Pavilions Obsolete

The Japanese pavilion under construction, Giardini della Biennale, Venice (1956).
Photo: courtesy of the

Archivio Storico della Biennale di Venezia (ASAC), Fototeca.
Delivered by Intellect to:

Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Universitaetsbibliothek (auto19172)
8
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jcs 9 (1) pp. 8–39 Intellect Limited 2020
Journal of Curatorial Studies

Volume 9 Number 1
© 2020 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. https://doi.org/10.1386/jcs_00009_1
Received 01 September 2019; Accepted 18 April 2020
CLARISSA RICCI
Università di Bologna
From Obsolete to Contemporary:

National Pavilions and the Venice
Biennale
Abstract Keywords
For over a century, the Venice Biennale and its national pavilions have served as Venice Biennale
a platform for international artistic display. Despite the fact that national repre- national pavilions
sentation has been a pivotal aspect of the Biennale since the first pavilion was globalization
built in 1907, there is a lack of deep understanding of the nature of this model. transnational
The purpose of this article is to offer an historical account of the conceptual and Achille Bonito Oliva
material predicament of national representation at the Venice Biennale. The focus Harald Szeemann
is directed mainly at the introduction in 1993 of a more transnational approach in
the context of an increasingly interconnected and globalized world.
National pavilions are the trademark feature of the Venice Biennale. However 1. See, e.g., Mulazzani
with the exception of short inquiries into the pavilions’ architecture and devel- ([1988] 2014) and
Ballarin (2015).
opment at the Giardini, literature around the foundation and expansion of the
national pavilions is fragmentary, typically focusing on the initiatives of indi- 2. See Moore and Reich
(2009) and Sharp and
vidual countries rather than on the system as a whole.1 The most comprehen- Boesch (2013).
sive texts were produced by the organizers of the pavilions themselves, often
on the occasion of an anniversary.2 Reflections on national representation
have most often been brought about by artistic projects that challenged the
symbolic and historical connotations of national pavilions. This was the case
with GERMANIA (1993), which involved Hans Haacke demolishing the floor

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Clarissa Ricci
3. On the relevance of of the German pavilion; Santiago Sierra’s 2003 intervention, which restricted
national pavilions for
contemporary Venice
access to the Spanish pavilion with passport control (Martinez 2003); and
Biennales, see Vettese Antoni Muntadas’s On Translation, in which the artist investigated the frame-
(2014, 2017). On national works or ‘translations’ that the Biennale had adopted over time (Muntadas
pavilions, see Hossain
et al. (2011) and Ireland and Marí 2005). In addition, pavilion commissioners and curators have made
and Martini (2013). important contributions in mobilizing national pavilions’ contexts, as was the
4. See the minutes of the case with the 2011 Norwegian pavilion, when the curators bypassed the prob-
Venice Council (1893); lem of choosing a representative artist for Norway, and presented instead a
on the Secession, see series of public lectures intended to analyse what they called the ‘aspect[s] of
Ludwig (2008: 25–58).
the world-historical conjunctures making up the present’ (Kuzma et al. 2012:
7). Another example that successfully tackled nationalism while suggesting
ways around it was the Armenian pavilion (2015) on diaspora, which also
received the Golden Lion (Droitcour 2015).
There has been a large volume of work concerning the political and
cultural impact of globalization on the art world, but very little on the impact
on the Venice Biennale specifically.3 This article aims to contribute to a deeper
understanding of the survival of the national pavilions by focusing on how this
system is connected to the conceptual framework that the Biennale adopted
over time to legitimate its international reach. The research relies on archival
documentation from the Historical Archives of the Venice Biennale (ASAC)
and takes into account critiques on the formation of the nation.
This article is structured chronologically, concentrating on the interna-
tional legitimation policies of the Biennale, including the development of
the pavilion system. The first section discusses the foundation of the system
and its development in relation to the political and cultural upheavals at the
start of the twentieth century. The second section discusses the crisis of the
1970s that followed the success of other large-scale international exhibitions,
such as the Paris Biennale and Documenta, which used different models to
manage the international participation of artists. The third section analyses
how, in the wake of globalization, the transnational approach, introduced
in 1993, prompted a change in the theoretical framework under which the
national pavilions were managed. Ultimately, the transnational framework
developed into the contemporary ‘platform’ structure of the Biennale, which
holds together the main international exhibition, guided by a curator of the
Biennale’s choice, with a myriad of ‘national pavilions’. Through these trans-
formations, the Venice Biennale manages to stay at the forefront of contempo-
rary artistic culture.
Venice Biennale’s International Aspirations and the

Development of Pavilions
The Venice Biennale was established in 1895 with the intention of staging an
exhibition that would be recognized both nationally and internationally (West
1995: 412–23). The ambition was to make something grand, comparable to
the Salon in France or the Royal Academy in Great Britain (Angeli 1893: 397).
The direct models were the international exhibitions in Munich, more specifi-
cally the Secession in 1893, organized by artistic groups as a counter to the
municipally managed Glaspalast exhibitions, which were accused of lacking
both quality and international scope.4 Despite the fact that other exhibitions
can be considered as models (Wyss 2010: 52–54), the organizational structure
of the first Biennale was most closely related to the first Munich Secession,
in which artists were specifically invited to participate in order to guarantee

