Siddhartha Mitter is a freelance writer and critic. He 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. Here is Mary Louise Schumacher, a longtime journalist and the foundation’s new executive director, in conversation with Siddhartha. It has been gently edited for length and clarity.  

Mentioned in this episode:

“Waking Life: Siddhartha Mitter on the art of Cauleen Smith” (Artforum, May 2019)

“LaToya Ruby Frazier Is Paying It Forward” by Siddhartha Mitter (The New York Times, May 2024)

“Dawoud Bey, Full Frame: On Richmond’s Trail of the Enslaved” by Siddhartha Mitter (The New York Times, November 2023)

“Simone Leigh, in the World” by Siddhartha Mitter (The New York Times, April 2022)

“Lorraine O’Grady, Still Cutting Into the Culture” by Siddhartha Mitter (The New York Times, February 2021)

“El Anatsui Builds Monumental Art From Daily Life” by Siddhartha Mitter (The New York Times, October 2023)

“At His Moment of Triumph, Arthur Jafa Is Looking for Trouble” by Siddhartha Mitter (The New York Times, May 2021)

For Chakaia Booker, Whose Medium Is Tires, the Art Is in the Journey” by Siddhartha Mitter (The New York Times, May 2021)

Andrea Bowers: Her Activism Animates Her Art” by Siddhartha Mitter (The New York Times, November 2021)

“Steve McQueen, on a Different Wavelength” by Siddhartha Mitter (The New York Times, May 2024)

Documenta 15

Counterpublic

Cultured Magazine

“Art Talk: Why Art Critics Matter” by Deborah Solomon (WNYC News, May 2013)

Jupiter Magazine

A Beautiful Resistance (The Boston Globe)

Zoë Hopkins

Burnaway

Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles

In the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe (Duke University Press, 2016)

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, Just for Kicks, Aureyez, and Jim Swim. These interviews are accompanied by newly commissioned portraits of these writers made by Kevin J. Miyazaki in the spaces where they work.