The battle of Venice - Front Page

In the second far-reaching administrative and financial overhaul in just six years, the Venice Biennale has been restructured as a cultural foundation. Formalized in a Jan. 15 decree whose provisions apply to all sections of the institution (visual arts, film, theater, music, architecture, dance and the historical archive), the transformation has been touted by Italian culture minister Giuliano Urbani as a means of securing increased private funding for the perennially strapped organization and of ensuring future financial stability with the establishment of an endowment.

But in Venice and among center-left opponents of the Berlusconi government, and even among some members of the majority coalition, the decree has revived deep-rooted fears about the Biennale's artistic autonomy, the danger of encroaching commercialization and privatization of Italian culture, the potential for undue influence by well-connected donors, and the threat of further bureaucratic intrusion by the national government into an institution that debuted in 1895 as a municipally sponsored international visual-arts show. Indeed, for many, the dreaded tampering with the Venice Biennale can be summed up by the word "Romanization." Right now the cinema section of the Biennale organization, and particularly the Venice Film Festival, which it stages each year, is viewed as the principal object of Urbani's designs, but the current wrangling is being scrutinized closely for signs of what may be in store for the visual arts as well.

Arguably, the bad blood between Rome and Venice dates at least to 1930, when the Fascist government took control of the Biennale, then devoted solely to the visual arts, and declared it an "autonomous agency" of the state. Film, music and theater sections were introduced, and in 1935 the film festival, which figured in Mussolini's ambitious plan to expand and promote the country's movie industry, was singled out to be an annual event. From 1943 to 1945, during the wartime suspension of the Biennale, the national pavilions in the Giardini were taken over as studios by Cinecitta, the Roman film production facility whose 1937 launch had been presided over by II Duce personally.

The specter of past high-handedness shadowed the weeks leading up to Jan. 15, when Urbani was said to be considering involving two Roman institutions, Cinecitta Holding (which today oversees the production studios, the distribution of noncommercial films and the promotion of Italian films abroad) and the national film school, in the administration of the Venice Film Festival. There was parallel speculation that the reform would entail some sort of administrative merger between the Biennale and two other recurring but far less prestigious exhibitions, the Milan Triennale (an international architecture and design show) and the Rome Quadriennale (which features contemporary Italian art).

Tensions boiled over at the end of January, when the cultural committee of the Italian senate unexpectedly withheld its approval of Urbani's choice for the president of the new Biennale's administrative council. The culture minister had tapped Davide Croff, a 56-year-old Venetian-born economist and banker who retired as managing director of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro in June 2003. Since then, Croff has served as the president of the Ugo and Olga Levi Foundation in Venice, whose principal activities are in the field of music, but whose Grand Canal palazzo has accommodated off-site exhibitions during the visual-arts shows of 2001 and 2003.

A rubber-stamp approval of Croff had been assumed, but the nomination was rejected by opposition members as well as by some dissenters within the center-right majority. The rejection is nonbinding, but at best it constitutes an embarrassing vote of no confidence for Croff. Committee members cited his lack of experience in cultural management and declared him tainted by the suspicious ambiguities of the statute he would be charged with implementing and by the dark intentions of his sponsor, Urbani, who was accused by one deputy of launching "a creeping process of colonization of the Biennale."

The often vague wording of the decree's finer points has sent Italian administrators and journalists into a frenzy of interpretive speculation. Among the basic provisions for the new Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia is the establishment of an endowment with contributions from the government and the private sector. Previously, each Biennale event was individually funded, its expenses covered by government monies, earned income and corporate support, but with no capital held in reserve. The new foundation will be able to accept gifts of property as well as cash donations.

For the time being, the Biennale's administrative council, whose duties include appointing the directors of each artistic section, will continue to consist of five members who serve renewable terms of four years: the president, who is designated by the culture minister; three ex-cathedra members (the mayor of Venice, who serves as vice president; the president of the region of Venice or his representative; and the president of the province of Venice or his representative); and a fifth individual, who, at least for now, is appointed by the culture minister. Under the new decree, however, that fifth chair and an additional two could eventually be occupied by deep-pocketed donors whose support is evaluated as a percentage of the endowment's total value and of the national government's annual contribution.