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From Obsolete to Contemporary
quality, and were grouped according to nationality, a model that seemed to 5. See Munich Secession
Folder (1894); on the
privilege identification over style.5 For the Secessionists, according to art histo- Secession model, see
rian Seigfried Wichmann, ‘the international exchange of art of high quality Bruno (2009: 13).
became an obligation, and in their appreciation of alternative points of view 6. On ‘inventor’, see
the exhibitions reflected a new aesthetic world view’ (2008: 7). The necessity Bruno (2009: 20, 101–07)
to be international was also the main preoccupation of Bartolomeo Bezzi, an and in particular the
quotation from Giulia
Italian artist who superintended the exhibitions of Italian art in Germany on Turco (1895), cited in
behalf of the Italian government (Bruno 2009: 8–9). Bezzi was also the ‘inven- Bruno (2009: 40).
tor’ of the Venice Biennale, or rather I would say the ‘translator’ of the Munich 7. The Founding
model into Venice.6 Committee led by
Inspired by earlier examples, the members of the Venice Biennale founding Riccardo Selvatico, the
mayor of Venice, was
committee made it their mission to make the exhibition ‘international’, both composed by a group
in terms of reach and participation.7 Many foreign personalities were called of artists, intellectuals
and businessmen
on to be part of the ‘Committee of Patronage’ (La Biennale di Venezia 1895: (Lamberti [1982]
2–25). This was distinct from the Organizing Committee, which was entirely 2020). See Esposizione
composed of Italians and devoted to more practical matters, but nevertheless Internazionale d’Arte
della Città di Venezia
these international figures played a pivotal role. They were listed in the adver- (1894a).
tising and were responsible for achieving the high artistic standards set by the
8. See Maggio Serra (1991),
founders. They also served the practical function of connecting the Biennale to Lamberti (2005) and
the specific artistic contexts of their respective countries. Strukelj (2010).
The foreign representatives of the Patron’s Commission were the prede-
cessors of the contemporary country commissioners. In the early exhibi-
tions, however, this role was managed through figures (mainly artists) who
acted as agents, paid by the Biennale and personally in contact with Antonio
Fradeletto, the General Secretary of the Biennale from 1895 to 1914. These
figures served as talent scouts but also became diplomats in that they behaved
as representatives of the Italian government. In a letter to Bezzi, who was leav-
ing for Germany to choose artworks to exhibit at the 1899 Biennale, Fradeletto
(1898b) reminds the artist that he is a ‘representative of the Venice Biennale
and of Italy’, and provides him with a translator, letters of recommendation in
three languages and a letter from the mayor of Venice.
In the closing speech at the end of the first Biennale, mayor Filippo
Grimani (1895) praised the international approach as the key aspect that guar-
anteed the event’s success. This remark proudly set the Biennale apart from
other Italian national art exhibitions in the period following the Risorgimento,
which largely aimed to foster national cohesion.8 The Venetian municipality
held one such exhibition at the Giardini in 1877, and it was the extraordinary
sales results and visitor numbers that convinced the municipal councillors
of the financial rewards of organizing an international version (Esposizione
Internazionale d’Arte della Città di Venezia 1894b).
In short, international participation was central from the very beginning.
But even if the Biennale followed the convention of dividing artists by nations
(La Biennale di Venezia 1895), this had very little to do with the model of
national representation that evolved subsequently, and that involved official
representatives from each member nation both funding and selecting their
artists. The Biennale’s desire for international recognition was reflected in the
fact that the early exhibitions were based on a model that evolved in Germany
in the second half of the nineteenth century in order to promote local acad-
emies, and from which the Secession also originated (Metzger 2009).
The drive to create a collective bond in the newly formed nation of Italy –
rhetorically summed up in a sentence attributed to Massimo d’Azeglio,
‘we have made Italy: now we must make Italians’ – was partly enabled by

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Clarissa Ricci
Poster for the Prima Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Città di Venezia (1895). Photo: courtesy of the
Archivio Storico della Biennale di Venezia (ASAC), Fondo Manifesti.
9. Esposizione mass politics (cited in Malia Hom 2013: 3–8). Events, ceremonies and anni-
Internazionale d’Arte
della città di Venezia
versaries helped to strengthen the symbolic value of national traditions. As
(1894b). historian Eric Hobsbawm pointed out, art was also a strong part of these
10. On Barbantini
‘invented traditions’ (1983: 301). Evidence of this can be found in the official
and Fradeletto’s correspondence between the Biennale and the Italian authorities. In a letter
relationship, see to promote a lottery to fund the exhibition, for example, Fradeletto (1898a)
Lamberti (1987a: 41–68)
and Perocco (1987). The described the Venice Biennale as a ‘national event to be proud of’. As early
Ca’ Pesaro, which was as 1900, during the organization of the 4th Biennale, Fradeletto expressed
donated by Duchess a concern about the Biennale being perceived as too straniera (‘foreign’).9
Felicita Bevilacqua La
Masa to the Venetian This precaution held back the Venice Biennale from being truly international
Town Council, was since, between 1901 and 1910, Fradeletto introduced the regional rooms.
dedicated to the
Gallery of Modern Art
Regionalism was a fact in Italian art (West 1995: 425), but nevertheless, there
in 1897. Between 1908 was a degree of contradiction to such regionalist emphasis within an interna-
and 1924, it was the tional exhibition (Stella 1912: 51).
venue for exhibitions of
young artists (Scotton However, Fradeletto’s attempt to cast the exhibition as a national specta-
1999). cle did not save him from widespread criticism in the national press (Ceschin
2001: 135). For example Nino Barbantini, a rival figure to Fradeletto, who
organized exhibitions in the newly founded Gallery of Modern Art in Venice,
the Ca’ Pesaro, often criticized the Biennale’s easy choices of famous foreign
artists.10 Along the same lines, in 1910, the futurist leader Filippo Tommaso

