Emily Watlington is a critic, curator, and senior editor at Art in America. She is one of eight writers to win the 2024 Rabkin Prize. 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. Our new Executive Director, Mary Louise Schumacher, a longtime journalist, conducted this conversation with Emily. It has been gently edited for length and clarity. 

Mentioned in this episode:

“The Pitfalls of the Something-for-Everyone Approach to the Venice Biennale” by Emily Watlington (Art In America, July 2024

“Andrea Crespo” by Emily Watlington (Art Papers, Winter 2018/2019)

Art in America

Rebecca Solnit

“Maurizio Cattelan’s Notorious Banana Sculpture Donated to Guggenheim Museum” by Valentina Di Liscia (Hyperallergic, September 2020)

Notion app

Anna Jermolaewa at the Austrian Pavilion of the 2024 Venice Biennale

Nathan Fielder’s The Curse trailer
Leave Society by Tao Lin (Penguin Random House, 2021)

The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever by Prudence Pfeiffer (Harper, 2023)

All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess by Becca Rothfeld (Metropolitan Books, 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 Johson, producer, and Johnathon Olsen, editor. Music is by Ariel Shalom, warmkeys, and Duce Williams. These interviews are accompanied by newly commissioned portraits of these writers made by Kevin J. Miyazaki in the spaces where they work.