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Video still by Garret Linn

Stephen Zacks has been awarded a Creative Capital| Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for his forthcoming book, A Beautiful Ruin: The Generation that Transformed New York, 1967-1985.

The Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant supports writers whose work addresses contemporary visual art through project-based grants issued directly to individual authors. The first program of its kind, it was founded in recognition of both the financially precarious situation of arts writers and their indispensable contribution to a vital artistic culture. The Arts Writers Grant 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.

Through all its grants, regardless of topic or project type, the Arts Writers Grant Program aims 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 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.

The Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program is spearheaded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts as part of its broader Arts Writing Initiative and is administered by Creative Capital.

This project has also been supported by NY State Council on the Arts, Graham Foundation for the Advancement of the Fine Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. It is tentatively planned for publication in 2013 by Inventory Books/ Princeton Architectural Press.

Important to Emphasize in Bold: Greenpoint is being rapidly popularized among college-educated postsuburban migrants to New York City. The area is on the cusp of a kind of accelerated demographic change experienced by neighborhoods like Soho, the Lower East Side, and Williamsburg. What will the consequences be for the community, can its residents influence patterns of capital formation—and should they even try?
RIPP Magazine, Spring, 2012.

Opening Up Opportunities: With a new, engaging design, New York City’s Department of Probation finds fresh purpose for its waiting rooms. 
Metropolis, Apr. 2012.

How to Lift 3,500 Tons: Jon Khachaturian began his career putting offshore oil rigs in place. Now he pulls them back out. 
Popular Science, Dec. 2011.

What does it mean when museums position themselves as engines of social change...powered by luxury car companies? Stephen Zacks considers new claims on the urban environment. 
The Architects' Newspaper, Nov. 8, 2011.

Review> Industrial Strength: Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World by Catherine Tumber. 
The Architects' Newspaper, Sep. 19, 2011.

A Moving Archive: True to the work of the pioneering Korean artist, the Nam June Paik Library turns research into a performance.
Metropolis, September, 2011.

Motor City Freeway Span: New bridge and park reunite Detroit's Mexicantown neighborhood. 
The Architect's Newspaper, Jun. 16, 2011.

A Beautiful Ruin: The Rebirth of New York City, 1975-1986.
Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts, production grant, 2011. 

Flint Spark? Competition seeks to reignite dead Rustbelt building. 
The Architect's Newspaper, May 31, 2011.

Détournement, or the Misguided Oppositional Ideology of the College-Educated Urban Elite. TARP Architecture Manual, Pratt Institute School of Architecture, Spring, 2011.

The Flint Ecological Urbanism Project, Pecha Kucha New York #11: The Dimensions of the New City, public presentation, May 7, 2011.

Government: Leadership Council: Five leading mayors talk about the challenges they face, the strengths of their cities, and their visions for the future. Metropolis, Jan., 2011.

Urban Intervention: The Syracuse Center of Excellence helps lay the foundation for the revitalization of a struggling Rust Belt city.  
Metropolis, November 2010.

I'll Take Manhattanville: Many states have clamped down on eminent domain. Recent court cases signal that New York won't be following their lead.  
Architectural Record, August, 2010.

"The Conservationist," "The Parkitect," "The Pedestrian."
Monocle, July/ August 2010.

Cinematic Architecture: Media Production Center, Studio Gang. 
Blueprint, June, 2010.

                                                                PHOTO Michael Transue

The New York State Council on the Arts has awarded me a grant for my narrative history of urbanism in New York during a pivotal moment in the late 70s and early 80s when art and architecture were about to transform the city into a global superstar.