Greg Allen is an artist and writer who began greg.org: the making of art blog in 2001. For the first time in the prize’s history, the Rabkin Foundation commissioned portraits of the winners in the spaces where they write and conducted interviews with them about their lives and ideas. Here is Mary Louise Schumacher, a longtime journalist and the foundation’s new executive director, in conversation with Greg. It has been gently edited for length and clarity.
Mentioned in this episode:
greg.org: the making of
“Lightning Field Notes” by Greg Allen (Greg.org, July 2015)
“Old News” by Jeff Weiss
Anne Truitt
Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die) by Isaac Julien, exhibit at the Barnes Foundation, 2022
Ten Thousand Waves by Isaac Julian
“Just Dropped: Édouard Manet Facsimile Object (M4), ‘Fleurs’” by Greg Allen (Greg.org, May 2024)
“Show Me the Manets” by Greg Allen (Greg.org, September 2022)
“Hirshhorn Commissions Nicolas Party To Create New Large-Scale Immersive Mural” (Smithsonian, May 2017)
“The Daily Practice of Refusing” by Greg Allen (Greg.org, January 2017)
Glenstone
Cady Noland
LIGO
“A Student Thesis Has Become a Groundbreaking Show About How Black People Have Been Pictured Across Art History” by Naomi Rea (artnet, September 2018)
“For One Week Only Raphael’s Great Tapestries Have Returned to the Sistine Chapel” by Kate Brown (artnet, February 2020)
Danh Vo
UNESCO Heritage site Buddha statues
“The History of Tilted Arc Is Long” by Greg Allen (Greg.org, April 2024)
“Itty Bitty Videy Committee” by Greg Allen (Greg.org, August 2024)
This episode of the Rabkin Interviews was produced by the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, an artist-endowed foundation based in Portland, Maine. The Rabkin Prize is awarded through a nomination process, and an independent jury selects the winners. The production team for the Rabkin Interviews includes Cindy Eggert Johnson, producer, and Johnathon Olsen, editor. Music is by Ariel Shalom, Flint, Cosmonkey and Maybird. These interviews are accompanied by newly commissioned portraits of these writers made by Kevin J. Miyazaki in the spaces where they work.
Greg Allen, 2024 Rabkin Prize winner