Creative Capital-Warhol Foundation Awards Grants to UH Art Professors

Raphael Rubenstein, Sandra Zalman Recognized Among Top Arts Writers

Some of the nation's top arts bloggers, essayists, critics and authors recently were recognized by the Creative Capital-Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program. Among the writers recognized are two University of Houston School of Art professors: Raphael Rubenstein and Sandra Zalman.

The Creative Capital-Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program supports writing efforts focused on contemporary arts. The program also is designed to encourage arts writers to continue sharing their critical and analytical insights.

Rubenstein's $30,000 grant supports his blog "The Silo," which offers profiles on contemporary artists. The amount of Zalman's grant is still to be determined, but it will aid her as she conducts research and writes an article titled "Whose Modern Art?: Huntington Hartford, MoMA and the Fight for Modern Art's Legacy."

"There are few grants for art criticism, which makes getting this grant all the more important," Rubenstein said. "I'm thrilled for the attention it brings to my project as well as for the financial support."

Rubenstein's blog showcases a range of visual artists who have not received substantial commercial success or commercial acclaim. In his analysis, Rubenstein explores the impact of these artists' works and factors that hindered their accessibility to critics and consumers.

 "One factor that compelled me to start "The Silo" was the ongoing communications revolution sparked by the web," he said. What blogs offer art critics is the opportunity to set their own agendas, rather than let their subjects be determined by the programs of galleries and museums. Unlike many others blogs, with "The Silo" I'm more interested in using the archiving potential of the web than in exploiting its immediacy."

In her article "Whose Modern Art?," Zalman will reflect on Huntington Hartford's Gallery of Modern Art, which opened in 1964in Manhattan to compete with the Museum of Modern Art.

"My article will discuss the ways in which each institution accounted for its art and its audience, as both museums presented divergent perspectives of modern art for public consumption," said Zalman, assistant professor of art. "I'm incredibly honored that the Warhol Foundation has chosen to fund this project, which I've wanted to pursue for some time now."

The Creative Capital -Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant awards project-based grants issued directly to individual authors. The program issues awards for articles, blogs, books, new and alternative media, and short-form writing projects and aims to support the broad spectrum of writing on contemporary visual art, from general-audience criticism to academic scholarship. To learn more about these grants, visit http://artswriters.org/.

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