The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant has named the twenty-two writers who are the recipients of its 2020 grants, which this year total $675,000. The grantees are divided into three categories—articles, books, and short-form writing—and will receive remunerative awards of between $15,000 and $50,000. The grants are issued in support of contemporary-art writing and are aimed at preserving critical writing in relation to the visual arts. Work considered ranges from brief reviews in magazines or newspapers to in-depth book-length studies, with topics targeting both general and special-interest audiences.

“Art writing that is incisive and attuned to the cultural moment positions artists as key contributors to urgent conversations in and beyond the art world,” said Joel Wachs, president of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, in a statement. “Through their rigorous and generous engagement with artists and art works, their close reading of historical and cultural contexts, and their creative juxtaposition of disparate practices, arts writers illuminate the unique way art engages with and explicates our idea of a national consciousness.”

“Today’s politically charged moment is palpable in the work of the writers selected to receive grants this year,” said program director Pradeep Dalal. “This year’s grantees will write about lesser-known and overlooked figures like Patssi Valdez before, during, and after her participation in the Chicano art collective ASCO, and Kynaston McShine, the legendary Trinidadian curator at MoMA.” Dalal went on to cite a number of grantees whose work is especially germane to the present moment. Among them were Naeem Mohaiemen + Anjali Singh and Ariel Goldberg, all of whom address the ethics of photography; Sergio Delgado Moya, who writes on sensationalism as violence; and Jessica Lynne, who explores the “intergenerational histories of Black women artists in the South.”

To date, the program has awarded roughly $9.3 million in support to more than 310 arts writers.

The full list of 2020 Warhol Foundation Arts Writers grantees is below.

Articles

Angie Baecker, “The Art Group and the Avant Garde: Collective Practices and the Socialist Legacy in Contemporary China”

Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, “Patssi Valdez: ‘I dare you question me,’ A Radical Photographic Portraiture”

Erica Moiah James, “Juan Francisco Elso: La luz de las cosas / The Light of Things”

Arnold Joseph Kemp, “Who is this black, queer curator? If you don’t remember it and do him, his last name is McShine”

Oluremi C. Onabanjo, “The Conditions of the Archive: Marilyn Nance and FESTAC 77”

Books

Sergio Delgado Moya, A Nervous Archive: Sensationalism and the Potency of Horror

Ariel Goldberg, Just Captions: Ethics of Trans and Queer Image Cultures

Naeem Mohaiemen + Anjali Singh, Harmit Singh’s War

Jerry Philogene, The Socially Dead and Improbably Citizen: Visualizing Haitian Liberation

Jeannine Tang, Living Legends: The Art and Care of Queer and Transgender History

Joseph L. Underwood, Forging a New Contemporary: Art from Senegal in Transnational Networks, 1974–1984

Short-Form Writing

Ratik Asokan

Jessica Baran

Barbara Calderón

Dan Fox

Bean Gilsdorf

Colony Little

Jessica Lynne

Lauren O’Neill-Butler

Amy Taubin

Monica Uszerowicz