Venice Biennale https://www.artnews.com The Leading Source for Art News & Art Event Coverage Wed, 28 Feb 2024 13:30:21 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.3.3 https://www.artnews.com/wp-content/themes/vip/pmc-artnews-2019/assets/app/icons/favicon.png Venice Biennale https://www.artnews.com 32 32 Italy: ‘Venice Biennale Won’t Exclude Israel’, Perrotin Partners with eBay, Berlinale Film Festival Controversy Continues, and More: Morning Links for February 28, 2024 https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/italy-venice-biennale-wont-exclude-israel-perrotin-partners-with-ebay-berlinale-film-festival-controversy-continues-and-more-morning-links-for-february-28-2024-1234698023/ Wed, 28 Feb 2024 13:30:20 +0000 https://www.artnews.com/?p=1234698023 To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

THE HEADLINES

ISRAEL TO STAY AT VENICE BIENNALE. Italy’s culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, said the Venice Biennale would not exclude Israel’s from participating in the upcoming exhibition, following recent calls for its ouster, which the minister called “shameful,” reports Alex Greenberger for ARTnews. The group Art Not Genocide Alliance penned an open letter signed by hundreds, calling Israel’s participation a “Genocidal Pavilion,” and claiming the festival was “platforming a genocidal apartheid state.” In a Tuesday statement, Sangiuliano said, “Israel not only has the right to express its art, but it has the duty to bear witness of its people precisely at a time like this when it has been attacked in cold blood by merciless terrorists.”

PERROTIN ON EBAYPerrotin gallery is launching a partnership with eBay, and selling a selection of lithographs, posters, and artist editions via the Perrotin Store, a marketplace already up and running through eBay.fr. Items for sale include editions by the likes of Takashi Murakami, Sophie Calle, Claire Tabouret, Barry McGee, Mathilde Denize, JR, and Daniel Arsham, to name a few. In a press release today, the French gallery with international outposts stated that with this “historic” collaboration, both companies “hope to make art and beautiful objects accessible to all, for all budgets.” Founder Emmanuel Perrotin added that his family didn’t have the means to collect art when he grew up, but were always big fans of museum boutiques, and filled their home with posters. “That idea has always stayed with me in the development of the gallery. Art is for everyone!” he said.

THE DIGEST

German Minister of Culture Claudia Roth defended herself over calls for her resignation after she was seen applauding the controversial Berlinale film festival acceptance speeches of Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham and Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra, by saying on X (formerly Twitter) that her approval “was directed at the Jewish-Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham, who spoke out in favor of a political solution and peaceful coexistence in the region.” However, her hair-splitting response has unleashed a media storm, by implying she refused to applaud for the Abraham’s filming partner, the Palestinian Adra. [The Guardian]

The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) recently issued an “amber alert” to the art storage industry about the risk of its facilities being used for money laundering, tax evasion, and terrorist financing through its “long-term storage and concealment of high value assets by sanctioned persons.” [ARTnews]

Ukrainian artist Mikhail Reva’s sculptures made by debris from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have gone on view in Paris. The artist gathered more than two tons of war remnants, including Kalashnikov cartridges and rocket fragments fired on his own house to make the works exhibited at the US Embassy’s Hotel de Talleyrand in Paris. [Euronews and The Associated Press]

The California College of the Arts (CCA) has appointed Daisy Nam as the next director and chief curator of its Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. [Artforum]

Laura Turcan is named the new director of Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris.[Le Quotidien de l’Art]

THE KICKER

LOUIS JOHNSON DISCOVERY. A rarely seen, two-part film featuring master choreographer Louis Johnson, who worked in New York city in the 1950s and 60s, is given new visibility and context in a New York Times feature that shouldn’t be missed. The story of Johnson, who described himself as the “first Black Black” student at the School of American Ballet in 1950, is one of struggling against segregation, including being told Black bodies were not meant for ballet, and being denied acceptance to the New York City Ballet because of race. He nevertheless went on to perform on Broadway and created his own dance project, early aspects of which can be seen in the film, which the NYT scanned and digitally restored from its original print, housed at Manhattan’s Film-Makers’ Cooperative. Titled “Two by Louis Johnson,” the film was directed and shot by Richard Preston, showing works choreographed by Johnson during the civil rights movement. Johnson ultimately found success and worked for the Metropolitan Opera and received a Tony.

