Founded in October 2000 and currently published 10 times annually, the Brooklyn Rail provides an independent forum for arts, culture, and politics throughout New York City and far beyond.

Our journal, in addition to featuring social and political meditations, criticism of music, dance, film, and theater; and original fiction and poetry, covers past and contemporary visual art in particular depth. In order to democratize our art coverage, our Critics Page functions with a rotating editorship, which such luminaries as Dore Ashton, Barbara Rose, Irving Sandler, W.J.T. Mitchell, Ralph Lemon, Joan Kee, Elizabeth Baker, Alice Notley, and Richard Shiff have helmed.

The Rail further fulfills its mission by curating art exhibitions, panel discussions, reading series and film screenings that reflect the complexity and inventiveness of the city’s artistic and cultural landscape.

In 2013, Phong H. Bui curated Come Together: Surviving Sandy, Year 1, an exhibition that collected over 300 contemporary artists to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, which led to the formation of Rail Curatorial Projects. Rail Curatorial Projects seeks to establish dialogues between artists, curators, art historians, critics, gallerists, and collectors via rigorously conceived and researched exhibitions and events.

In 2020, we expanded into digital programming and introduced the New Social Environment (NSE) lunchtime conversation series over Zoom, featuring conversations with artists, poets, musicians, activists, and more, including Doris Salcedo, Henry Threadgill, Joe Bradley, Martin Puryear, Cecily Brown, Etel Adnan, Julie Mehretu, Peter Brook, Yvonne Rainer, Nikki Giovanni, and David Byrne. There have been over 1,100 episodes of the NSE, with over one million viewers tuning in to watch it live and in our archive.

In 2022, Rail Curatorial Projects launched an ongoing series of exhibitions titled Singing in Unison, an ongoing multi-venue series of exhibition, with the aim of breaking down barriers and divisions while exemplifying the breadth of the creative world, with artists who are taught and self-taught, young and old, and hailing from every corner of the globe to foster social unity in light of the recent political climate and the COVID-19 pandemic, featuring over 200 artists across ten exhibitions.

Other Rail initiatives include our small press, Rail Editions, and our bi-annual River Rail. Rail Editions publishes books of poetry, experimental fiction, prose meditation, artists’ writings, and interviews with artists in addition to art and literary criticism. The River Rail is an offshoot of the Rail solely focusing on environmental issues, where artists, scientists, poets, and other creative individuals can intersect

The Brooklyn Rail, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, distributes its journal free of charge around New York City, and ships to a growing list of national and international subscribers.