I finished listening to Siddhartha Miter’s conversation with Rabkin Foundation Executive Director Mary Louise Schumacher this morning, and it was insightful and sobering. They talked a lot about the art writing field and its precarity, and that was as depressing as you can imagine. But they also talked about the windows art writing affords into new, expanded views of the world, beyond the luxury object trade talk we’re inundated with, and it was awesome. Then I’ve been clicking through the sheer number of powerful pieces Miter has written about incredible artists, exhibitions, movements, and publications, and it’s extraordinary. A combination of vast treasure and barely scratching the world’s art surface.
If you need me, I’ll be filling up my reading list, starting with Jupiter Magazine, one of the art publications Miter namechecked. The theme of Jupiter’s latest issue, The Theater of Refusal, revisits and renews Charles Gaines’ foundational 1993 exhibition of contemporary Black art and its critical context. Its form was a series of readings and screenings throughout the summer, which I will now try to approximate in my head.
2024 Rabkin Interview with Siddhartha Miter [rabkinfoundation.substack]
Jupiter [jupiter-mag]