Knight Foundation supports the Miami Rail to provide arts and culture coverage about Miami for local and national distribution via print and online platforms. Below, Nina Johnson-Milewski, publisher of the Miami Rail, writes about their work from the past year. Photo credit: Gesi Schilling. The Miami Rail has provided a valuable forum for analytical perspectives on arts and culture. An editorially independent expansion to Brooklyn Rail, the Miami Rail’s mission is grounded in the notion that sustained and documented critical insights are necessary for vitality and growth in the arts. The quarterly newspaper has recorded, and thereby contributed to, an exceptionally vibrant period in Miami’s cultural history. Each quarter the Rail has distributed 5,000 free copies of the printed publication across Miami, while making all of its contents available for free online. In its inaugural year, the Miami Rail has covered internationally renowned artists and exhibitions such as Rashid Johnson at Miami Art Museum, and Rita Ackermann at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami. It has published dialogues such as that between Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates and Diana Nawi, associate curator at the Miami Art Museum (prior to his solo “Soul Manufacturing Corporation” at Locust Projects). Likewise, readers have heard directly from the pioneer of video art, Bill Viola, as he spoke with the Rail about “the power of the moment, digital humanism and the catatonia of the image.”
