Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation

Susan C. Larsen, Ph.D., our founding and emeritus executive director, and her late husband, Lauri Robert Martin, met the artist Jon Serl in 1981. They were adventuring through pockets of California that Lauri had first discovered on his motorcycle and stopped in at an emporium, The Chimes, in Lake Elsinore. While browsing, they spotted a painting in an office. When the couple inquired about it, they were told that the artwork was beloved and not for sale but that the artist lived down the road. So they reached out to Serl, who had a local following but was unknown to art audiences outside of the area. After meeting him and seeing his art, Susan and Lauri began documenting his oeuvre, life and ideas. Susan recorded many interviews, and Lauri made countless photographs. They began an abiding and meaningful friendship that lasted until Serl died in 1993. Susan, an art historian and former curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, also introduced galleries, scholars, and collectors to Serl’s work. She was especially keen to share it with her dear friends, Dorothea and Leo Rabkin, important collectors of what has historically been called folk and outsider art. The Rabkins acquired some of Serl’s paintings, which remain in the Rabkin Foundation collection. Susan is completing a memoir of the years she and Lauri spent with Jon Serl, based on the taped conversations. It is entitled “If We Could Fly,” named for one of Serl’s buoyant paintings of children at Lake Elsinore.

Susan will host a virtual conversation about Serl, convened by The Brooklyn Rail, on Monday, Oct. 21 at 1pm ET. The conversation will include an august gathering of scholars and artists who have been inspired by Serl, including Katherine Bradford, Eleanor Gaver, Brook Hsu, Sam Messer, and Josh Smith. The online event is held on the occasion of the “Jon Serl: No straight lines” exhibit at David Zwirner in New York. All are welcome via Zoom. To register, click this link: https://brooklynrail.org/event/2024/10/21/jon-serl-no-straight-lines

Photography by Lauri Robert Martin: Susan C. Larsen and Jon; Jon drying clothes in the sun; and Jon at home. Jon's painting, “Angles Erning Wings,” part of the Rabkin Foundation collection, is in the last image.
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Hello. We have launched a new newsletter, the Rabkin Reader. Mary Louise Schumacher, our executive director, will drop into your inbox about once a month to share great arts writing. 

Subscribe today to be among the first to learn who won the Rabkin Prize this year. We'll announce the winners next week. You'll find us on Substack. Link in bio, too. 

It is challenging to be an arts writer today, but one of the rewards is each other. Earlier this year, we asked the Rabkin Prize winners and finalists what would be supportive of their work. One of the clearest answers we got was this: connection and community (rest and time to write was another). So, when Mary Louise, our executive director, finds herself in different parts of the country, she does her best to gather our prize winners (and a few friends of the foundation), so they can talk shop, share ideas and sometimes meet each other for the first time. We know good things will come of this. The best turnout yet was in Carolina Miranda’s backyard this week in Los Angeles.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE——JULY 24, 2023
RABKIN FOUNDATION AWARDS $450,000 TO ART JOURNALISTS—— Nine Visual Art Journalists Win $50,000 Each-

The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation has given Rabkin Prizes of $50,000 each to nine visual art journalists: Maximilíano Durón (New York); Erin Joyce (Arizona); Eileen G’Sell (St. Louis); Jori Finkel (Los Angeles); Harmony Holiday (Los Angeles); Annette LePique (Chicago); Darla Migan (New York); Rebecca Solnit (San Francisco); Jillian Steinhauer (New York).

Jurors for this seventh cycle of awards were: Mark Alice Durant and Nanette Maciejunes.

This is the seventh cycle of the Rabkin Prize which started in 2017. To date, the foundation has given a total of 3.25 million dollars to 62 individual art writers. Leo Rabkin was an artist who worked and exhibited in New York City for sixty years. His wife, Dorothea, joined with Leo to create a landmark collection of American folk and outsider art. They lived in Chelsea and had a wide circle of friends including artists, writers and curators in New York City and beyond.

The award program is by nomination only. A distinguished group of sixteen nominators, working in the visual arts in all parts of the country, provided the list of potential winners. The nominators were asked to identify, “The essential visual art journalist working in your part of the country.” Candidates for the award submitted two recent published articles and a brief curriculum vita. Writers can be re-nominated and are eligible until they win a Rabkin Prize. This is an annual program and a central initiative of the foundation.

If you would like more information about our program and/or photographs and biographies of this year’s winning writers contact Danielle Yovino at [email protected] or downloadable bios can be found at www.rabkinfoundation.org/awards. If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Susan Larsen at [email protected].

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Mary Louise Schumacher as Executive Director of the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation.

Schumacher is a respected, veteran journalist and an ardent advocate for the art writers’ community. She brings passion and intellect to the Rabkin Foundation awards program for visual art journalists, which has given over $3 million dollars to art writers in all parts of the country.

Schumacher has been uniquely focused on the research and support of the field of arts journalism for many years. As the longtime art and architecture critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, she created a program for the discussion of visual culture, a community of writers with diverse perspectives called Art City. As the Arts and Culture Fellow with the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University in 2017, she conducted a national survey of arts writers across the country, which resulted in a series of articles for Nieman Reports about the priorities and challenges of the field. After leaving daily journalism in 2019, Schumacher collaborated on a project about democracy called This is Milwaukee and focused on completing a documentary film she’s directed about art critics called Out of the Picture which will be released later this year.

Schumacher will take on her new post on October 1, succeeding founding Executive Director Emeritus, Susan C. Larsen, Ph.D., under whose leadership the foundation developed and oversaw the awards program, established a national headquarters in Portland, Maine and professionally archived the life work of Leo Rabkin (1919-2015).

