Jessica Lynne is a writer, art critic, podcaster, editor, and co-founder of ARTS.BLACK, a journal of art criticism that centers Black perspectives while engaging the contemporary art world. She is a winner of a 2025 Rabkin Prize. You can read her full bio at our website.

We invited Jessica to have a conversation about her work. The interview is accompanied by a newly commissioned portrait of Jessica in her studio during a residency at ALMA | LEWIS, an art platform for critical thinking, constructive dialogue, and creative expression dedicated to Black cultures in Pittsburgh.

Please note: Jessica is no longer at Momus, a change that occurred after our podcast was produced.

The interview has been gently edited for length and clarity.

Mentioned in this episode:

* ALMA | LEWIS: Artist Residency

* Educator, artist, and architect Amaza Lee Meredith

* Art on My Mind by bell hooks (The New Press, 1995)

* Writer and curator Taylor Aldridge

* Poet June Jordan

* Writer Toni Cade Bambara

* ”Toward a Black Feminist Criticism” by Barbara Smith (Center for Critical Education Inc., 1978)

* Writer Greg Tate

* Writer Joan Morgan

* ARTS.BLACK

* Jupiter Magazine

* Writer Camille Bacon

* Artist Chloe Bass

* Negroland by Margo Jefferson (Pantheon, 2015)

* Constructing a Nervous System by Margo Jefferson (Pantheon, 2022)

* Writer Randall Kenan

* WNBA

* Bisi Silva, founder and curator of Contemporary Art CCA, Lagos, Nigeria

* The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property by Eunsong Kim (Duke University Press, 2024)

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 for the Rabkin Interviews also includes Cindy Eggert Johnson, producer; Johnathon Olsen, editor; with research and copyediting by Katie Avila Loughmiller and Karen Samelson. Music is by Flint, HaHaHa, Ori Kaplan and Jimit. The Rabkin Prize is awarded through a nomination process, and an independent jury selects the winners.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rabkinfoundation.substack.com