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Marinetti, in an emphatic declamation from the Campanile in San Marco, 11. See also Dal Canton
(1997).
accused the Biennale of ‘bowing to the foreigners’ ([1910] 1980: 23).11 After
First World War, the Biennale multiplied the number of pavilions and this criti- 12. See Stringa (2002) and
Bianchi (2002).
cism became even harsher (Salvagnini 2000: 38).
These examples of the controversy that the decision to conceive an ‘inter- 13. See Rizzi and Di
Martino (1982: 84) and
national’ art exhibition created at a local level, suggests that the creation of Di Martino (1995).
‘national pavilions’ was not simply a natural progression in the genealogy
14. On 20 years of Chinese
that most scholars, from Lawrence Alloway (1968) to Caroline Jones (2016), presence at the Venice
trace between the Biennale and world’s fairs. A lack of proper critical scrutiny Biennale, see Peng and
has led to an imperfect understanding of the national pavilion model and has Bonito Oliva (2013). On
Francesca Dallago, see
created a confusion that needs to be untangled between the terms ‘interna- Andrews (2014).
tional’, ‘national representation’ and ‘national pavilion’.
The confusion between national representation and internationality origi-
nated from the way that the Biennale communicated its international reach.
The internationality of the exhibition was, in its early years, demonstrated in
the catalogue and advertisements, which included a list of foreign personali-
ties, mainly artists, who ensured the Biennale’s artistic quality. The choice of
prominent artists for the Patron’s Committee, e.g. Puvis de Chavannes and
Gustave Moreau, was part of the strategy to legitimate the exhibition.12 The
early Biennales were divided into ‘rooms’ dedicated either to a specific country
(e.g. Sweden room) or to artists from larger areas (e.g. North European) or
simply foreign ‘international’ rooms. When the pavilions started to be built,
there was no real distinction made between rooms managed by countries’
representatives, rooms arranged by the Biennale’s agents and national pavil-
ions. From the Italian perspective, these were all national representations of
foreign art, only managed in different ways.
The confusion can be attributed to the use of a table attached to the cata-
logue in 1924, which showed the list of participating countries since 1895.
This table included both international artists invited by the Biennale and
artists invited as national representatives by the pavilions, and has been repro-
duced many times without sensitivity to the difference between the two.13
According to this table, for example, Japan was represented in 1897. In that
year, there was indeed a Japanese room (Sala N), which provoked great inter-
est both in Italy and Europe, but rather than displaying works selected by offi-
cial Japanese representatives, the room contained the Japanese collection of
the Italo-German collector Ernst Seeger, which ranged from artefacts from
the third century ad to more recent ceramics and paintings from the collec-
tion of Count Fè d’Ostiani (Lamberti 1987b: 72, 74). Alongside this collection,
there was exhibited a selection of more contemporary works sent by Nippon
Bigiutsu Kyokuai (Japanese Artists Association). In other cases, though, the
distinction between works selected by the Biennale and works selected by the
nations themselves can be subtle. An example is the Chinese pavilion that was
officially launched in 2005. However, China claims that it has been present at
the Biennale since 1993, when a group of young Chinese painters were exhib-
ited in Passaggio a Oriente (‘Passage to the Orient’), thanks to the efforts of
Francesca Dallago, assistant curator of the exhibition, who was working at the
time at the Italian consulate in Shanghai.14 These exhibitions were not auton-
omously managed by the representatives from the countries’ governments;
thus they were not ‘national pavilions’.
The reason that the early model of national representation developed into
independent pavilions managed autonomously by countries was a matter
of economics. Moreover, despite the fact that the word ‘pavilion’ suggests

