Grantees

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Tom Vanderbilt
(Short-Form Writing)
Tom Vanderbilt writes about art, design, architecture, science, and technology, and contributes to a wide range of publications. He is inspired both by the engaged, generalist writers of the past—such figures as Lewis Mumford and George Orwell—and by C.P. Snow’s dictum, outlined in The Two Cultures, to lessen the gulf between disciplines in an effort toward greater understanding and richer social discourse. Whether exploring the elusive relationship between artistic truth and evolving technological means (in an ID Magazine piece on Clifford Ross), theorizing the expanding role of the screen in public space (in an Artforum essay on Doug Aitken), excavating the “underground” art associated with the Cold War-era missile defense program, or delineating the tension of artistic representation in the face of a totalizing media message (in an Artforum review of Sarah Morris’s documentary work on China), he is interested in visual culture as a polyvalent social force.