Brooke Kamin Rapaport is an American art curator and writer and is a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome in winter 2025. [1] She is the former Artistic Director and Martin Friedman Chief Curator at Madison Square Park Conservancy in New York City. [2] At Madison Square Park Conservancy, she was responsible for the outdoor public sculpture program of commissioned work by contemporary artists. With an exhibition of Martin Puryear's work, Martin Puryear: Liberty/Libertà , Rapaport served as Commissioner and Curator of the United States Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. [3] Rapaport frequently speaks on and moderates programs on contemporary art and issues in public art. [4] She also writes for Sculpture magazine where she is a contributing editor. She lives in New York City and is the mother of three sons.
Rapaport was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. She received a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Amherst College and a Master of Arts in Art History from Rutgers University. Rapaport was a Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Museum Studies at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in New York City. She received an honorary degree, Doctor of Arts, from Amherst in 2022. [5]
Rapaport was the assistant curator (1989 to 1993) and associate curator (1993 to 2002) of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. She organized numerous exhibitions and wrote corresponding catalogues for Vital Forms: American Art and Design in the Atomic Age, 1940–1960 [6] (with Kevin L. Stayton) and Twentieth Century American Sculpture at the White House: Inspired by Rodin (1998, with colleagues). [7] She also realized exhibitions with contemporary artists in the Grand Lobby series of installations including Houston Conwill, [8] Leon Golub, [9] Komar and Melamid, [10] and Meg Webster. [11]
As guest curator at The Jewish Museum in New York City, Rapaport organized The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend, [12] a 2007 survey exhibition that traveled to The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young. A catalogue published by Yale University Press accompanied the Nevelson exhibition and was named best Editors' Picks in the Arts and Photography books of 2007 by Amazon.com. [13] The volume also won the New York State Historical Association's Henry Allen Moe Prize for Catalogues of Distinction in the Arts in 2009. [14]
Rapaport organized Houdini: Art and Magic at The Jewish Museum in 2010. [15] The show traveled to venues in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Madison, Wisconsin. Yale University Press published the exhibition catalogue.
She is a contributing editor and writer for Sculpture magazine and has published articles on artists including contemporary plant artists, Alice Aycock, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Melvin Edwards, R.M. Fischer, DeWitt Godfrey, Louise Nevelson, John Newman, Judy Pfaff, Shinique Smith, and Ursula von Rydingsvard. Rapaport authored a blog on artists' materials and processes for the International Sculpture Center. [16] Her essay, Why Calder is Back: A Modern Master's Creative Reuse of Materials was included in the exhibition catalogue Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. [17] In 2024, Rapaport joined a group of national curators in "On the Nature of Sculpture Parks," a roundtable discussion for Public Art Dialogue. [18]
At Madison Square Park Conservancy, Rapaport organized outdoor projects with contemporary artists including Diana Al-Hadid, [19] Tony Cragg, [20] Abigail DeVille, [21] Leonardo Drew, [22] Nicole Eisenman, [23] Teresita Fernández, [24] Hugh Hayden, [25] Paula Hayes, [26] Cristina Iglesias, [27] Maya Lin, [28] Josiah McElheny, [29] Giuseppe Penone, [30] Martin Puryear, [31] Arlene Shechet, [32] Shahzia Sikander, [33] Rose B. Simpson, [34] and Krzysztof Wodiczko. [35] Through Madison Square Park Conservancy in 2017, Rapaport established Public Art Consortium, a national initiative of museum, public art program, and sculpture park curators. In 2024, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Conservancy's public art program, she was the editor and lead author for Public Art in Public Space: Twenty Years Advancing Work in New York's Madison Square Park, published by Gregory R. Miller & Company. [36] She also narrated the video documentary launched to celebrate the milestone year. [37]
In August 2018, Madison Square Park Conservancy, along with the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, announced that Martin Puryear will represent the United States at La Biennale di Venezia 58th International Art Exhibition. The 2019 U.S. Pavilion was commissioned and curated by Rapaport. [38] The exhibition marked the first time in the history of the Biennale that the U.S. Pavilion was organized by an institution whose visual arts program is focused exclusively on public art. [39] An accompanying catalogue, with essays by Rapaport, Darby English, Anne M. Wagner, and Tobi Haslett, was published by Gregory R. Miller & Company. [40]
Rapaport sits on the boards of the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, the Al Held Foundation, the von Rydingsvard and Greengard Foundation, and formerly Socrates Sculpture Park and the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College.
