Ann McCoy is a writer and artist whose critical writing has appeared in journals, catalogs, and publications since the 1970s. She serves as Editor-at-Large at The Brooklyn Rail.
Writings by the Artist
“Elda Cerrato: Transcend/Transport”, The Brooklyn Rail, February 2026, p. 60
“To the Holy Sepulcher: Treasures from the Terra Sancta Museum”, The Brooklyn Rail, December/January 2026
“Utopia: Three Centuries of Sexuality in American Cults and Communes”, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2025
“Lucy Skaer: Stacks and Ledgers”, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2025
“Cameron”, the Brooklyn Rail, September 2025
“William Kentridge: A Natural History of the Studio”, the Brooklyn Rail, June 2025
“Wolfgang Laib: Towers of Silence”, the Brooklyn Rail, May 2025
“Etel Adnan”, The Brooklyn Rail, March 2025
“Mary Queen of Heaven”, The Brooklyn Rail, February 2025
“Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris”, The Brooklyn Rail, December/January 2024-25
“Olafur Eliasson: Your psychoacoustic light ensemble”, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2024
“Helène Aylon: Undercurrent”, the Brooklyn Rail, October 2024
“Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archeology of Memory”, The Brooklyn Rail, July/August 2024, p. 57
“Carol Wainio: Recent Paintings and Drawings”, The Brooklyn Rail, May 2024
“Maria Magdelena Campos-Pons: Behold”, The Brooklyn Rail, December/January 2024
“Harry Smith”, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2023, p. 62
“William Kentridge: Oh to Believe in Another World”, The Brooklyn Rail, October 2023, p. 86
“A Dweller on Two Planets”, The Brooklyn Rail, July/August
“A Greater Beauty: The Drawings of Kahlil Gibran”, The Brooklyn Rail, July/August
“Chrysanne Stathacos”, The Brooklyn Rail, June 2023, p. 85
“Comparative Hell: Arts of Asian Underworlds”, The Brooklyn Rail, April 2023
“Ritual and Memory: The Ancient Balkans and Beyond”, The Brooklyn Rail, February 2023
“Sophie Milner: Unstiching”, ARUSHA, London, December 2022
McCoy, Ann, “Pulled from the Shadows: William Kentridge’s Dance of Death,” in William Kentridge in Praise of Shadows, edited by Ed Schad, New York, DelMonico Books, 2022
“Aubrey Beardsley, 150 year Young”, The Brooklyn Rail, October 2022, p. 75
“Writing a Chrysanthemum: The Drawings of Rick Bafrton”, The Brooklyn Rail, July/August 2022
“Karla Knight: Road Trip”, The Brooklyn Rail, June 2022
“Pompeii in Color”, The Brooklyn Rail, May 2022, p. 75
“Maria Nordman: At the Start”, The Brooklyn Rail, February 2022, p. 95
“Wallace Berman: Off the Grid”, The Brooklyn Rail, October 2021, p. 80
“Robert Smithson: Abstract Cartography”, The Brooklyn Rail, July/August 2021
“Justin Matherly: Compost”, The Brooklyn Rail, February 2021
“Shari Mendelson: Animals, Idols, and Us”, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2020
“Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist”, The Brooklyn Rail, May 2020
“Michele Zalopony”, The Brooklyn Rail, March 2020, p. 51
“Babylon’s Ishtar Gate”, The Brooklyn Rail, February 2020, p. 59
“Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg: One Last Trip To The Underworld”, Brooklyn Rail, December 2019–January 2020 issue.
“Into the Mystic”, Brooklyn Rail, October 2019, p. 54
“Peggy Ahwesh: Cleve”, The Brooklyn Rail, June 2019, p. 65
“Pulled from the Shadows: William Kentridge’s Dance of Death”, Performance Art Journal, May 2019, pp. 1–8
“Archie Rand: Misfits”, The Brooklyn Rail, February 2019, web exclusive
“Nancy Holt”, The Brooklyn Rail, February 2019, p. 59
“Ann McCoy with Aaron Rosen”, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2018, web exclusive
“Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future”, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2018, p. 54
“Private Devotions and Conversations with Saints and Coyotes”, catalog essay, “Blessed Be: Mysticism, Spirituality, and the Occult in Contemporary Art,” MOCA, Tucson, pp. 12–13
“Sue Coe: Graphic Resistance”, The Brooklyn Rail, July/August 2018, web exclusive
“Joan Waltemath: M’s Crossing”, The Brooklyn Rail, June 2018, web exclusive
“Helen O’Leary: Home is a Foreign Country”, The Brooklyn Rail, June 2018, p. 59
“Stations of the Cross”, The Brooklyn Rail, April 2018, p. 45
“Bradley Eros: All that is solid melts into eros”, The Brooklyn Rail, April 2018, web exclusive
“Lesley Dill with Ann McCoy”, The Brooklyn Rail, February 2018
“Channa Horwitz”, The Brooklyn Rail, February 2018
“Benjamin Kress: New Paintings”, The Brooklyn Rail, January/December 2017
“Restoring the Minoans: Elizabeth Price and Sir Richard Evans”, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2017, p. 58
“Mystical Symbolism: The Salon of the Rose+Croix in Paris 1892–1897”, The Brooklyn Rail, September 2017, p. 59
