Friday, August 10, 2007

I'll kill an artforum editor, if I have to

Last year I signed up for the Andy Warhol Arts Writer Grant Program with the firm conviction that you only get anywhere in this game if you personally know someone on the board (or committee or whatever) and now that is being confirmed by blogger The Expanded Field, and seconded by Modern Art Notes. Oh, the nepotism and self-serving short-sightedness of the good 'ol boys system! Good thing I'll never have to worry about burning through all that money!

Here's Andrew's take on it: Though nearly every project given in the last round of this grant project is legitimate and deserving, the grantees are hardly an undistinguished bunch. Every single one has a university affiliation (except for the director of the Drawing Center), a quarter of them are editors at Artforum, and though I can't be positive, I don't think a single one is under 30, most over 40. One might conjecture that the under 30 crowd is hardly doing a lick of legitimate writing about art, but that's of course nonsense. Somehow I remember the original press material for the grants giving lipservice about helping young arts writers who hadn't become famous, but of course I may be mistaken. One of the grantees leaked to me that it was an inside job, they were good friends with one of the jurors. But I'm sure that the jurors are blind and judge purely on the merit of the project rather than on fame or friendship, except of course when they're not.

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