][20]Intimacy in Discourse: Reasonable and Unreasonable Sized Paintings (2015, SVA Chelsea Gallery andMana Contemporary)[21][22][23] as well asSocial Ecologies at Industry City;[24][25] Patricia Cronin's Shrine for Girls[26][27][28] at the Venice Biennale in 2015;Hallway Hijack[29][30] at 66 Rockwell Place in 2016. In 2017, Rail Curatorial Projects curatedOccupy Mana: Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy;[31][32][33]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, theRail was invited to curate an exhibition for the2019 Venice Biennale. The show was a continuation of 2017'sOCCUPY MANA, curated by the Rail'sPhong Bui 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 titledArtists Need to Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy: Mare Nostrum (2019, Venice Biennale).[34][35][36] The Rail Curatorial Projects openedOCCUPY COLBY: Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy, Year 2 (2019, Colby Museum of Art).[37] The show was on the same lengths ofOCCUPY MANA[31] as well asSocial Environment.[34]
We the Immigrants is a project that at promotes and elevatesimmigrants 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.[38] 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.[39]
In March, 2020, as theCOVID-19 pandemic in New York City 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 artistJoseph Beuys’s concept ofSocial Sculpture, where making art is less fleeting and precious and more woven democratically into our lives.[40] There have been over 200 archived conversations as of January 2020 and guests have includedKent Monkman,Kay Gabriel,Njideka Akunyili Crosby,Giuseppe Penone,Noam Chomsky,Thelma Golden,Ai Wei Wei,Rosa Barba,Jordan Casteel,Paul D. Miller,Luca Buvoli,Eric Fischl, andYvonne Rainier.
Rail Editions is a press imprint of theBrooklyn Rail which publishes books of art, poetry, fiction, artists’ writings, works in translation, and more.
Previous titles include:On Ron Gorchov (2008), edited byPhong Bui;Pieces of a Decade: Brooklyn Rail Nonfiction 2000–2010 (2010), edited byTheodore 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 superstormHurricane Sandy;Cephalonia (2016), a narrative poem byLuigi Ballerini;Swept Up By Art (2016), the second memoir of the art historian and criticIrving Sandler; andOur Book: Florbela Espanca Selected Poems (2018), the first translation into English of Portuguese poetFlorbela Espanca's poetry.[41]Words Apart and Others[42] (2018) by Jonas Mekas as well as a companion of responses,Message Ahead (2018), were published in 2018.[43]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,Sheila Heti, and many more.[44]
Robert Storr has called it "the murmur of the city in print."[1]
FormerNation publisherVictor Navasky considered it "a non-establishment paper that questioned the establishment's assumptions without falling victim to the counterculture's pieties."
For the lateNancy 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."[1]
PoetJohn Ashbery has written: "how wonderful to have a new newspaper that cares about literature and the arts and isn't afraid to say so. TheBrooklyn Rail is a welcome addition to the New York scene."[1]
American painterAlex Katz has said that theRail "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 theBrooklyn Rail, the city would be a desert.”[1]
In 2013 theRail was awarded the Best Art Reporting by theInternational Association of Art Critics, United States Section (AICA-USA).[49][50]