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Italy’s Culture Minister Says Venice Biennale Won’t Exclude Israel, Calls Protest ‘Shameful’ https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/venice-biennale-keeps-israel-pavilion-culture-minister-1234697902/ Tue, 27 Feb 2024 20:42:34 +0000 https://www.artnews.com/?p=1234697902 Italy’s culture minister said on Tuesday that the Venice Biennale would not exclude an Israeli presence this year, even as thousands of artists signed an open letter calling for the festival to do so.

That letter called Israel’s presentation at the art festival a “Genocidal Pavilion,” and accused the Biennale of “platforming a genocidal apartheid state.” It also said the Biennale exhibited a “double standard” by commenting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 but having not yet issued a statement about Gaza, where nearly 30,000 people have been killed since the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel.

Past and current Venice Biennale participants signed the open letter, as did Turner Prize winners and other acclaimed artists.

While the Biennale still has not responded, Italian culture minister Gennaro Sangiuliano seemed to suggest that the Israeli Pavilion would go on as planned.

In a tersely worded statement sent out earlier today, Sangiuliano called the letter “shameful” and claimed that those who signed it had threatened to undo a culture of freedom in Italy.

“Israel not only has the right to express its art, but it has the duty to bear witness of its people precisely at a time like this when it has been attacked in cold blood by merciless terrorists,” he wrote. “The Biennale will always be a space of freedom, encounter and dialogue, not a space of censorship and intolerance. Culture is a bridge between people and nations, not a dividing wall.”

Art Not Genocide Alliance, the group behind the open letter, said in a statement posted to social media, “Culture is not a ‘bridge between people and nations’ when one nation is involved in the elimination of another, the citizens of which are kept behind a dividing wall.”

Israel has had a pavilion at the Venice Biennale since 1950 and is one of the nations that regularly exhibits at the festival in a dedicated structure for the country. This year, artist Ruth Patir will represent Israel.

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60 Must-See Exhibitions to Visit This Spring https://www.artnews.com/list/art-news/news/museum-shows-to-see-spring-2024-us-international-venice-biennale-1234697357/ Tue, 27 Feb 2024 10:00:00 +0000 https://www.artnews.com/?post_type=pmc_list&p=1234697357 The big themes of the spring season in the world of museums and biennials are migration and mutation. The former is the loose focus of this year’s edition of the Venice Biennale, the world’s biggest art festival, which will explore artists who live in diaspora. But it is also the subject of a range of retrospectives for artists whose work provides a rebuke to the notion of national borders as fixed, immutable things.

Transformation was a core component of Surrealism, an avant-garde that is turning 100 this year. It is, however, not the only movement celebrating an anniversary in 2024—Impressionism, the French movement launched in 1874, is now 150 years old. Both -isms are being toasted in big shows this season.

But it is not just living artists and modernists who are being feted. An Angelica Kauffman retrospective, long in the works, is finally here, and so is a restoration of a prized Jan van Eyck painting.

Below, a look at 60 must-see museum shows and biennials to visit this spring.

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Thousands of Artists Urge Venice Biennale to Drop ‘Genocidal’ Israeli Pavilion: ‘No Death in Venice’ https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/venice-biennale-israeli-pavilion-open-letter-artists-1234697649/ Mon, 26 Feb 2024 16:07:08 +0000 https://www.artnews.com/?p=1234697649 Thousands of artists have signed an open letter that calls on the Venice Biennale, the world’s top art festival, to drop Israel’s national pavilion this year. In continuing to mount the Israeli Pavilion, the artists say, “the Biennale is platforming a genocidal apartheid state.”