“Making Space: Woman Artists in Postwar Abstraction”, The Brooklyn Rail, June 2017, p. 65
“Helene Aylon with Ann McCoy”, The Brooklyn Rail, May 2017, p. 67
“Lenore Malen: Scenes from Paradise”, The Brooklyn Rail, February 2017, p. 44
“Carolee Schneemann”, The Brooklyn Rail, December 2016/January 2017, p. 52
“Slavs and Tatars: Afteur Pasteur”, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2016, p. 57
“William Kentridge with Ann McCoy”, the Brooklyn Rail, May 2016, p. 57
“Recycling Religion”, the Brooklyn Rail, February 2016
“William Kentridge Takes New York”, the Brooklyn Rail, December–January 2015, p. 68
“Two Exhibitions Showcase the Bloody Relics of Hermann Nitsch’s Rituals”, Hyperallergic, October 15, 2015
“Richard Long Crescent to Cross”, the Brooklyn Rail, October 2015, p. 48
“Agnes Denes Living Pyramid”, the Brooklyn Rail, September 2015, p. 66
“Joan Capote, Collective Unconscious”, the Brooklyn Rail, July 2015, p. 61
“Joyce Kozloff”, the Brooklyn Rail, May 2015, p. 86
“Alfredo Jaar, Shadows”, the Brooklyn Rail, April 2015, p. 56
“Lucy Skaer”, the Brooklyn Rail, January 2015, p. 49
“Kristin Jones with Ann McCoy”, the Brooklyn Rail, January 2015, web exclusive
“Notes from an Old Meanad in the Trenches”, Brooklyn Rail, September 2014, web exclusive
“Here and Elsewhere”, The Brooklyn Rail, September 2014, p. 61
“Eve Andree Laramee with Ann McCoy”, The Brooklyn Rail, September 2014, p. 38
“Wellsprings Reconsidered”, Critic’s Page editor, The Brooklyn Rail, June 2014, p. 70
“Doug Wheeler”, The Brooklyn Rail, March 2014, p. 72
“Michael Zansky, A Vacation on Mars with God”, The Brooklyn Rail, February 2014
“Krzystof Wodiczko with Ann McCoy”, The Brooklyn Rail, February 2014, p. 12
“Nalini Malani with Ann McCoy”, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2013, p. 17
“Art in the Age of Vulnerability”, The Brooklyn Rail, October 2013, p. 37
“What is Art”, The Brooklyn Rail, September 2013
“Michelle Stuart”, The Brooklyn Rail, September 2013, p. 12
“Subliming Vessel: The Drawings of Mathew Barney”, Brooklyn Rail, July–August 2013, p. 47
“Eating Apollo’s Cattle”, The Brooklyn Rail, June 2013
“The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in 17th. Century China”, The Brooklyn Rail, May 2013, p. 44
“Paul Laffoley and Suzanne Treister”, Brooklyn Rail, March 2013
“Judith Bernstein: Hard”, Brooklyn Rail, February 2013, p. 53
“On Being Wounded in the Face”
“Thoughts on Girl Drive”, 2009, LABYRINT 09, Botkyrka Konsthall, Sweden
“The Death and Transformation of the Monkey King”, KHOJ, New Delhi
“Pfaueninsel”, a catalog for the Berlin exhibition, 2008
“Mirror into Forgiveness”, JAIN SPIRIT, December 2003–February 2004, pp. 36–37
“The Ethereal Forces”, Wystawa prezentowana w Muzeum Archidiecezjalnym Sztuki Religijne w Lublinie, 2003, exhibition catalog.
“Monica Serra, the Shadow and the Caged Bird”, SPRING 69, Woodstock, Connecticut
“Memoirs of C.A. Meier”, SPRING 68, Woodstock, Connecticut, 2001.
“Something About Mary, Memories of Mary Bancroft”, SPRING 67, Woodstock, Connecticut, 2000, pp. 130–136
M/E/A/N/I/N/G, An Anthology of Artist’s Writings, Theory and Criticism, Susan Bee and Mira Schor, editors, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2000, pp. 241–242, 357–359
“Overtime: A Forum on Art Making”, MEANING #10, November 1991, p. 13
“The Critic and the Hare: Meditations on the Death of My Rabbit”, MEANING #6, November 1989, p. 34
“Puella Aeterna, Crone Nevah!”, Crone Chronicles, Summer Solstice 1993, #16, pp. 13–14
“Alchemy and Suffering”, Ann McCoy, New Observations, #84, July 1, 1991, p. 18
“The Temple of Isis”, Ann McCoy (exhibition catalogue), New York: A.C.A. Contemporary, 1988
“Meditations on the Red Mass”, Bomb, Winter 1986, p. 38
“Maditaties Over De Rode Mis”, Museum Journal, No. 1, 1986
“The Red Sea and the Night Sea” (exhibition catalogue), Chicago: The Arts Club of Chicago, 1979
“The Red Sea–Das Rote Meer” (exhibition catalogue), Cologne: Museum Ludwig (in conjunction with Berliner Kunstlerprogramm’s D.A.A.D.), 1977, pp. 4–16
“Meditations on the Red Mass”, BOMB, no. XIV, Winter 1986, pp. 38–41
“Maura Sheehan’s Urban Artifacts”, Arts, November 1985, pp. 60–61
“The Daemon and the Night Sea”, Art International, Vol. XXIV, Nos. 3–4, November–December 1980, p. 113
(exhibition catalogue), New York: A.C.A. Contemporary, 1988
“The Critic and the Hare: Meditations of the Death of my Rabbit”, Ann McCoy
Edinburgh International (exhibition catalogue), Edinburgh Royal Scottish Academy, December 1987
“Alchemy is not a lost art but is alive and well in the dreams of modern man”
“Ann McCoy”, Second Sight: Biennial IV, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1986
“Alice Baber: Light as Subject”, Art International, Vol. XXIV, Nos. 1–2, September–October 1980, p. 135