Louise Nevelson was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire, she emigrated with her family to the United States in the early 20th century. Nevelson learned English at school, as she spoke Yiddish at home.
Martin L. Puryear is an American artist known for his devotion to traditional craft. Working in a variety of media, but primarily wood, his reductive technique and meditative approach challenge the physical and poetic boundaries of his materials. The artist's Liberty/Libertà exhibition represented the United States at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Ursula von Rydingsvard is a sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is best known for creating large-scale works influenced by nature, primarily using cedar and other forms of timber.
Lynne Cooke is an Australian-born art scholar. Since August 2014 she has been the Senior Curator, Special Projects in Modern Art, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Teresita Fernández is a New York-based visual artist best known for her public sculptures and unconventional use of materials. Her work is characterized by a reconsideration of landscape and issues of visibility. Fernández’s practice generates psychological topographies that prompt the subjective reshaping of spatial and historical awareness. Her experiential, large-scale works are often inspired by natural landscapes, investigating the historical, geological, and anthropological realms in flux. Her sculptures present optical illusions and evoke natural phenomena, land formations, and water.
Deborah Kass is an American artist whose work explores the intersection of pop culture, art history, and the construction of self. Deborah Kass works in mixed media, and is most recognized for her paintings, prints, photography, sculptures and neon lighting installations. Kass's early work mimics and reworks signature styles of iconic male artists of the 20th century including Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, and Ed Ruscha. Kass's technique of appropriation is a critical commentary on the intersection of social power relations, identity politics, and the historically dominant position of male artists in the art world.
Michelle Grabner is an artist, curator, and critic based in Wisconsin. She is the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she has taught since 1996. She has curated several important exhibitions, including the 2014 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art along with Anthony Elms and Stuart Comer, and FRONT International, the 2016 Portland Biennial at the Oregon Contemporary, a triennial exhibition in Cleveland, Ohio in 2018. In 2014, Grabner was named one of the 100 most powerful women in art and in 2019, she was named a 2019 National Academy of Design's Academician, a lifetime honor. In 2021, Grabner was named a Guggenheim Fellow by The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2024 Grabner was inducted into the Wisconsin Academy of Art and Science.
Established in 1950, the List Visual Arts Center (LVAC) is the contemporary art museum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is known for temporary exhibitions in its galleries located in the MIT Media Lab building, as well as its administration of the permanent art collection distributed throughout the university campus, faculty offices, and student housing.
Jean Shin is an American artist living in Brooklyn, NY. She is known for creating elaborate sculptures and site-specific installations using accumulated cast-off materials.
Elaine A. King is a curator, critic, professor, and editor.
Sheila Pepe is an artist and educator living and working in Brooklyn, New York. She is a prominent figure as a lesbian cross-disciplinary artist, whose work employs conceptualism, surrealism, and craft to address feminist and class issues. Her most notable work is characterized as site-specific installations of web-like structure crocheted from domestic and industrial material, although she works with sculpture and drawing as well. She has shown in museums and art galleries throughout the United States.
Chul Hyun Ahn (Korean: 안철현) is a South Korean artist who works primarily with light.
Adam D. Weinberg is an art museum curator. He was the Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art for 20 years, from October 1, 2003 to October 31, 2023.
Orly Genger is a contemporary American sculptor. She currently lives and works in New York. Genger received a Postbaccalaureate degree from the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002 and graduated from Brown University with a BA in 2001.
Shinique Smith is an American visual artist, known for her colorful installation art and paintings that incorporate found textiles and collage materials. She is based in Los Angeles, California.
Kathy Halbreich is an American art curator and museum director.
Robert Owen is an Australian artist and curator. He lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.
The American pavilion is a national pavilion of the Venice Biennale. It houses the United States' official representation during the Biennale.
Martin Puryear: Liberty/Libertà is an art exhibition at the 2019 Venice Biennale's American pavilion featuring new works by sculptor Martin Puryear and curated by Brooke Kamin Rapaport. The Biennale is an international contemporary art biennial in which countries organize their own representation through national pavilions. Multiple journalists named the American pavilion an overall highlight of the Biennale.
Fatoş Üstek is a London-based independent Turkish curator and writer, working internationally with large scale organizations, biennials and festivals, as well as commissioning in the public realm. In 2008 she received her MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths College London, after completing her BA in Mathematics at Bogazici University in Istanbul.