Current Biennale participants and past ones alike signed the letter, as did Turner Prize winners, widely acclaimed artists, and at least one curator of a major international biennial.

The letter comes as the death toll in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas attack approaches 30,000, according to the local health ministry.

Following the Hamas attack, which killed 1,200 Israelis and involved the taking of more than 200 hostages, Israel has repeatedly led airstrikes and a ground invasion on Gaza. The country is expected to soon invade Rafah, a city in southwestern Gaza where an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering.

The open letter said that Israel’s military action in Gaza was tantamount to “genocide” and called for a ceasefire.

“As the art world readies itself to visit the Giardini’s nation-state diorama, we say platforming art representing a state engaged in ongoing atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza is unacceptable. No Genocide Pavilion at the Venice Biennale,” the letter said.

Moreover, the letter claimed that the Biennale had created a “double standard” by speaking out in favor of Ukraine after it was invaded by Russia in 2022 while having not yet made a statement on Gaza. (Russia did not participate in the 2022 Biennale, and will once again not have a pavilion this year.)

A Venice Biennale spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Israel, which has a permanent structure for its pavilions in the heavily trafficked Giardini venue, is this year set to be represented by Ruth Patir. In October, Patir and curators Mira Lapidot and Tamar Margalit said they were “stunned and terrified” by the Hamas attack and added, “Our immense sense of grief is compounded by profound worry about the escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and extends to the tragic loss of lives there, and what’s still to come.”

Meanwhile, Faisal Saleh, the director of the Palestine Museum US, which staged an officially sanctioned exhibition alongside the 2022 Venice Biennale, said that his proposal for a show this year was rejected. There will, however, be a collateral event that does include Palestinian artists that is not organized by that institution.

Saleh was among the signatories of this open letter. Patir, Lapidot, and Margalit declined to comment.

Alongside Saleh were others who have spoken out in favor of Palestine: photographer Nan Goldin, who publicly canceled a New York Times project, claiming the publication had a “complicity with Israel”; artist Mike Parr, who was reportedly dropped by his Australian gallerist after staging a performance that mentioned Israel and Palestine; and David Velasco, who was fired as editor of Artforum after the publication ran an artists’ open letter calling for a ceasefire. (Artforum is owned by Penske Media Corporation, the parent company that also owns ARTnews and Art in America.)

Jesse Darling, the winner of last year’s Turner Prize, also signed the letter, as did artists such as Carolina Caycedo, Meriem Bennani, Naeem Mohaiemen, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Evan Ifekoya, Lydia Ourahmane, and Katja Novitskova.

Correction, 2/27/24, 10:30 a.m.: This article misstated that the painter Ahmed Morsi signed the letter. He did not sign the letter, but an architect of the same name did. Additionally, the headline has been updated to reflect the current tally of signatories.

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Climate Activists Target Botticelli’s ‘The Birth of Venus,’ Loewe’s Next Craft Prize Set for Paris, Protestors Crash New York’s Jewish Museum, and More: Morning Links for February 14, 2024 https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/climate-activists-target-botticellis-the-birth-of-venus-loewes-next-craft-prize-set-for-paris-protestors-crash-new-yorks-jewish-museum-and-more-morning-links-for-february-14-2024-1234696313/ Wed, 14 Feb 2024 13:17:25 +0000 https://www.artnews.com/?p=1234696313 To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

BOTCHED BOTTICELLI. Climate activists are continuing their greatest-hits museum tour and have targeted Botticelli’s fifteenth century masterpiece The Birth of Venus at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. This time, two activists from the group Last Generation stuck images of a flooded Tuscan town to the protective glass covering of Botticelli’s painting. Their curatorial choice is not lost on observers, with Botticelli’s work also depicting the subject of water, as Venus rises from the sea. Before being dragged away by police, the men told the crowd in Italian that, “the government continues to pretend that fields did not burn in January, that water will not be a problem this summer, that houses destroyed by floods are accidental events and not caused by human choices.”