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Clarissa Ricci
temporariness and recalls the structures of world’s fairs, the pavilions at the
Biennale were built to last. National pavilions began in 1905, when the board
passed a resolution that each country should have a permanent building of its
own (Tavinor 2016: 96). To encourage this practice, the Biennale often helped
to sponsor (until the First World War) the construction on the understand-
ing that this would be paid back by the country. At the time, the countries,
which, with few exceptions, were mainly European, were already participat-
ing in selection committees or were paying to rent out parts of the galleries
of the Central Pavilion. The decision to favour the construction of the national
pavilions was therefore not disinterested, but neither was it purely opportun-
istic. Artists, for example, did not like to be mixed up in international rooms
because in that format they tended to sell less (see Boberg 1900).
Moreover, a consideration of personal contacts or political choices must
be part of the analysis of each pavilion’s foundation. The first pavilion at the
Giardini, for example, was Belgian, and its foundation was encouraged by
Fradeletto’s personal interest in the unity of art, a principle that many Belgian
artists were investigating (Carraro 2010: 134). In addition, Fradeletto favoured the
British pavilion (1909) over the Austrian one, due both to personal Anglophilia
and political circumstances. Italy was part of the Triple Alliance (1892–1915)
with Austria-Hungary and Germany, but wanted to maintain a good relation-
ship with Great Britain. It would have been easier, faster and cheaper for the
Biennale to authorize Austria’s pavilion over Britain’s, which required exten-
sive negotiation and involved financial support from the Biennale, but it was
clear to Fradeletto that building Austria’s pavilion first would have deterred the
British (Tavinor 2016: 100). More prosaic reasons prevented the Russian pavil-
ion from being opened before 1914, as the government could not finalize an
agreement with the Biennale’s management (Bertelè 2017).
As the format of the Biennale developed between 1895 and 1914, Antonio
Fradeletto tirelessly pursued the participation of powerful countries (Tavinor
2016: 96). Over the span of seven years, the Giardini was urbanized by new
and architecturally diverse pavilions (Hungary, Bavaria [then Germany], Great
Britain 1909, France 1912, Russia 1914). It was during this initial phase that
the rules of the pavilions were set and they have not changed much over the
Biennale’s long history. The funding of the buildings’ construction was mostly
each nation’s duty, even if plans were shared and approved by the Biennale’s
management. It was also the countries’ responsibility to cover administration
and installation costs, and they were given autonomy over the nature of the
exhibition. The sale of artworks, however, remained under the control of the
Biennale, who charged a commission between 10 and 15 per cent (Ricci 2017).
Not all the pavilions were under government control. Although the estab-
lishment of each new pavilion required the approval of the Italian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, they were often funded and managed by private individuals or
corporations. The British pavilion, for example, was privately run by a commit-
tee and then a trust until 1932 (Tavinor 2016: 103–09). This arrangement still
occurs nowadays, creating scandal when privately run pavilions are used for
ends other than simply representing a nation’s artistic endeavours, as was the
case with the Kenya (Warner 2015). Therefore, even if most pavilions were
established under the banner of nationalistic rhetoric, practically speaking it
was largely a matter of personal initiative, contacts, politics and opportunity
being coordinated and guided by the Biennale.
In the 1920s, the Giardini filled up rapidly and it was only by expanding
into the Bacino di Sant’Elena that the Biennale could build the Venice pavilion

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(1932), which accommodated the Decorative Arts section alongside other 15. Grand Prizes were
awarded at the
countries such as Romania, Yugoslavia, Poland and Switzerland. Mussolini’s Biennale from 1930 to
regime (1926–45) promoted the creation of a state culture, and exhibitions 1968. In 1986, they were
celebrating Fascist cultural ‘accomplishments’ proliferated (Stone 1998: 17). introduced as prizes
of best painter and
Indeed, exhibitions also played a central cultural role in the rest of Europe and sculptor. In 2008, the
in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s, as they offered messages name was changed to
of national unity during a period of economic crisis and political uncertainty ‘Lions’.
(Rydell 1993: 6–11). 16. See Barbantini (1945:

By the 1920s, the Biennale had established its reputation as a key site of 116) and De Sabbata
(2006: 203–08).
cultural legitimation and symbolic capital, and as such the Mussolini regime
was loathe to forgo it (Stone 1998: 33). However, they took the institution 17. See Alloway (1968: 173)
and Martini (2012).
out of Venice’s hands and placed it under state control, making it into a tool
of national propaganda. Competitions, prizes and awards were the backbone
of this transformation. Until the 1930s, prizes mostly came in the form of
acquisition by a museum (Ricci 2017). To enhance both the symbolic capital
of the exhibition and its sense of spectacle, ‘Grand Prizes’ of painting, sculp-
ture and graphics were introduced in 1938.15 Moreover, there was a drive to
enlarge visitor numbers, which involved the Biennale expanding its remit into
other arts: in 1930, a music festival was instituted; 1932 saw the birth of the
Biennale’s cinema festival; in 1934, the exhibition included theatre; and in
1936, it expanded its coverage of music.
In practice, Fascism reconceptualized the Biennale, transforming it from
an art exhibition into a cultural institution. Moreover, Fascism changed the
artistic face of the Biennale. Between 1920 and 1926, Vittorio Pica opened the
exhibition to international modernism (Lacagnina 2016) but the regime was
more interested in the juxtaposition of the traditional arts of each nation, a
sort of international nationalism that stood in direct contrast to the interna-
tional cosmopolitanism of the avant-garde (De Sabbata 2006: 178–89). Antonio
Maraini, General Secretary of the Biennale from 1928 to 1942, gradually excluded
any form of avant-gardism from the Italian pavilion (De Sabbata 2006: 182). The
modernism of the French pavilion was neutralized (Tomasella 2001: 86–88), and,
as Fascist imperialism expanded, especially after 1936, Maraini excluded foreign
countries or international exhibitions from the Central Pavilion.
Under Fascism, the primary function of the Biennale became to assert the
supremacy of Italian art and each country was left alone to manage their own
exhibition space.16 After 1938, however, the countries began to bow out of the
exhibition and the worry became how to guarantee the internationality of the
exhibition. By then, Austria, Poland and Russia were not present and, by 1940,
Great Britain and Denmark had also departed. This contradictory relationship
of the Biennale’s board to its national pavilions, alongside the geopolitical
turmoil of Second World War, exacerbated the fragmentation of the exhibition
space of the Venice Biennale, where independent ‘multiple art worlds’ emerged
in the exhibition without prior planning (Vettese 2014: 33).17 Such an outcome
was unlikely to have been foreseen by Fradeletto, despite the fact that he was
the initial promoter of the pavilions, as he was most interested in using the
system to find long-term business partners.
The Obsolescence of the National Pavilions System After

