Donate to the Rail
Help us build a $10 million endowment to keep the Brooklyn Rail independent, relevant, and free for generations to come
Or skip the fees mail a check to:
The Brooklyn Rail 253 36th Street, 3rd Floor, Suite C304 Brooklyn, NY 11232 Mailbox 20
The Brooklyn Rail is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Your donation is fully deductible. Questions? Email [email protected] ❤️
Our endowment
Over the past 21 years the Brooklyn Rail has undertaken a miraculous journey, bringing together in a single monthly publication art, music, dance, film, theater, and literature, along with thoughtful social and political meditations. Inspired by the dedication of our artist friends and colleagues, and by their ability to live and work with uncertainties and doubts, we too are committed to the practice of the impractical by keeping the Rail free, and also without a mission statement or a desire to exploit any specific demographic of readership. As it has been for the past 21 years, The Brooklyn Rail is quite literally for everyone.
In recent years the Brooklyn Rail has expanded its outreach. It has a robust online presence, and now reaches almost three million readers each month. And in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we launched our daily New Social Environment lunchtime conversations, which began on March 17, 2020, and takes place live on Zoom, weekdays at 1pm. This platform brings together our friends and colleagues from all the disciplines in the arts, the humanities, and science in an eminently democratic gathering of people from all over the world. These programs are recorded and are permanently available on YouTube. They are an embodiment of the great warmth and social intimacy that guides all the Brooklyn Rail’s endeavors. In response to the ongoing political and social crises of the past few years, we have used our expanded outreach to elevate the voices of people who have something to say that is worthwhile and significant.
We are also proud to have launched several ongoing new projects that further bring together our colleagues in the arts, humanities, and sciences. These include WE THE IMMIGRANTS, Weekend Journal, Art-in-Transit, Poetry-in-Transit, and Music-in-Transit. We have discovered with profound joy how these projects have a synergetic effect, opening dialogues between various fields and disciplines, and bringing together the older and younger generations, who have largely been kept separate for far too long. We’re also poised to mobilize the intelligence and wisdom of our mentors and friends in the academy with the wisdom of people in the outside world, since the privilege of passing on the baton of culture is the key to all our futures.
As many of you know, for the past 21 years. The Brooklyn Rail has led a kind of hand-to-mouth existence, constantly in need of funds to pay its staff, contributors, and production people. So, with the blessing of our board of directors we have decided to establish a first-ever endowment for the Rail, as a way of celebrating our 21st anniversary and the ongoing vitality of our programs. Our goal is to raise a $10 million endowment, which will allow us to be less burdened by financial instability and to be more generous with our print issues and our online editions, as well as the River Rail, a publication dedicated to climate change and global warming, and Rail Curatorial Projects, which aims to curate group exhibitions that respond specifically to location, cultural moment, and economic conditions. Having this $10 million endowment will allow us to support our important public programing, which includes poetry readings, film screenings, dance and music performances, panel discussions with artists, art historians, curators, scientists, writers, philosophers, and others. All of these events, as well as the print edition of the Brooklyn Rail, and everything else we do, are free to the public.
Please support and contribute to our endowment, which will keep the Brooklyn Rail alive, free, and relevant, to ensure that what we do in the arts, humanities, and sciences is made available to everyone, not just the cultural elites. Each and every one of our creative friends is like a musician who has the unique talent of being able to achieve a unique voice on a specific instrument. Each has a particular sound, which must and should be individually treasured. And at the same time, we know that when they bring their distinct instruments together they can also create an even richer symphonic sound that is capable of nurturing our souls.
This is one of the goals of the Brooklyn Rail. Please add your voice to the symphony.
In solidarity, deep appreciation, with love and courage as ever,
— Phong H. Bui
Founded in October 2000, the Brooklyn Rail provides an independent forum for arts, culture, and politics throughout New York City and far beyond.
Our journal features criticism of visual art, music, dance, film, theater and literature, alongside thoughtful political commentary and original fiction and poetry.
The Rail is distributed free of charge both in print and online, and further fulfills its mission by curating art exhibitions, panel discussions, reading series and film screenings that reflect the complexity and inventiveness of the city’s artistic and cultural landscape. Learn more »