ABBEY CONTEMPLATION. Officials at London’s Westminster Abbey said a looted Ethiopian tablet that represents the Ark of the Covenant and the Ten Commandments, which has been sealed inside the abbey’s altar since the late 19th century, should be returned to the Ethiopian Church. The artifact, known as a tabot and considered sacred, was snatched by British troops during the battle of Maqdala in 1868, and donated to the abbey. “The Dean [David Hoyle] and Chapter has decided in principle that it would be appropriate to return the Ethiopian tabot … We are currently considering the best way to achieve this,” an Abbey spokesperson told The Art Newspaper. They added the process “may take some time,” information that may ring redundant to Ethiopians, after over 150 years of waiting.

The Digest

Protestors crashed a talk at New York’s Jewish Museum Tuesday night, featuring Israeli artist Zoya Cherkassky and the museum director James Snyder. The artist is exhibiting drawings about the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Protestors said they were “anti-Zionist Jews,” and that Cherkassky’s exhibition was “imperial propaganda,” while the museum program was a means to “manufacture consent for genocide.” [ARTnews]

Pope Francis plans to visit the 60th Venice Biennale on April 28. It will be the 87-year-old pontiff’s first time at the biennial, and the Holy See pavilion, located in the women’s prison at Venice’s Giudecca Island, is reportedly at the top of his bucket list. [Artnet News]

The works of 30 finalists for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize will go on display at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo on May 14. Many of the works were created from recycled materials, reflecting a recurring theme of “elevation and transformation of the everyday.” The winner of the prize will receive 50,000 euros. [WWD]

French President Emmanuel Macron has backed off controversial plans to remove the historic, green bookselling kiosks from the Seine River banks, in time for the 2024 Summer Games opening ceremony, telling authorities they best adapt. The booksellers, known as “bouquinistes,” also peddle vintage prints and Belle Epoque posters. For months they have protested the now scrapped police order to remove some 570 stalls ahead of the opening ceremony, for security reasons. [Le Monde]

French dealer Emmanuel Perrotin has ended his secondary-market collaboration with Tom-David Bastok and Dylan Lessel. In 2021 the trio opened a Paris gallery dealing in the secondary market, but following a stated mutual decision, Bastok and Lessel have purchased Perrotin’s share of that space. They also bought Perrotin’s portion of a 2022-inaugurated gallery in Dubai. [The Art Newspaper, France]

The Center for Art & Advocacy has announced the six 2024 recipients of its Right of Return Fellowships. The 2017-founded program is the first national initiative of its kind to support previously incarcerated artists who aim to improve the justice system. [Artforum]

Union workers at the Eiffel Tower have voted to go on strike starting Feb. 19, over disagreement with the city’s financial management of the monument. [Challenges]

The Kicker

SOUNDS OF TRANSFORMATION. A La Scala concert by the Orchestra of the Sea, is being performed on violins made from wood recovered from washed up smugglers’ boats carrying migrants to Italy. It doesn’t stop there: The luthiers who chiseled the violins, violas and cellos are inmates in Italy’s largest prison. The project called “Metamorphosis” is all about transformation – the wrecked migrant boats are recast into instruments, and the inmates learn a new skill and craft through a rehabilitation program. Two prisoners were able to see the orchestra’s debut concert Monday, featuring pieces by Bach and Vivaldi. The idea to use the wood from the discarded boats to make instruments originally came from inmates trained as luthiers. “We don’t know what happened to [the migrants], but we hope they survived,” said one prisoner in the program, speaking to AP.