Second World War
The Biennale tried to purge itself of the legacy of Fascism after the end of
the war. As Germany sought to do through Documenta (Schwarze 2000), the

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Clarissa Ricci
Comparative table of the construction development of Venice Biennale national pavilions at the
Giardini in 1912, 1934, 1966 and 1993. Photo: courtesy of the author and Martina Salvaneschi.

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Italian government tried to present a new cultural image of the country, and 18. After the Second
World War, in order
this attempt to make amends for the recent past occasioned retrospectives of to resume the Venice
artists and movements that had been ignored during the Fascist period (Jaquec Biennale’s activities as
2007: 6). Giovanni Ponti, Special Commissioner, and Rodolfo Pallucchini, soon as possible, the
Italian government
Coordinator of the Visual Arts section, searched the Biennale’s foundational nominated a ‘special
documents for ür-guiding principles that could be recognized as belonging to commissioner’.
the institution, regardless of its significant role in Fascist propaganda.18 One of 19. Pavilions that were
the most quoted principles was the desire to attract visitors with ‘illustri strani- built after this time,
eri’ (‘distinguished foreigners’), giving Italians the opportunity to encounter such as the Korean
pavilion in 1995, were
diverse artistic styles and visual languages (Pallucchini 1948: xii). The postwar meant to be temporary.
drive to reshape the cultural image of Italy (Bandera 1999) as being open to
an increasingly globalized world gave way to the construction of a new series
of national pavilions.
On the one hand, Pallucchini called for greater international participation.
Under Fascism, international contemporary art was shown only in the pavil-
ions, while the Biennale’s curators were in charge of the crowded and heav-
ily unionized Italian section, and of retrospective exhibitions. On the other
hand, however, he failed to reform the charter since its last modification under
Fascism in 1938 (Regio Decreto Legge 1938), and so for over two decades
following the war, the internationality of the Venice Biennale continued to be
largely contained in the national pavilions.
Even though other biennials were developing elsewhere (e.g. São Paulo in
1955 and the Paris Biennale in 1959), the Venice Biennale was considered by
the press the most important and international art exhibition, and countries
that sought cultural recognition in the West attempted to find a place at the
Giardini. Between 1955 and 1964, the Giardini filled up even further. Together
with new constructions (Switzerland and Egypt in 1952, Japan and Venezuela
in 1956, Canada in 1958, Uruguay in 1960, Northern Scandinavian countries
in 1962, and Brazil in 1964), a new Italian protection law, which originated in
the Venice Charter (1964), listed the pavilions as ‘Italian heritage buildings’,
suspending any future developments (Favaro and Trovò 2011: 59–60).19
After Second World War, the Central Pavilion, which was still called the
Italian pavilion, became a major issue. Because it was impossible to build new
pavilions, this building became more and more congested. Alongside the large
Italian section, it also hosted the exhibitions of countries without a perma-
nent pavilion. On another level, though, there was greater critical reflection
on what it meant to have national representation. Criticism emerged in the
press when Russia, after a long absence, returned in 1954 with a highly politi-
cized exhibition that caused shockwaves in the political and artistic debates
that were underway in Italy about realism and abstraction.
It was especially those countries whose recent pasts were troubled with
conflict that made it evident how complicated it was to articulate what
‘national representation’ meant. To Eduard Trier, Commissioner of the German
pavilion in 1964 and 1966, who pushed for contributions that reflected the
art of its time: ‘in Germany it is not possible to allocate national tendencies
to an art movement. Therefore I look at artistic individuals and not at group
contexts’ (cited in Lagler 2007: 110). Trier referred to the tendency in the 1960s
to nationalize artistic movements, as America was doing with pop art, but
also to the new supranational exhibition format that was developing with
Documenta, in whose committee Trier served between 1959 and 1966.
Unfortunately, the re-foundation of the Biennale attempted by Pallucchini
and Ponti was made under a provisional organization, and the lack of solid

