The reading season

Good morning Rabkin community,

There is a stack of art magazines and books teetering beside my reading chair, guilting me: “Where have you been, Mary Louise?” Some have been beckoning for months. This totem to my delinquency reminds me of a former colleague, James Auer.

Jim was an elegant man who rose to speak to me when I stopped by his desk in the newsroom, though his keyboard was filled with crumbs from fog-noshing tuna sandwiches. Ever behind on deadlines, he always pushed through lunch. Jim also had a neat trick; he used vacation time to catch up on his reading.

I have been thinking about Jim and what I want to take away from his example, to stay put more and also to push less. And so, I recently declared to my partner that I am not leaving Maine until March. We’ll see if this holds, but I find our edge of the continent, especially in winter, especially in the predawn hours, very regulating to my system. It is a time to sit or walk with questions, to sift through ambiguities, to envision. The word “attunement” comes to mind.

I’ve started calling winter my reading season.

Winter is also the season for one of the foundation’s newer traditions, our Year in Reading project, when arts writers we care about share their best reads from the year, whether criticism, essays, novels, nonfiction books, Instagram reviews, gallery wall text, graffiti, archival reflections or TikTok missives. We are putting it all together now and will share it with you next month. You can check out the 2024 edition while you wait.

Also in the meantime, here are some reads I’ve been drawn to in recent weeks, the big list you’re here for.

Hilton Als on James Van Der Zee
Jorge Arango on “Every Infinitesimal Thought”
Roger Berkowitz on authority
Holland Cotter on Coco Fusco
Lauren Levato Coyne on Andrea Dezsö and Adam Gurvitch
Ben Davis on contemporary readings of the Degenerate Art Show
Travis Diehl on Joshua Citarella
Aruna D’Souza on Ruth Asawa
Amanda Fortini on Linda Rosenkrantz
Joe Fyfe on June Leaf
Jessica Fuentes on the death and legacy of artists
Eileen G’Sell on Lois Dodd, Eleanor Magid, and Louise Kruger
Julia Halperin on Minnie Evans
Cig Harvey on how to make a picture
Tempestt Hazel on Tempestt Hazel
Harmony Holiday on Amiri Baraka
Jameson Johnson on writing as monument
Christopher Knight on “Monuments”
Carolina Miranda on Rick Caruso
Cara Ober on Amy Sherald
Cassie Packard on Ayoung Kim
David Remnick with Zadie Smith
Noah Reyes with Antonio Darden
Ray Mark Rinaldi on “What We Hold On To”
Seph Rodney on “Data Consciousness”
Phillip Russell on Black life and the archive
Jared Schroeder on state-level support for journalism
Sebastian Smee on Yoko Ono
Zadie Smith on writing
Lauren Stroh on The Angolite
Variable West with Cloe King
Hrag Vartanian on Pyaari Azaadi
Emily Watlington on Michael Rakowitz
J Wortham on “Monuments”
John Yau on George Morrison

If you haven’t had a chance to listen to our interviews with this year’s Rabkin Prize winners, our 2025 podcast series just wrapped, and it will be there waiting for you. Here’s a teaser, the winners on the reading they recommended to fellow arts writers.

We’d love to hear what you are paging through, too, so hit “reply” and share if you’re inclined. Or, if you have some arts writing you’re eager to shout out, your own or otherwise, drop a call to Greg Allen’s “Phone It In: Art Writing Mixtape” project. It gives new meaning to the term “open call” (I love this project so much).

And, finally, for the Mainers, maybe we’ll see you Saturday at the Flags of Freedom printmaking workshop at Indigo Arts (register here) or the Water Women Film Fest at SPACE in a few weeks.

For those of you among us who contribute to our teetering stacks of arts writing, thank you for the work you do.

Until December,
Mary Louise