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Jackie Robinson Statue Stolen and Burned, Spanish Outcry Over ‘Effeminate’ Jesus Painting, Rubin Museum to Shutter, and More: Morning Links for February 1, 2024 https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/jackie-robinson-statue-stolen-and-burned-spanish-outcry-over-effeminate-jesus-painting-rubin-museum-to-shutter-and-more-morning-links-for-february-1-2024-1234694801/ Thu, 01 Feb 2024 13:16:38 +0000 https://www.artnews.com/?p=1234694801 To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

The Headlines

ROBINSON ROBBED. A Jackie Robinson statue in Wichita, Kansas was stolen and later found burned. On January 24 the statue of the first Black player in Major League Baseball and a civil rights activist, was cut off its pedestal, just above the ankles, and removed from McAdams Park by two people, according to police, who have surveillance footage of the crime. Days later, firefighters responding to a fire in a “small residential-style trash can,” discovered some of the statue remnants among the burnt items. A GoFundMe campaign launched to replace the artwork has reached over $168,500. “Nobody can understand why this would happen,” said Bob Lutz, the executive director of the nonprofit League 42, which installed the sculpture, according to the New York Times.

TOO SEXY JESUS. Spanish conservatives are denouncing as “effeminate,” “sexualized,” and “offensive” a painting depicting Jesus Christ, which was meant to be the poster for Easter Week in Seville, sparking a national controversy. The painting by local artist Salustiano Garcia shows Jesus after his resurrection, almost entirely in the nude, per much of art historical tradition. However, critics calling the artwork a “shameful … aberration,” are demanding the poster be scrapped in a petition signed by more than 10,000 people. The artist told the local ABC newspaper the portrait was based on an image of his son, done with “deep respect.” In response, opposition Socialist party member Juan Espadas denounced “expressions of homophobia and hatred.” [AFP]

The Digest

The Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan will close in October and lay off about 40 percent of staff. After two decades, the institution dedicated to art of the Himalayas said they would continue to loan works and operate as a spaceless, research-facilitating organization. The museum has recently repatriated parts of its collection, believed looted, but museum director Jorrit Britschgi told ARTnews the closure was unrelated. [ARTnews]

The Venice Biennale has named 331 artists for its 2024 edition, titled “Foreigners Everywhere.” Held from April 20 to November 24. The show’s curator, Adriano Pedrosa, said the theme, “has several meanings. First of all, that wherever you go, and wherever you are, you will always encounter foreigners. They – we – are everywhere. Secondly, that no matter where you find yourself, you are always truly and in deep down inside of foreigner.” [ARTnews]

The Peruvian government has dropped plans to outsource tickets to Machu Picchu after a week of protests, which blocked access to the site, and included reports of police firing tear gas at picketers. Up to 4,500 people visit Machu Picchu, a World Heritage Site, per day. Damage from the protests is estimated to cost about $4.7 million. [AP

The National Library of France [Bibliothèque nationale de France] said an unspecified number of rare Russian books were stolen from its collection after similar thefts in France and Europe were committed by swapping original Russian literature editions for fakes. One man was arrested on Monday in Estonia for steeling eight rare books, including works by Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol, from the University of Tartu Library in 2022. [Le Figaro]

Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama will wrap the façade of the Barbican Centre in London with a 21,527 square-foot (2,000 square-meter) fabric art installation called Purple Hibiscus (2023-24). The pink and purple cloth has been handwoven in a large-scale collaboration with people from northern Ghana. [The Art Newspaper]

Artist Lisa Hunt has died at 55, in New Jersey. The printmaker and designer was known for her intricate gold leaf graphic collages and screen-prints inspired by West African and African American textiles, as well as the Art Deco movement. [Hyperallergic]

The New York auction house Guernsey said it has cancelled a planned Feb. 22 sale of Nelson Mandela’s personal belongings, due to a South African government agency’s opposition. In an ongoing case, the South African Heritage Resources Agency went to court to seek the return of the objects, due to their perceived heritage value. [The New York Times]

The Kicker

WANTED! NEW COLLECTORS. In his new book How to Collect Art, author and art economist Magnus Resch contends galleries are still privately grappling with financial challenges as revenues stagnate and new buyers remain limited. The book, which surveyed nearly 200 collectors and gallerists, follows similar conclusions Resch made nearly a decade ago. “The art market has long faced a shortage of new buyers,” Resch told ARTnews Reporter Angelica Villa. “Despite the global number of millionaires doubling in the last decade and record attendance at art events, the value of the art market has remained only stable. This discrepancy points to a conversion problem, wherein the newly affluent aren’t seamlessly transitioning into art buyers,” he said.