Photo by Kevin J. Miyazaki. Copyright Kevin J. Miyazaki, 2023

Visit www.rabkinfoundation.org/news for full press release.

From the archives: Leo Rabkin, 1959/1974, “Untitled,” watercolor collage on mulberry paper. The original paintings were done in 59, & reworked in 74.

For Immediate Release-Rabkin Foundation awards $400,000 to art journalists:
Eight Visual Art Journalists Win $50,000 Each——
Portland, Maine, July 15, 2022– The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation has given Rabkin Prizes of $50,000 each to eight visual art journalists: Shana Nys Dambrot (Los Angeles); Bryn Evans (Decatur, Georgia); Joe Fyfe (New York City); Peter L’Official (Harlem & Annandale-on-Hudson, NY); Stacy Pratt (Tulsa); Darryl F. Ratcliff, II (Dallas); Jeanne Claire van Ryzin (Austin); Margo Vansynghel (Seattle).

Jurors for this sixth cycle of awards were: Eric Gibson: Arts in Review editor of the Wall Street Journal and author of the book, The Necessity of Sculpture: Selected Essays and Criticism 1985-2019, (2020).
Sasha Anawalt: Professor Emerita of Journalism at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism; Founding Director of the Master in Arts Journalism program; Founding Director of the USC/Getty Arts Journalism Program; Pulitzer Prize Juror 2006 and 2007; Author of The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company (1996). Author of numerous articles for The New York Times; National Public Radio; L.A. Weekly and more.
Paul Schmelzer: Founder of The Ostracon: Dispatches from Beyond Contemporary Art’s Center; Managing Editor, The Walker Reader; Co-Organizer of Superscript: Arts Journalism, ad Criticism in a Digital Age; Articles for: Art 21; Artforum; Hyperallergic; The Huffington Post; Raw Vision; The Utne Reader and more.
Full release can be found at www.rabkinfoundation.org/awards, link in bio. This is the sixth cycle of the Rabkin Prize which started in 2017. To date, the foundation has given a total of $2,775,000 to individual art writers. If you would like more information about our program and/or photographs and biographies of this year’s winning writers contact Danielle Yovino, Curator of the Collection and Executive Assistant, at [email protected] or visit www.rabkinfoundation.org/awards. If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Susan Larsen at 207-536-1686 or email [email protected].

With great pleasure, we announce a Lifetime Achievement Award for Peter Schjeldahl, chief art critic for The New Yorker magazine. This award comes with a prize of $50,000.

Generations of readers have enjoyed Schjeldahl’s distinctive voice, characterized by warmth, boldness, wit and erudition. He has published as both poet and art critic for over fifty years. Schjeldahl, formerly art critic for The Village Voice (1990-1998) and now head art critic for The New Yorker (since 1998), is one of very few working American art critics with a continuous and faithful national audience.

We are pleased to honor this distinguished and indispensable art critic who has enriched our lives and our understanding for so many years in many ways. Previous winners of the Rabkin Lifetime Achievement Award are: Roberta Smith; Christopher Knight and Carl Little.

Full release can be found at www.rabkinfoundation.org/awards. For further information contact [email protected] or [email protected]. Photo by Gilbert King.

Some unseen mixed media mini’s from the archives. Watercolor on mulberry paper, with stitching, ink, & piercings. A little sunshine on a rainy day. ☀️

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE- Carl Little, Maine Arts writer, Wins Rabkin Lifetime Achievement Award-----
Portland, Maine, August 23, 2021— The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation is dedicated to recognizing and rewarding writers who make art accessible to general audiences. As such, the trustees of the Rabkin Foundation are pleased to announce that the foundation has awarded a $50,000 Lifetime Achievement Award to poet and art critic Carl Little of Mount Desert, Maine.

For more than 30 years, Carl Little has been one of the primary cultural connections between Maine and New York, writing about the Maine art scene for national publications and about the larger art world for Maine magazines.

Personally and professionally, Carl Little is a modest, generous and collaborative colleague respected and liked by everyone who knows him. He has dedicated his writing life to explaining and exploring the art worlds of Maine and New York, a lifetime of art writing that the Rabkin Foundation is pleased and proud to honor.

Please visit www.rabkinfoundation.org/awards for full release (link in bio), and contact [email protected] for further questions. Photo by Erin Little.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE- JULY 1, 2021,
RABKIN FOUNDATION AWARDS $400,000 TO ART JOURNALISTS- Eight Visual Art Journalists Win $50,000 Each——

The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation has given Rabkin Prizes of $50,000 each to eight visual art journalists: Aruna D’Souza (MA); John Yau (NYC); Raquel Gutierrez (AZ); Jarrett Earnest (Brooklyn); Mark Lamster (TX); Yinka Elujoba (Brooklyn); Jennifer Huberdeau (MA); and Jasmine Weber (Brooklyn).

This year’s winning journalists publish regularly in The Brooklyn Rail; Hyperallergic; Art News; the New York Times; Paris Review; Harper’s; Artforum; BOMB; Art in America; 4 Columns; Them; National Public Radio; Gumbo; the Los Angeles Times; PUBLIC; the Berkshire Eagle; the Wall Street Journal, the Dallas Morning News; Glasstire and more.

Jurors for this fifth cycle of awards were: Melissa Harris, Aperture Foundation editor-at-large and professor at Columbia University, School of Journalism and Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Mary Louise Schumacher was the chief art critic of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for eighteen years. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University addressing changes in art journalism across the nation. Her research on the state of arts criticism in America is soon to be released as a feature length documentary film.

Visit www.rabkinfoundation.org/awards for full press release with downloadable bios of each of our winners. Please contact [email protected] for further info.