Major art coverage by Robin Cembalest now online
An exclusive report on the Mapplethorpe obscenity trial. Major features on ecological art, multiculturalism, Native American art, and the Guggenheim’s global reach. Relentless coverage of the culture wars. An award-winning investigation into the Hispanic Society of America that resulted in real change.
These are among some 150 articles that journalist Robin Cembalest has posted in her newly created writing archive. It’s open to all at robincembalest.com/journalism.
Cembalest, the former longtime executive editor of ARTnews, has written for newspapers and magazines internationally. This searchable archive, which features a fraction of her output, includes many articles that were not previously accessible in digital format.
The Cembalest archive offers a fascinating chronicle of the people, places, and institutions shaping the conversation over the past decades. Included are interviews with figures such as Okwui Enwezor, Marcia Tucker, and Kirk Varnedoe, as well as the creators of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of the American Latino, and other culturally specific institutions.
Prescient coverage with echoes for the present
Cembalest wrote early and often about the activists on the front lines of the fight for freedom of expression, the changemakers bringing social justice into the art museum, and the pioneers building the nascent contemporary art scenes in Spain, Cuba, and beyond, along with many others breaking ground with new forms of making, interpreting, and exhibiting art. The archive also features much-quoted interviews with legendary artists and prescient trend stories on the challenges facing art museums, particularly the Smithsonian.
On a lighter note, the archive showcases Cembalest’s iconic headlines, such as “Much Ado about Doodoo” and “Take My Grant, Please.” Another story, “Tempest in a Peephole,” reports on a controversy surrounding the removal of a Sol LeWitt sculpture from a show at the National Museum of American Art, as it was then called. (LeWitt’s piece is coincidentally on view this winter at Paula Cooper Gallery.) The incident is a fascinating reminder about how artists banded together to reverse a censorship decision at a Smithsonian museum—with lessons for the current moment.
These articles provide a treasure trove of information that offers new insights and raises provocative questions about how much has changed, and how much has not. As Cembalest wrote in a headline for her 2002 ARTnews essay about the legacy of Linda Nochlin and the magazine’s coverage of women artists: “They’ve come a long way, maybe.”
Cembalest’s archive includes stories published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Village Voice, the New York Observer, El País; art magazines such as ARTnews, Artforum, Art & Antiques, and the New Art Examiner; and other publications, including Design Observer, Lingua Franca, the Forward, and the New Leader.