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Clarissa Ricci
20. See also Esposizione democratic regulation triggered a major internal crisis in 1957 (Budillon Puma
Biennale Internazionale
(1968).
1995: 83–98). The municipality, together with the Biennale’s management and
Italian art critics, gathered at a conference during which they discussed updat-
21. See also Martini (2010:
171).
ing the exhibition format and giving more space to international contempo-
rary art (Arti Grafiche Sorteni 1957: 25–61). Small adjustments were made,
such as the inclusion of more young artists and the reduction of the pres-
ence of Italian artists, but broader reforms did not take place and a general
dissatisfaction with the exhibition arose before finally erupting after the global
student protests in 1968.
Once the 1968 Biennale closed, a series of gatherings took place to collec-
tively shape the future institution. The Biennale staff, supported by many
Italian intellectuals, formed an assembly that led the institution for two years
and shaped a new charter, known as the ‘reform of 1973’ (Alfieri 1968).20 This
reformation was pivotal for the Biennale. It democratized its governance by
handing control of the institution to a board of nineteen members, and shifted
its cultural goals towards documentation, contemporary art production and
permanent activities (Italian Council of Ministers 1973: Article no. 1). The
approach of the staff assembly was collegial, and every aspect, from exhibi-
tion formats to opening hours, was discussed. Therefore, when the charter
was drafted, a country-wide meeting was held to discuss the proposals for the
1970 exhibition (Esposizione Biennale Internationale 1969). It was decided,
alongside the commissioners, to abolish awards and to choose a theme for
each exhibition in order to enable a unified approach (Martini 2011: 124–25).
During these debates, the issue of the obsolescence of the national
pavilions was discussed, as a new generation of Italian curators, including
Germano Celant and Gillo Dorfles, advocated their abolition (Alfieri 1968:
40–41). On the other hand, commissioners from certain countries, including
those from the pavilions of Norway and the United States, suggested that
pavilion-owning countries should be represented on the Administrative Board
in order to allow them to take part in the Biennale’s decision-making process.
This proposal, from the pavilion commissioners’ point of view, would match
their economic and cultural contribution to the Biennale. The staff assembly’s
collaborative approach, which was sometimes perceived as an interference
by the pavilion’s commissioners, together with the inaccuracy and vagueness
of some sentences in the new charter, triggered a general protest among the
countries, which was harshly expressed during the country meetings of 1974
(Ente Autonomo ‘La Biennale di Venezia’ 1974b).21 The same country commis-
sioners who had joined the reformist protests in 1968 were not at ease with
the control that the Biennale wanted to exert (Ente Autonomo ‘La Biennale di
Venezia’ 1968).
More specifically, article number 10 stated that participation in the
events of the Biennale was ‘conditioned by the direct and personal invitation
addressed to the authors by the [Biennale] board of directors’ (Italian Council
of Ministers 1973). This article was rooted in an old rule of the Biennale under
which foreign countries were formally invited to participate by the Italian
government. In practice, however, this was only a formality, since each country
autonomously managed their buildings and mounted their exhibitions with-
out any interference from the Biennale. The conflict was resolved by adjust-
ing the regulation (Martini 2011: 127–28), but it nevertheless highlighted a
problematic contradiction that the Biennale had to deal with in its transition
into a fully contemporary art exhibition. As Vittorio Gregotti, Artistic Director
of the Visual Arts section between 1974 and 1978, noted, ‘contemporary art is

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intrinsically international’, and the exhibition that the Biennale directly organ- 22. See also Ente
Autonomo ‘La Biennale
ized had to be international, despite the presence of other (inter)national exhi- di Venezia’ (1954).
bitions held in the pavilions (Ente Autonomo ‘La Biennale di Venezia’ 1974a).
23. See Martini and Martini
At the same time, as commented by Klaus Gallwitz, countries did not want to (2011: 123–26), Portinari
abandon the privilege of having a dedicated exhibition in such an important (2018) and Tanga (2020).
context, despite the fact that some commissioners believed that the national 24. See Weiss (2011) and
pavilions were ‘fossils’ (cited in Ente Autonomo ‘La Biennale di Venezia’ 1974c). Gardner and Green
What was at stake was the autonomy and authority of both the curators of (2013).
the Biennale, who needed to update the format of the exhibition and make it
more unified, and of the national pavilions who claimed the right, as business
partners, to choose their own representative artists.
To avoid the fragmentation caused by these autonomous bodies, the
countries’ commissioners were often given indications of what sort of art
to exhibit. In 1954, for example, they were asked to exhibit works related to
Dada and surrealism (Jaquec 2007: 66–68).22 After 1968, this collaborative
approach was pushed forward. The use of exhibition-wide themes seemed
to solve the problem of autonomous exhibitions, and, in 1976, the use of
the ambiente (‘environment’) theme produced memorable exhibitions.23
However, in the following decades, the use of themes proved to be an inad-
equate means of reforming the Biennale’s atomized structure. In practice, the
commissioners of the pavilions were more interested in responding to the
political and cultural agenda of their own country rather than to the Biennale.
The Biennale’s curators were, moreover, not always prompt in communicat-
ing their chosen theme. Often, by the time that the meeting between the
countries was held – a moment that, from 1969 onwards, was meant to bring
this bifurcated institution together – the pavilions’ commissioners had already
made plans for their exhibitions. This was especially the case towards the end
of the 1980s, when the Biennale was increasingly affected by Italy’s political
and economic difficulties (Vecco 2002).
These discussions were mirrored by those conducted between the 1970s
and 1980s at the São Paulo Biennale that had, since its inception, closely
followed the Venetian model. Regardless of the absence of constructed pavil-
ion buildings, the organizers of the Brazilian biennial had difficulty in avoiding
pavilion-based national representation because of the economic contribu-
tion of each country. Attempts were made in 1979 to move away from the
nationally structured exhibition with the first Latin American Biennial (Maroja
2019), and then in 1981 by Walter Zanini, who adopted the thematic exhibi-
tion strategy (Whitelegg 2009). It was not until 2006, however, that national
pavilions were suppressed. At around the same time as the discussions held
by the staff assembly in Venice, other biennials were seeking the same inter-
national legitimation as the Biennale, but with an approach that moved away
from the Venetian model (Gardner and Green 2016). Newly founded bien-
nials such as the Sydney Biennial (1973) rejected the pavilion model, while
Bienal de La Habaña (1984) advocated a different international scenario of
the ‘South’,24 which would go beyond Europe and North America (Mosquera
2010). It is fruitful to compare the international politics of the Havana and
Venice biennials in the 1980s, not in order to show which was more suitable
as a model of the contemporary biennial (Niemojewski 2010: 89), but rather to
foreground what Bezzi understood as necessary for Italian artists in 1893 – to
recognize that nationality should be considered part of an international rela-
tionship. In Havana, national art was not dismissed, but rather it was used to
bring together nations that belonged to a different geographical area (South

