Kaelen Wilson-Goldie is a journalist and critic with decades of international reporting experience who writes often about the relationship between art and politics. She is a winner of the 2026 Rabkin Prize. You can read more about Kaelen here. 

We invited Kaelen to have a conversation about her work and ideas. The interview is accompanied by a newly commissioned portrait of Kaelen at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, N.Y., by Kevin J Miyazaki.

The interview has been gently edited for length and clarity. 

Mentioned in this episode:

• The Boston Globe

• Writer Mike Barnicle

• University of Virginia

• The Cavalier Daily student newspaper

• The Declaration student newspaper

• C-VILLE Weekly

• Writer Allen Ginsberg 

• BBC America

• The Daily Star newspaper on web.archive.org

• Writer Lysandra Ohrstrom

• American University of Beirut

• Beautiful, Gruesome, and True: Artists at Work in the Face of Warby Kaelen Wilson-Goldie (Columbia Global Reports, September 2022)

• Filmmaker Amar Kanwar

• Artist Teresa Margolles

• Artist collective Abounaddara

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights

• abou naddara by Abounaddara

• Syrian Film Collective Withdraws from Venice Biennale, Claims Censorshipby Hrag Vartanian (Hyperallergic, May 2015)

• Major U.S. Museums Criticized for Responses to Ongoing George Floyd Protests by Alex Greenberger and Tessa Solomon (ARTnews, June 2, 2020)

• Artforum Fires Top Editor After Its Open Letter on Israel-Hamas War by Zachary Small (The New York Times, Oct. 26, 2023)

• Equator

• Le Temps newspaper

• Tribune de Genève newspaper

• Le Courrier newspaper

• Writer Jason Farago (2017 Rabkin Prize winner)

• Writer Siddhartha Mitter (2024 Rabkin Prize winner)

• Writer Emily Labarge

• Writer Aruna D'Souza (2021 Rabkin Prize winner)

• Writer Travis Diehl (2018 Rabkin Prize winner)

• Art Galleries Are Not OK by Marc Spiegler (The New York Times, June 19, 2026)

• Break, Learn, and Build by Kaelen Wilson-Goldie (The Public Review, Nov. 16, 2024)

• Foreigners Everywhere (Stranieri Ovunque) exhibit curated by Adriano Pedrosa (Venice Biennale, April-November 2024)

• The New Yorker

• Writer Peter Schjeldahl

• The Village Voice

• On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century by Cynthia Carr (Wesleyan University Press, August 2008)

• Teenarama: Rita Achermann by Peter Schjeldahl (The Village Voice, Jan. 22, 1998; digital reprint on Artnet.com)

• Istanbul Biennial

• Artist Henri Matisse

• Artist Alexander Calder

• Fauvism

• Stony Brook University

• Writer Katie Siegel

• Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life exhibit curated by Ruba Katrib (MoMA PS1, 2021)

• Curator Ruba Katrib

• Writer Jerry Saltz

• Burnaway

• The Summer I Lay Dying by Jasmine Amussen (Burnaway, May 26, 2026)

• Writer William Faulkner

• Bidoun magazine

• Writer Yasmine El Rashidi

• Artist Hassan Khan

• Here and Elsewhere exhibit (The New Museum, 2014)

• Writer Negar Azimi

• My Center is Not in the Solar System: Tributes to Etel Adnan essays by 23 writers, including Kaelen Wilson-Goldie (Bidoun and MACK, May 2026)

• Writer Sukhdev Sandhu

• Greater New York 2026 exhibit (MoMA PS1, April-August 2026)

• Photographer Dean Majd

• Mahmoud Khalil photographed by Dean Majd for Dazed magazine (Autumn 2025)

• Musician Saint-Lavant (Marwan Abdelhamid) photographed by Dean Majd (GQ Middle East, November 26, 2023)

• Whitney Biennial 2026 (Whitney Museum of American Art, March-October 2026)

• The Incidental Insurgents multimedia installation by Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme (2012-2015)

• Tassili n'Ajjer cave paintings

• Artist collective Aouchem

• Artist Baya Mahieddine

• Venus in Two Acts by Saidiya Hartman (Small Axe, June 2008)

• Whose Art Is It? by Jane Kramer (Public Planet Books, October 1994)

• Swagger and Tenderness: The South Bronx Portraits by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres (The Bronx Museum, 2022-2023)

• Curator Tom Finkelpearl

• Rosorita by Anita Desai (Scribner, January 2025)

• Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor (Riverhead Books, October 2025)

• Writer Lori Waxman
  

This episode of the Rabkin Interviews was produced by the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin  Foundation, an artist-endowed foundation based in Portland, Maine. The interview was conducted by Mary Louise Schumacher, a journalist and the executive director of the Rabkin Foundation. The portraits were made by artist-photographer Kevin J. Miyazaki. The production team includes Cindy Eggert Johnson, producer; Johnathon Olsen, editor; with research and copy editing by Danielle Yovino and Nan Williams.

Music is HaHaHa by Ariel Shalom, Present in the Past by Flint, and Silky Tofu by Just for Kicks. The Rabkin Prize is awarded through a nomination process, and an independent jury selects the winners.