WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.- The Venice Biennale is the largest and longest-running recurring art exhibition in the world, attracting global interest and participation. In addition to a themed exhibition curated by an artistic director, more than eighty national pavilions and dozens of officially sanctioned collateral events occur during the six-month event. There is a long history of special publications and related materials that are produced in support of these exhibitions. Since 2007, the
Clark Art Institutes library has built an unparalleled collection of these editioned artworks, books, posters, publicity materials, and other, more unusual objects. This summer, visitors to the Clark have the opportunity to experience the Biennale through the lens of these items. Arts Biggest Stage: Collecting the Venice Biennale, 20072019 presents a unique look at the Biennale by showcasing the materials in the Clarks growing collection and exploring the questions of identity, nationhood, and spectacle central to the event. The exhibition, curated by Brian Sholis, an independent curator and editor, offers insights into a period when contemporary art has received increasing attention in mainstream culture, when the art worlds geographic reach has expanded beyond its traditional centers, and when technology has reshaped how such events are encountered, both in-person and online. Arts Biggest Stage is on view July 4October 14, 2019, at the Lunder Center at Stone Hill, located on the Clarks campus in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
No other event compares to the scope, the scale, and the surprise of the Venice Biennale, said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark. While the experience of attending the Biennale is unique and powerful, the objects and material artists create around the experience are every bit as intriguing and evocative. When I first arrived at the Clark in 2016 and discovered the amazing treasure trove in the librarys collection, I knew that it would make for a fascinating exhibition that would give our visitors an opportunity to experience a slice of the Biennale and the growing phenomenon of spectacle in the contemporary art world. Their range captures a sense of the spectacle that is the Biennale and provides a wonderful opportunity to examine the creativity of emerging and established contemporary artists.
Following the tradition of nineteenth-century salons and worlds fairs, the first Biennale was held in 1895. Over time, the event has evolved into a cross-continental survey of contemporary art and the social issues it engages. This massive endeavor overtakes the city of Venice, creating an experience that is part art extravaganza, part urban tourism, and, for the city of Venice, a powerful economic engine. In 2017, 615,000 tourists descended on Venice for the Biennale.
This exhibition offers Clark visitors a wonderful opportunity to discover the Biennale, and by extension, the breadth of artmaking today, through the editioned artworks and other materials created for its myriad presentations, said Sholis. The Biennale has been the preeminent event in contemporary art for half a century, and its importance increases as contemporary art crosses over into popular culture. Everyone who has visited the Biennale leaves with great storiesand these objects tell many such tales.
For the 2009 Biennale, for example, artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset organized the Danish and Nordic Pavilions. Rather than present an exhibition of only their own work, the duo created The Collectors, two fictional worlds that turned the adjacent pavilions into housesone for a bourgeois family, one for a single gay manand invited more than twenty artists working in various media to fill them. Those materials, plus sketchbooks and more, are included in the exhibition.
The national-pavilion structure encourages many participating artists to consider questions of personal and national identity. In 2017, the Tunisian Pavilion and the artists collective Neue Slovenische Kunst (NSK) both highlighted the challenges of migration. Tunisia returned to the Biennale that year after a long absence, though not with a traditional pavilion. Instead, its project, The Absence of Paths, came in the form of a universal visa, or Freesa, that visitors could apply for and obtain at one of three kiosks installed across the city. The document, resembling an official passport, identifies the holder as a migrant, a global citizen in a world with no borders. Similarly, NSK brought its ongoing project NSK State in Time in the form of an NSK passport office. Bearers become citizens of the NSK state, a conceptual micronation created by the collectives artists. Both application documents and passports from each pavilion are included in the exhibition.
The exhibition includes an array of other distinctive objects including vinyl records, tote bags, beer bottles, a cowbell, party invitations, posters, wallpaper, wax-sealed letters, artists books, clothing, and more created byor, in some cases responding toartists from around the world. Some of the objects included in the Clarks show are from the 2019 edition of the Biennale, which opened on May 11 and will be ongoing in Venice while Arts Biggest Stage is on view in Williamstown.