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Clarissa Ricci
America) in order to contrast the hegemonic nations of Europe and North

America.
However, it was the Paris Biennale that seemed to offer the most adequate
alternative to the built pavilions. The exhibition, founded by André Malraux in
1959, was smaller in scale and devoted to young artists. Artists were selected
by the exhibition committee but were partly funded by the represented coun-
tries, and were then grouped according to their nationality. These examples
are crucial to understanding how national representation was addressed at
other international biennials. However, during the 1980s, nothing really
changed at the Biennale and slow decision-making exacerbated the Biennale’s
conflictual relationship with the pavilion-owning countries. Commissioners
also lamented the decline of the Giardini and, increasingly during the 1980s,
overall dissatisfaction rose. In addition, the international press unfavourably
compared the exhibition with Documenta, which seemed more suitable as a
contemporary art platform (Cestelli Guidi 1997).
During the 1980s, the evident obsolescence of the idea of national art
representation in the postwar period increasingly became a matter of discus-
sion. However, when referring to the Venice Biennale, this shift has to be
understood on two levels. In Italy, it coincided with a critique of the rhetoric
of italianità (‘Italianness’), a nationalist identity that was derived from Fascist
propaganda and linguistic reformation (Klein 1981). Moreover, in the Italy
of the 1980s, pro-European sentiment was rising, in concert with the forma-
tion of the European Union (Woolf 2003: 330–35). From this point of view,
national representation was perceived as part of the legacy of the national-
istic chauvinism of right-wing politics. In addition, the globalization of the
markets broadened the western-centric perspective of the world, stimulat-
ing approaches that would encompass more points of view (Harris 2011). As
cultural historian Michael Denning notes, in the late 1980s the term ‘globaliza-
tion’ displaced ‘international’ (2004: 11). Equally, exhibitions such as Magiciens
de la Terre (1989), which was originally meant to be part of the Paris Biennale
(Steeds 2013), were, regardless of criticism, pivotal in advancing the discourse
of globalization, multiculturalism and postcolonialism. The influence of these
discourses can be traced in the inquiries conducted by Art in America (‘The
Global Issue’ 1989) and Kunstforum (‘Weltkunst-Globalkultur’ 1992).
However, to understand the way in which the Biennale addressed these
topics, it is important to focus specifically on what might at first seem a second-
ary level – its institutional transformations. The discussion about the national
pavilions was not, in fact, the greatest worry of the Biennale’s board. Throughout
the 1980s, both editions of the Piano Quadriennale (‘Quadrennial Plan’) – the
cultural project laid out by the Biennale’s board of directors, who hold their office
for four years – mentioned the matter of the national pavilions (Ente Autonomo
‘La Biennale di Venezia’ 1984, 1987). Yet the point was never strongly addressed
and was overshadowed by more pressing matters. In the 1980s and 1990s, the
board’s meetings were dominated by the need to rethink the Biennale’s charter.
The 1973 reform, which was intended to democratize the institution, remained
incomplete (Martini 2012). The large number of board members, each with a
political agenda, made the Biennale difficult to govern. The fact that the Biennale
was a parastate enterprise, or, in other words, dependent on central government
and political decisions, was a continuous cause of lament.
In short, in Italy, the discourse around the obsolescence of the national
pavilion system was a central part of the argument about the need to rethink
the Biennale’s charter, while, at an international level, it was considered to be

