RAPHAEL RUBINSTEIN

Raphael Rubinstein is widely recognized for his art criticism, curating of exhibitions and literary writing. Among his many books are The Turn to Provisionality in Contemporary Art: Negative Work (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), which Johan & Levi Editore published in Italian translation in 2024, The New Italian Poetry (Nonprofessional Experiments, 2024), The Miraculous (Paper Monument, 2014), A Geniza (Granary Books, 2015), and monographs on Shirley Jaffe (Flammarion, 2014), Guillermo Kuitca (Lund Humphries, 2020), Paul Pagk (Skira, 2025), and Cora Cohen (Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2026).

In addition to his influential writings on “provisional painting,” Professor Rubinstein has written extensively on postwar European art, in particular on the French Supports/Surfaces movement. He has also curated numerous exhibitions, including “Reinventing Abstraction: New York Painting in the 1980s” (Cheim & Read, New York), “Schema: Diagrammatic Painting” at Marlborough Gallery, New York, and “Under Erasure” at Pierogi Gallery, New York (the latter two shows co-curated with artist Heather Bause Rubinstein).

Prior to joining the UH School of Art, Professor Rubinstein served as a Senior Editor at Art in America and Managing Editor of Flash Art. He was also one of the founding instructors of the Art Criticism and Writing MFA at the School of Visual Art. His poetry has appeared in Harper’s, The Brooklyn Rail and The Best American Poetry 2015. Chapters from Libraries of Sand, his book about French-Egyptian writer Edmond Jabès, have appeared in Bomb, Jacket2, 3AM Magazine and The Fortnightly Review. In 2026, Wesleyan University Press issued a new edition of his translation of Marcel Cohen’s In Search of a Lost Ladino. He is a recipient of the award of Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters from the French government.