Venice Biennale makeover

The Aug. 12 announcement was so densely studded with "firsts"--first Spanish and first American directors of the Venice Biennale, first co-directorship and first women chosen for the post--that one could easily overlook what might be the more enduring institutional change it portended. With most of the art world away and at play, Biennale president Davide Croff announced the appointment of Maria de Corral and Rosa Martinez to oversee the 2005 Biennale. De Corral will present a historically shaded perspective on contemporary art in the Italian pavilion in the Giardini. At the Arsenale, which in the past has housed "Aperto," the exhibition of younger, rowdier art, Martinez will offer a panorama of more forward-looking tendencies. Robert Storr will organize an international symposium for autumn 2005 to explore the role and future of the 110-year-old institution and then will move up to direct the 2007 edition.

The substantial credentials of the trio put the selection safely beyond petty controversy. De Corral has served as the director of visual arts for the Fondacion La Caixa (1981-91) and the director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid (1991-94), for which she organized last summer's Julian Schnabel painting retrospective. In 1986, she curated the Spanish pavilion at the Biennale, which featured the art of Jorge Oteiza and Susana Solano. Spain's 2003 pavilion was curated by Martinez, who brought in Santiago Sierra. Martinez was co-curator of Manifesta 1 (1996) and director of the fifth Istanbul Biennial (1997) and the third SITE Santa Fe Biennial (1999). Between 1998 and 2002, she curated special projects at the ARCO fair in Madrid. Storr, while curator of contemporary art at New York's Museum of Modern Art (1990-2003), was responsible for important exhibitions devoted to Robert Ryman, Bruce Nauman, Gerhard Richter and others. Currently the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, he is the director of the 2004 SITE Santa Fe Biennial [on view through Jan. 9, 2005].

Most people were not aware that the essential program, if not the names of the principals, had actually been made public nearly two months earlier. In an interview published in the June 25 issue of the Italian daily La Repubblica, Croft reported that the administrative council of the Biennale had unanimously approved a three-year plan that cast the 2005 edition as an "exhibition-debate," and the 2007 show as the culmination of a 36-month period of reflection defined by a symposium of collectors, curators, critics and historians. Croft described himself as having already met with the "most important" directors and curators, read dozens of articles on the 2003 Biennale and perceived a prevailing bewilderment, a result of the Biennale having become a gigantic "container" instead of an authoritative "guide" to the new.

The prospect of co-directors, regarded by many as a way of diminishing the power of the position, had arisen even earlier, during the furor surrounding Croff's own nomination as president and a concurrent series of administrative reforms of the Biennale [see "Front Page," Mar. '04, and "Artworld," Apr. '04]. But with the June interview, it became evident that the role of the director as a theme-setting, goal-defining auteur, which had been the privilege of mavericks and innovators from Achille Bonito Oliva to Jean Clair and Harald Szeemann (Francesco Bonami had been more of a corporate delegator in 2003), faced a different sort of threat. In Croff's words, "First there used to be a person charged with making the show. Now, instead, first we'll see what the Biennale should be able to do. Then we'll see who is the person or persons who can accompany us in the project." That "we" refers, it would seem, to the administrative council, with the president at its head.

It is not clear how de Corral and Martinez, portrayed by Croff as occupied with separate exhibitions, will collaborate on matters ranging from detailing a budget to vetting proposed satellite shows. Nor is it certain that the 2005 exhibition can rise to be more than a prelude or an interim effort, and its directors more than custodians who serve a bureaucracy bent on unveiling a new and perhaps more docile Biennale in 2007. And can an autumn symposium fully delve into what ails the Biennale while the show itself remains on view?

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