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Morocco Scraps Planned Venice Biennale Pavilion in ‘Last-Minute Decision’ https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/morocco-replaces-venice-biennale-curator-artists-1234693167/ Wed, 17 Jan 2024 21:43:46 +0000 https://www.artnews.com/?p=1234693167 With less than four months before the opening of the 60th Venice Biennale, the Moroccan Ministry of Culture has dropped the artists and curator originally chosen to represent the country in its first-ever national pavilion.

Le Monde Afrique reported on Wednesday Mahi Binebine, the pavilion’s curator, received news from a Moroccan ministry official on Monday that he, along with artists Safaa Erruas, Majida Khattari, and Fatiha Zemmouri, would no longer be involved with the presentation. According to Binebine, the ministry official did not provide a justification for the “last-minute decision” to replace him with art historian and independent curator Mouna Mekouar.

Binebine told Le Monde Afrique that he spent “several tens of thousands of euros” to ensure the project was completed within three months and that images of the art were ready to be sent to the Biennale by its January 11 deadline. Binebine and the artists had reportedly traveled to Venice in September to visit the pavilion in preparation of the event and had even met with the director of the biennale, Adriano Pedrosa. In the intervening months, they had repeatably been in contact with the ministry concerning the reimbursement and promised financing for additional preparations.

The Venice Biennale and Moroccan Ministry of Culture did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Erruas, an artist based in Tetouan, in northern Morocco, told Le Monde Afrique that the situation was “a nightmare,” explaining that she had rented a second workshop and collaborated with dozens of artists to construct the 42-foot-long installation set to debut in Venice. “How can an institution that is supposed to help and promote artists disrespect them to this extent,” she said.

The next Venice Biennale will run from April 20 to November 24. The main exhibition, which is curated by Pedrosa separately from the pavilions, is titled “Foreigners Everywhere.” It explores the concept of a borderless world “rife with multiple crises concerning the movement and existence of people across countries,” according to its descritpion. 

Morocco was among those making their Venice Biennale debut, alongside Benin, which has never before had a pavilion there.

In a statement posted to Instagram on Tuesday, Binebine and the artists said they wished “all the success in the world” to their replacements.

“With dignity, we maintain hope in this Morocco which hurts us,” the statement concluded.

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Right-Wing Intellectual and Journalist, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, May Be the Next President of the Venice Biennale https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/pietrangelo-buttafuoco-journalist-president-venice-biennale-1234685029/ Fri, 27 Oct 2023 17:02:51 +0000 https://www.artnews.com/?p=1234685029 Right-wing journalist Pietrangelo Buttafuoco has been nominated to replace Roberto Cicutto as president of the prestigious Venice Biennale, according to multiple English and Italian news outlets.

Buttafuoco is a close friend of Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and a supporter of her far-right Brothers of Italy party. He began his career as a writer for several right wing Italian newspapers and magazines and was once the leader of the Fronte della Gioventù, the youth wing of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement party that preceded Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, according to The Art Newspaper.

Despite Buttafuoco’s lack of managerial experience, supporters view his nomination as triumph for Italy’s cultural right and fatal blow to the Italian liberal/left which, according to Raffaele Speranzon, an Italian senator and member of the Brothers of Italy, “thought of the Biennale Foundation as a fiefdom where it could place friends and acolytes.” Speranzon has said that Buttafuoco’s nomination “represents the kind of sea change the Meloni government wants to extend to every cultural and social institution in the nation: figures will be chosen for their depth, competence and experience alone.”

