It was announced earlier this week that Phoenix contributing writer Greg Cook's art blog, the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, has been awarded a $30,000 endowment from the Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program, which rewards "commitment to the craft of writing and the advancement of critical discourse on contemporary visual art."One of just three blogs to receive the grant, Cook's site is especially deserving: it's a dense, sprawling, and compulsively updated clearing-house for arty goings-on across the Northeast — combining criticism and analysis of local museum and gallery shows, interviews with artists both famous and up-and-coming, and original reporting about the region's art scene. (It was Cook who first reported this past January, for instance, that Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum was planning to close.)
"If you look really closely and relentlessly and intensely at this region, you'll find amazing things going on," says Cook — also an artist and photographer in his own right — who sees his blog writing "almost fertilizing or composting" an already fruitful but sometimes underappreciated local scene, and "hopefully [making] a more exciting community for all of us."
Cook isn't sure at the moment just how he'll put his prize money to use. In a blog post Monday, he noted that "this windfall will allow the team at the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research to heat our headquarters and eat this winter."
He wasn't entirely joking. "The life of a freelancer in this economy is an exciting one," he says with a wry laugh. "So this is an encouragement to keep at it."
Down the road, some computer upgrades and new projects may be in the offing, but in the meantime, Cook says, "We're mostly gonna spend it on some booze and chocolate."
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2009: The year in art, Fresh fruit and vegetables, Living history, More 
- 2009: The year in art
The year started off with a kick in the teeth when, in January, Brandeis University announced plans to shutter its Rose Art Museum and sell off its masterpieces.
- Fresh fruit and vegetables
The bleakest months of New England winter are ahead of us, so the prospect of leaving your toasty house to see art may not be at the top of your to-do list.
- Living history
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Bert Gallery, which Catherine Little Bert and her father-in-law Hugo Bert (who'd run Cottage Gallery in North Providence) opened in the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Providence in 1985.
- Slideshow: The MFA's Luis Melendez exhibit
Images of Luis Melendez's show at the MFA
- Birth of a museum
Nobody starts an art museum. Most of the art museums in America were founded in the later 19th century, when esthetics became part of the larger cultural language — the Portland Museum was started in 1882.
- Re-structuring
Three large oil paintings overwhelm the lobby at the Portland Museum of Art, introducing the show "Division and Discovery: Recent Works by Frederick Lynch," a beautiful and meditative collection found on the fourth floor of the museum.
- An expanding world
Housed in two galleries at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, “Methods for Modernism: Form and Color in American Art, 1900 to 1925” presents a healthy survey of works by artists featured in the two most definitive venues for introducing European modernism to America.
- Art in the air conditioning
From Picasso to William "Shrek" Steig's cartoons, and surfer photos to a Twilight Zone toy store, New England offers art worth traveling to this summer. Here we round up the best in the region, no matter the weather or your artistic inclinations.
- Cubism and collage
Maqbool Fida Husain has long been known as one of the grand old men of Indian art.
- Looking DuBack
Looking backward, history seems a whole lot more orderly than it does while you're living it.
- A special Maine feel
This may be remembered as the year that the Center for Maine Contemporary Art smashed headlong into a fiscal brick wall, and at this writing it is not clear if, after its current show closes this week, it will open again in the spring.
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, Entertainment, Visual Arts, Cultural Institutions and Parks, Museums, Brandeis University, Brandeis University, Arts, Rose Art Museum, Rose Art Museum, CULTURE, Less
