Three Former Venice Biennale Artistic Directors on How to Best Curate (and Visit) the Show

Cecilia Alemani

Italian curator Cecilia Alemani was artistic director of the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. The theme, “The Milk of Dreams,” was taken from a children’s book by Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington. Developed amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the show considered the sciences, arts, and myths via three central themes: the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses, the relationship between individuals and technologies, and the connection between bodies and the Earth. The extraordinary circumstances that caused the Biennale’s one-year postponement inevitably entered the conversation as we grappled with the uncertainties of this time.

For the 60th edition of the exhibition, Alemani suggested a few tips to make the trip that much more enjoyable for newcomers and art world veterans alike. First and foremost, “bring comfortable shoes” for all the walking required to experience the festival. In particular, she encourages visitors to “walk around the walls of the Arsenale”. Second, being in a water-logged city, “get used to the vaporetto routes and timetable” by “download[ing] the app Chebateo” (meaning “What boat?”). Regardless of whether you use Venice’s public water bus, she adds, “get ready to get lost”—perhaps the best tip to properly exploring any city.

When attendees get hungry, Alemani suggests sampling “some cicchetti in Campo Santa Margherita” or “a tramezzino in Via Garibaldi”. And when needing a break from the art, Alemani relaxes by “go[ing] to the Lido and sit[ting] on the beach reading Death in Venice“, the 1912 novella by German author Thomas Man. At the end of a long day, she recommends “buy[ing] some slippers (“friulane”) at Piedaterre in Campo Santo Stefano”.

Before you head home, don’t forget to check out other seminal works, including “Tintoretto at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco”.

For this year’s edition, Alemani is most looking forward to seeing “some great art from around the world, lots of surprises and artists I don’t know, some amazing venues for the collateral events, and lots of friends!”

Francesco Bonami

When he was artistic director of the 50th edition of the Venice Biennale in 2003, Italian curator and writer Francesco Bonami eschewed the traditional exhibition model by delegating responsibilities to nearly a dozen curators under the theme “Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer”. The “Grand Show”, as it were, offered a varied explosion of artwork. In so doing, Bonami sought, according to his catalog essay, to create a “new reality somewhere between Globality and Romanticism, where economics and information finally intersect within the complexity of an individual’s identity and emotions . . . a world where the conflicts of globalization are met by the romantic dreams of a new modernity.”

In true fashion, Bonami offers no tips for Venice Biennale attendees. Much like the 50th edition, he leaves the experience to the curators and viewers to discern for themselves.

Of his efforts, he does, however, say, “I approached it as a Biennale not as an exhibition, and I think I was the last curator to do so. My Biennale was very sloppy. I will never have the chance to do another one. But as a pure exercise of fantasy, if i would have the opportunity I would do it even sloppier. With one big rule: NO DEAD people—at least until they are invited.“

Massimiliano Gioni

The Italian contemporary art critic and curator Massimiliano Gioni was artistic director of the 55th edition of the Venice Biennale in 2013. The theme was titled “The Encyclopedic Palace”, and inspired by Marino Auriti’s imaginary museum meant to house all worldly knowledge. Foregrounded by research, Gioni considered this dream of knowledge in relation to the onslaught of digital technology.

In that same spirit, Gioni has compiled a book, titled “Caffè Paradiso”, which is the name of the restaurant where each Biennale director spends interminable hours working on their show.

The book collects interviews with all the Biennale directors from 1993 through the present, with the exception of Germano Celant who passed away in 2020. Prominent curators such as Achille Bonito Oliva, Jean Clair, Harald Szeemann, Okwui Enwezor, Cecilia Alemani, Adriano Pedrosa, are featured. The book probes the former directors on the anxieties and aspirations inherent to the role.

Gioni encourages this year’s visitors to “walk and enter the many worlds that are brought together in Venice.” He continues, “In my book, Robert Storr tells the story of a quote chosen by Bruce Nauman for his contribution to a book published for the Biennale, and he says—quoting Diogenes—that ‘It is solved by walking’ or, we could say, ‘One learns by walking’. That’s all it takes to prepare for a Biennale.”

As for his approach to curating the Biennale, Gioni reflects, “I actually made it big by going small, by including many smaller works and very few large pieces—and the few large pieces were made of small parts. It was also a show that mixed contemporary art with historical materials; it combined “outsider”—for lack of a better description—artists and professional artists and dilettantes and amateurs; it included museum loans and new productions; it included many things that might have not been art at all.

“It was a show about the desire to know everything […] which is an impossible dream that has animated the Venice Biennale since 1895 when Riccardo Selvatico, mayor of Venice, had the very bizarre idea of bringing the whole world—with its myriad of ways of being contemporary—to a sinking city, perhaps for fear it would otherwise suffocate under the weight of its past.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gioni looks forward to experiencing, “Everything. The Biennale is for maximalists and I am bound to be one, given my name. Irony aside, there is so much to see. I am curious about the Nigerian Pavilion and the Italian Pavilion and the Lebanese Pavilion, the Pierre Huyghe show,” as well as, “the international exhibition itself”. He adds, “And never leave Venice without saying hello to Titian and friends. Titian’s last painting—his Pieta—is in the Accademia and that alone is an entire world in itself.”