A CONVERSATION WITH PHONG BUI, ARTIST, CURATOR, PUBLISHER OF “THE BROOKLYN RAI," VISIONARY

On this show we’ll be joined by Phong H. Bui, artist, curator, poet, art critic, environmentalist, groupologist, impresario, and co-founder and publisher of The Brooklyn Rail, the Brooklyn-based, Brooklyn-inspired journal of the arts, culture, and politics – whose off-shoots include Rail Editions, River Rail and some 465 episodes of The New Social Environment, a daily live zoom-gathering of artists, intellectuals and art-lovers, launched in order to support and stimulate the Rail community in response to the pandemic.  

Phong Bui was born in 1964 in Hue, Vietnam, was graduated from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, continued his postgraduate studies at the New York Studio School, and studied independently with Nicholas Carone. His work has been included in group exhibitions in Pierogi, The Brooklyn Museum, and the North Dakota Museum of Art.  He has taught at Yale, Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Pennsylvania, and the School of Visual Arts, and has lectured at Columbia University, Cooper Union and Bard College. Among many awards and fellowships, he received the 2019 Jette Award for Leadership in the Arts from Colby College, as well as curating Occupy Colby: Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy at Colby Museum of Art.  Bui has curated over 50 monographic and group shows since 2000, including the 2013 first anniversary commemoration of Hurricane Sandy: Come Together: Surviving Sandy, Year 1, an exhibition of works by some 300 artists and ranked as New York’s #1 exhibit that year by New York Magazine.

He served as curatorial advisor to MoMA PS1 from 2007 to 2010 where he organized exhibitions by such artists as Jonas Mekas, Joanna Pousette-Dart, Tony Fitzpatrick and Jack Whitten and numerous group exhibitions.

His art criticism appears regularly in The Brooklyn Rail, as do his uncanny portraits of artists featured there.   Brooklyn magazine named him one of the “100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture,” and the New York Observer called him the “ringmaster of the Kings County art world.”  He lives in Greenpoint.

Hosted by Janet Coleman and David Dozer