Writing renewed

Congratulations to this year's winners of the Warhol arts writers grants. They include 5 writers working on articles, 9 on books, 1 on "New and Alternative Media", 3 on blogs and 8 for the slightly enigmatically titled, "Short Form Writing". $710,000 in all.

The grant program, originally funded for just three years, was renewed earlier this year for another 5 years. And despite my previous complaints about the program, I think they're vitally important and are making strides in becoming more inclusive and participatory. In particular, I was thrilled to see the inauguration of an Art Writing Workshop program in conjunction with the grants and the International Art Critics Association (AICA). The workshop pairs 11 budding arts writers with senior critics from the AICA to work with them in reviewing their writing and developing their craft. Participants are selected from the field of Warhol grant applicants who were not selected for the final phase. This is a great first step in encouraging and training a new generation of arts writers, and begins to take the grants beyond the simple funding of already-established luminaries in the field.

Inspiring Words: Arts Writing Grants

From the submission guidelines for The Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program:

"strives to honor and encourage writing about art

• that is rigorous, passionate, eloquent, and precise;
• in which a keen engagement with the present is infused with an appreciation of the historical;
• that is neither afraid to take a stand nor content to deliver authoritative pronouncements, but serves rather to pose questions and to generate new possibilities for thinking about, seeing, and making art;
• that is sensitive to both the importance and difficulty of situating aesthetic objects within their broader social and political contexts;
• that does not dilute or sidestep complex ideas but renders accessible their meaning and value;
• that creatively challenges the limits of existing conventions without valorizing novelty as an end in itself."

Tyler Green is killing me

Over at Modern Art Notes, Tyler Green scoops me on the new reprint of Dave Hickey's The Invisible Dragon, and hits one of the arts-writing-nails I was obliquely aiming at in yesterday's post on the Warhol grants, squarely on the head:

"...there are no mechanisms by which young, new writers might be identified and encouraged to write and publish books that are written to attract both art-diehards and crossover audiences."

Indeed. And while I know Hol is not yet in a position to support these budding writers at their most nascent (though we one day want to be) I hope everyone realizes that for now, as these writers are duly found and encouraged, Hol is here and ready, in fact was expressly designed, to give them a dynamic and viable outlet for their work.

Warhol Arts Writers Grants

In the run-up to CAA and the subsequent catch-up now, I almost missed the announcement of the latest Arts Writers Grants from the Warhol Foundation and Creative Capital.

First off, a special congratulations to Art Fag City -- Paddy Johnson's terrific art blog, and one of only two thus far recognized in these grants. Aside from Paddy, there's a full list of the 2008 winners at the Arts Writers site. Peruse them all, but I'd also draw your attention to Lori Waxman's intriguing sounding 60 Wrd/Min Art Critic project.

Aside from celebrating the rightly-earned accolades of the many individual writers and projects listed however, I continue to be frustrated that more couldn't be made of the tremendous amount of money and attention Warhol has thrown at this. In their own words, "the program was designed with the long-term goal of reinforcing the infrastructure of the field and insuring that critical writing remains a valued mode of engaging the visual arts." And though over the past three years they've incredibly given grants to more than 60 different arts writing projects, they've totally failed to use that money or their own influence to build the kind of larger cultural support that would have helped sustain arts writing long after their financial contribution dries up. A couple relatively simple things I would have like to see them try:

1. Require all funded writers to publish a free, electronic version of the finished work (or some significant portion thereof) on the Arts Writers site. Make the writing and scholarship available and applicable to as wide a public audience as possible. Build a dedicated bookstore where print copies of those publications (and perhaps all past publications from grantees) might be purchased. Promote the work, celebrate it, and above all, share it.
2. Set up a social network, or even just a facebook group, open only to grant applicants (winners or not), seeding a community of writers actively engaged in writing about the visual arts. Introduce them. Let them talk to and support one another. Encourage them to collaborate. Share further sources of funding and avenues of publication with them. Link this community of arts writers to the community of arts magazines funded at the other end of the arts writers grants and to the many art institutions and museums Warhol funds annually. Again, let them talk to and support on another. Encourage them to collaborate.

Simply by looking at funded writers as the basis of a dynamic and powerful community, rather than as individual mouths to feed, I believe the Warhol Foundation's arts writing grants could have radically altered the landscape well beyond the scope of the 60 individuals they've so far supported.