Center-left politician Rachele Scarpa has said Speranzon’s comments “bring forth a chilling vision of how the right conceives the cultural institutions” in Italy. “What is most alarming is that he calls into question the work of an institution, such as La Biennale, whose sole aim must be to take care of its exhibitions and certainly not to make the [Brothers of Italy] happy.”

Italy’s minister of culture Gennaro Sangiuliano confirmed Buttafuoco’s nomination, which now has to be assessed by the cultural commissions in Italy’s Senate and House of Deputies before it becomes official. Their decision is to be made public on November 14, according to Artnet News

Cicutto, who was appointed as president of the Biennial in 2020 by the then-culture minister Dario Franceschini, will step down as president when his contract ends in March.

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Jeffrey Gibson to Become First Indigenous Artist to Represent US Solo at Venice Biennale https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/jeffrey-gibson-us-pavilion-2024-venice-biennale-1234675651/ Thu, 27 Jul 2023 15:40:27 +0000 https://www.artnews.com/?p=1234675651 In a historic first, Jeffrey Gibson will represent the United States at the 2024 Venice Biennale, marking the only time in the American Pavilion’s more-than-90-year history that an Indigenous artist has done it solo.

Gibson, a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and who is also of Cherokee descent, is known for vibrantly colored paintings, sculptures, and more that often incorporate text, some of it appropriated from pop music. At times, the work edges into abstraction, in an attempt to marry styles borrowed from Western modernism and Native American craft.

Beadwork has figured prominently in his work, as have spray-painting and other techniques. Among his most famous works are sculptural pieces formed from punching bags that he beads in patterns recalling the clothes worn by powwow dancers.

Two curators will work with Gibson on the pavilion: independent curator Abigail Winograd and Kathleen Ash-Milby, a Portland Art Museum curator of Native American art who is a member of the Navajo nation, making her the first Indigenous curator to work on a US Pavilion. They commissioned the pavilion with SITE Santa Fe director Louis Grachos.

“Throughout his career, Jeffrey has challenged us to look at the world differently through his innovative and vibrant work,” Ash-Milby said in a statement. “His inclusive and collaborative approach is a powerful commentary on the influence and persistence of Native American cultures within the United States and globally, making him the ideal representative for the United States at this moment.” 

The Portland Art Museum and SITE Santa Fe are the two commissioning institutions. That in itself is a rarity—most US Pavilions have been commissioned by East Coast museums in the Northeast.

This is the second US Pavilion in a row to mark a first. The 2022 one was done by sculptor Simone Leigh, who was the first Black woman ever to stage the pavilion solo. Portions of that pavilion currently figure in an acclaimed survey now on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, its commissioning institution.

The US Pavilion, which has been devoted to solo presentations since 1986, has previously featured at least one Indigenous artist: the Hopi painter Fred Kabotie, who showed in a group presentation in 1932.

Gibson’s pavilion comes at a high moment in his career. Having shown previously in editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art, the Whitney Biennial, and Desert X held in the past decade, his work is now on view at CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art in Upstate New York, where it figures in a show called “Indian Theater,” about performative practices and Indigenous aesthetics. Gibson is also due to a release a book next month that he edited called An Indigenous Present, which is being billed as a survey of contemporary Indigenous art.

A host of other pavilions have already been announced for the Venice Biennale, where John Akomfrah will represent Great Britain, Julien Creuzet will represent France, and Archie Moore will represent Australia, becoming the second-ever Australian artist to do so.

Meanwhile, Museu de Arte de São Paulo artistic director Adriano Pedrosa will curate the main show, which is not related to the national pavilions. His exhibition will take the title “Foreigners Everywhere” and will focus on diasporas and migrants.

Clarification, 7/27/23, 2:10 p.m.: The headline for this article has been clarified to reflect that Gibson is the first Indigenous artist to represent the US solo.

