January 16, 2026
Tani receives Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant
Ellen Tani, assistant professor of art history in the School of Art, was named a recipient of the 2025 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, which supports writing focused on contemporary visual arts. This funding will support Tani’s work on an ongoing book project, Charles Gaines: Black Conceptualism and the Poetics of Systems. The project explores the artist’s longstanding commitment to systems in the artistic process, positioning his work in relation to the politics of form, language and ideology, representation and the sublime, and epistemic racism. It is the first scholarly monograph on Gaines, an RIT alumnus and recipient of an honorary doctorate in 2023.
