Art Writer Robin Cembalest
has produced everything from investigative journalism to profiles, trend stories, hard news, reviews, and early listicles and blog posts. She’s published in the the Village Voice, New York Observer, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, El País, most of the major art magazines, design publications, and many other places.
Working at ARTnews, Robin covered the major cultural events and controversies of the 1990s and 2000s— government funding and the Mapplethorpe obscenity trial, the ecological art boom, the growth of the Guggenheim, censorship cases, multiculturalism, diversity, Native American art, the rise of social practice, and the transformation of the art museum, among other topics. She’s also written extensively on Spanish art and culture for publications in Spain and the U.S.
Following is a non-chronological sampling from Robin’s hundreds of publications.
Robert Pruitt reinvents the African American portrait
Dogon, Flavin, Outkast, Dave Chappelle, the Incredible Hulk, and more coexist in Robert Pruitt's identity-expanding drawings of women at the Studio Museum.
Brave New World
The first thing to understand about “Caribbean: Crossroads of the World,” the cluster of exhibitions opening concurrently at El Museo del Barrio, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Queens Museum of Art in June, is that these aren’t shows of Caribbean art. They’re shows of art about the Caribbean.