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Venice Biennale’s 2024 Edition to Celebrate Diasporas Under the Title ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/venice-biennale-2024-theme-foreigners-everywhere-adriano-pedrosa-1234672167/ Thu, 22 Jun 2023 12:05:57 +0000 https://www.artnews.com/?p=1234672167 The 2024 edition of the Venice Biennale, the world’s most important recurring art festival, will focus on outsiders, foreigners, and more, highlighting artists who have traveled at various points in their careers.

Its curator, Museu de Arte de São Paulo artistic director Adriano Pedrosa, revealed the biennial’s theme at a press conference held Thursday morning. With that announcement, there are fewer than 10 months to go before the Venice Biennale opens in Italy on April 20, 2024.

Pedrosa has named the show “Foreigners Everywhere,” a reference to a 2004 Claire Fontaine piece featuring that phrase spelled out in many different colors and languages. That work is itself an allusion to a Turin-based anarchist collective of the same name in Italian, Stranieri Ovunque.

At MASP, Pedrosa has gained a reputation for game-changing exhibitions that find innovative ways of slicing art history, often with a stated focus on race, gender, and sexuality. He’s best known for an exhibition series known as “Histórias,” the best-known show of which, focused on Afro-Atlantic histories, traveled to the US in an abridged form.

Pedrosa, who was born in Rio de Janeiro, is the first Latin American ever to organize the Venice Biennale, an exhibition that has historically been curated by European men.

“Foreigners Everywhere” builds on the work Pedrosa has done at MASP with a show that he said would emphasize a multiplicity of races, genders, and nationalities, all in service of what he called “a celebration of the foreign, the distant, the outsider, the queer, as well as the indigenous.”

“Artists have always travelled under the most diverse circumstances, moving through cities, countries and continents, a phenomenon that has only grown since the late 20th century—ironically, a period marked by increasing restrictions on dislocation or displacement of people,” Pedrosa said in a statement. “The Biennale Arte 2024 will focus on artists who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, émigrés, exiled, and refugees—especially those who have moved between the Global South and the Global North.”

Pedrosa’s Biennale theme suggests a continuation of what was started in 2022 by Cecilia Alemani, whose edition was titled “The Milk of Dreams” and centered around female and nonbinary artists, with men accounting for fewer than a tenth of the 200-plus artists she included. That exhibition also made waves by including a grouping of “capsule” shows composed mainly of art from decades ago that provided her focus on Surrealism’s reemergence with a historical grounding.

The 2024 edition will include what Pedrosa is calling a “Nucleo Contemporaneo” and a “Nucleo Storico,” sections dedicated to new and old works, respectively. That latter portion aspires to expand the history of modernism beyond Europe and North America.

“We are all too familiar with the history of modernism in Euroamerica, yet the modernisms in the Global South remain largely unknown and thus they assume a truly contemporary relevance—we urgently need to learn more about and from them,” Pedrosa said. “European modernism itself travelled far beyond Europe throughout the 20th century, often intertwined with colonialism, and many artists in the Global South travelled to Europe to be exposed to it. Yet modernism was appropriated, devoured and cannibalized in the Global South, repeatedly taking on radically new shapes and forms in dialogue with local and indigenous references.”

A part of the “Nucleo Storico” will be devoted to what Pedrosa called “the worldwide Italian artistic diaspora in the 20th century,” with artists from the country who traveled and moved to Africa, Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere.

Pedrosa’s theme will apply only to the main exhibition of the Biennale, which also includes dozens of national pavilions that are facilitated by their respective host countries.

Some of those countries have already begun announcing their representatives, with Julien Creuzet doing the French Pavilion, John Akomfrah doing the British Pavilion, Kapwani Kiwanga doing the Canadian Pavilion, and more.

Robert Cicutto, president of the Venice Biennale, praised Pedrosa’s concept as one that could potentially prove innovative for the 128-year-old art exhibition.

“I am certain that the 60th International Art Exhibition and its curator will be able to move us and, as the curator of the 18th Biennale Architettura Lesley Lokko said, fill in those gaps in art history with many heretofore neglected artists,” Cicutto said in a statement.

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