Karen Chernick is an art historian and writer living in Tel Aviv, specializing in arts and culture, food, and travel. As a college student at Brandeis University, she spotted a misidentified Reuven Rubin painting hanging above the photocopier at her work-study job. That modernist landscape led her to a better gig as the director of Rubin’s catalogue raisonné project, where her desktop detective work tracked down other lost paintings in Cleveland attics and British basements. She later earned an MA in art history from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts and studied with the unnervingly cool Linda Nochlin (with whom she never, for better or worse, discussed why have there been no great women artists. Not once.).
Chernick thinks that writing is the best excuse there is to talk to artists who move and inspire her. Being able to ask Maira Kalman why she loves Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, or Hank Willis Thomas how he uses retroreflective vinyl is a dream.
She is a member of the International Association of Art Critics and her writing has appeared on CNN, Haaretz, Elle Decor, The Times (UK), ARTnews, The Art Newspaper, Atlas Obscura, Smithsonian, Artsy, Artnet News, Observer, Lonely Planet, The Times of Israel, JTA, and The Brooklyn Rail, among other publications.