The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has announced the recipients of its 2025 Arts Writers Grants, distributing a total of $1.04 million to 31 writers across the United States. The prestigious grants, ranging from $15,000 to $50,000, recognize excellence in contemporary art writing and support critical discourse in the visual arts field. Among this year's recipients are several notable contributors to ARTnews and Art in America, including Glenn Adamson, Jeremy Lybarger, Zoé Samudzi, and Catherine G. Wagley.
The 2025 grant cycle marks a significant expansion with the introduction of a new Translation category, offering $30,000 grants to writers translating books on contemporary visual art into English. This addition reflects the foundation's commitment to broadening access to international art scholarship and fostering cross-cultural dialogue in the arts community. The grants are distributed across four categories: Articles, Books, Short-Form Writing, and the newly established Translation category.
Since its inception in 2006, the Arts Writers Grant program has demonstrated remarkable growth and impact, supporting more than 450 writers with over $13.5 million in funding. The initiative was created to ensure that critical writing remains a valued and essential mode of engaging with visual arts in contemporary culture. The foundation recognizes that arts writers play a crucial role in expanding the reach and understanding of artistic work beyond traditional gallery spaces.
Joel Wachs, president of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, emphasized the vital role of arts writers in cultural discourse. "By engaging deeply with works of art, exploring cultural and political contexts, and drawing connections across diverse periods and practices, arts writers broadcast artists' voices far beyond gallery walls, reflecting and shaping critical issues in the social, political, and cultural landscape," Wachs stated. He added that "The Arts Writers Grant honors excellence in the field, and celebrates the generative role arts writing plays in creative and intellectual spheres."
Pradeep Dalal, director of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, praised the quality and relevance of this year's recipients. "It is heartening to see the bold work and urgent issues being addressed by the 2025 Arts Writers Grantees," Dalal commented. "The incisive criticism and expansive scholarship of this year's grantees underscore the invaluable role of visual art in our lives today."
The Articles category recipients include Omar Berrada for "Stitching the Desert: Blackness in North African Art," Miriam Felton-Dansky for "Vetting Regimes: The US Politics of Artist Visas from the Berlin Wall to the Muslim Ban," and Sohl Lee for "Contemporary Pasifika Art: Decolonial Currents and Communities in the Pacific Ocean." Additional article grant recipients are Elliot Josephine Leila Reichert for "The Integrity of the Exhibit: On Art, Censorship, and Palestine," Zoé Samudzi for "The Citizen and the Anthropophage: Postwar/Postcolonial Italian Memory and the Cannibal Boom," and Sunny Xiang for "Asian American Art During the First Intifada."
In the Books category, eight writers received grants for substantial scholarly works. These include Maggie Borowitz for "An Unofficial History of Mexican Pink," Y Howard for "Erratic Erotics: Analog Sexualities Mortalities," and Salar Mameni for "Bahamut: Aesthetic Flows of the Arabian Sea." Other book grant recipients are Lydia Platón Lázaro for "The Exchange Rate: Contemporary Women Artists and Longevity in the Caribbean," Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts for "Proving Ground: Proposals for a Genealogy of Black Feminist Land Art," Jenni Sorkin for "Deviant Scale: Cloth at the Body's Margins," Eric A. Stanley for "The Aesthetic Underground: Visual Insurgency in the Long 1970s," Ellen Tani for "Charles Gaines: Black Conceptualism and the Poetics of Systems," Drew Thompson for "Coloring Surveillance through Polaroids: The Poetics of Black Solidarity and Sociality," and Uranchimeg Tsultem for "Withstanding Power: Mongolian Artists on Resilience in the Past and Present."
The Short-Form Writing category recognized twelve writers for their contributions to arts journalism and criticism. Recipients include established critics Glenn Adamson, Emily Alesandrini, Lisa Hsiao Chen, Jean Dykstra, Ruth Gebreyesus, Robert Alan Grand, Tobi Haslett, Jeremy Lybarger, Richard May, Walker Mimms, Lilia Rocio Taboada, and Catherine G. Wagley. These grants support writers who contribute essential voices to ongoing conversations about contemporary art through shorter-format pieces.
The newly introduced Translation category awarded grants to three translators working to make international art scholarship accessible to English-speaking audiences. Jessica Gogan received funding to translate "Creation Sundays: A Poetic Collection of the Experimental in Art and Education" by Federico Morais from Portuguese. Eriko Ikeda Kay was selected to translate "From Their Onna no ko shashin to Our Girly Photo" by Yurie Nagashima from Japanese. Additionally, viento izquierdo ugaz received a grant to translate "Saturday Night Thriller and Other Writings, 1992-2013" by Giuseppe Campuzano from Spanish. These translation projects will bring important international perspectives on contemporary art to broader audiences and enrich the global dialogue around visual culture.