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one of the main reasons for the Biennale’s slow decline (Ricci 2014). This was 25. Andrea Fraser secretly
recorded the meeting
a difficult problem to solve as the pavilions were embedded in the Giardini, and incorporated it
physically, culturally and economically. It was the epochal Italian economic and as audio installations
political crisis of the 1990s, together with the restructuring of Europe’s geopoliti- in the 1993 Austrian
pavilion (see Fraser et
cal order following the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), that caused the old-fash- al. 1993).
ioned Venetian peculiarity of the national pavilions to take on a positive aspect.
26. Klaus Bußman,
recorded in Ente
The Transnational Approach Autonomo ‘La Biennale
di Venezia’ (1992c: 49).
When Achille Bonito Oliva was appointed Director of the Visual Arts section
in March 1992, the Biennale was in great difficulty (Ente Autonomo ‘La
Biennale di Venezia’ 1992a: 54). On top of economic constraints and declin-
ing visitor numbers, it was affected by the historic crisis that led to the end
of Italy’s First Republic. The immediate consequence was the immobilization
of the Biennale’s decision-making process, meaning that the 1992 exhibition
had to be postponed to 1993 (Ente Autonomo ‘La Biennale di Venezia’ 1991).
The coincidence of the approaching centennial anniversary in 1995 provided
an ‘official’ excuse for delaying the exhibition, but it was also evident that the
institution was still bound to an old bureaucratic apparatus that appeared
incapable of keeping up with the world’s transformations. However, the loom-
ing centennial anniversary was also the stimulus for the board to attempt to
devise a new Biennale charter. Therefore, even if the general scenario was
difficult, a drive to raise the phoenix from the ashes was in process.
Between 4 and 5 July 1992, during the countries’ meeting at the Hotel
Bauer, Bonito Oliva proposed in an enthusiastic speech to all of the pavilions’
commissioners that they should embrace a transnational approach in choos-
ing their representative artists (Ente Autonomo ‘La Biennale di Venezia’ 1992c).
More specifically, he suggested that countries with a pavilion should play host
to those without. The audience’s first reaction to the ‘transnational approach’,
however, was dead silence.25 The meeting, in other respects, was not different
from other meetings. The commissioners all reported their previously decided
plans and posed questions over bureaucratic and organizational issues, such
as surveillance in the Giardini, display dates, rules and regulations. Just as in
1974, the overriding message was that no country intended to surrender its
privilege to exhibit autonomously.
Nevertheless, praise of Bonito Oliva’s idea and his curatorial project as a
whole was generally expressed, and some countries’ exhibition programmes
were already tuned into the transnational and challenged the notion of the
‘nationality’ of their representative artists. The German pavilion, for example,
announced that it would display works by Hans Haacke, a German living in
New York, and Nam June Paik, a Korean artist.26 Haacke’s memorable disrup-
tion of the floor of the pavilion, which metaphorically called into question
the foundations of nationality, together with Paik’s questioning of globalized
communications, ensured the pavilion the Premio Paesi (Ente Autonomo ‘La
Biennale di Venezia’ 1993). Significantly, the United States also happened to
adopt a transnational approach by exhibiting Louise Bourgeois, a French artist
living in New York. The Hungarian pavilion exhibited work by Joseph Kosuth,
who was born in Hungary but living in Italy. Moreover, the Austrian pavilion
played host to work not only by the Austrian artist Gerwald Rockenschaub,
but also to work by the American Andrea Fraser and the Swiss Christian
Philipp Müller. No country, however, followed Bonito Oliva’s request by host-
ing an artist from a country without a built pavilion, arguing, as the Spanish

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Clarissa Ricci
Hans Haacke and Nam June Paik receive the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion as the Country Prize from
Achille Bonito Oliva (1993). Photo: courtesy of Archivio Storico della Biennale di Venezia (ASAC).
27. Another common Commissioner did, that the countries without pavilions were the Biennale’s
comparison is to the
Olympic Games, which
problem (Ente Autonomo ‘La Biennale di Venezia’ 1992b: 35–39). The compari-
started the same year son often made between the Biennale and the United Nations,27 repeated by
as the Biennale. Bonito Oliva at the beginning of his 1992 speech at the Countries Meeting,
28. See Bonito Oliva (1993a: ironically emphasized the central institution’s complete lack of power over the
34) and Ricci (2020). national pavilions’ decisions.
Bonito Oliva’s transnational approach to the Biennale’s pavilions issue
in 1993 was not only driven by the desire to find practical solutions to the
ever-increasing demand for pavilions. It was also strategic, as he wanted
to enhance the ‘internationality’ of the exhibition (Bonito Oliva 1993a: 12).
Joining the board’s drive to give the institution new foundations in the wake
of the centennial anniversary, Bonito Oliva wanted his Biennale to represent
the whole planet. The title of the exhibition itself, Punti Cardinali dell’Arte
(‘Cardinal Points of Art’), exemplified the wide international reach that the
curator had in mind. His attempt to move beyond a western vision of the
world, even if its success was debatable, nevertheless informed each exhi-
bition.28 Cardinali dell’Arte comprised fifteen exhibitions that the curator
described as a ‘mosaic’ that built up the whole Biennale. Refuting the unify-
ing approach of an ‘orthopaedic theme’, this mosaic structure exacerbated the
fragmentation caused by the autonomy of national pavilions (Bonito Oliva
1993a: 13, 18). Moreover, the competing visions that made up the exhibition
were multiplied still further by the many people who participated in the cura-
torial groups that he created to conceive the exhibitions. The core idea was to

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offer a complex and even contradictory internationalist view of contemporary 29. In 1992, the European
Union was still only
art by allowing multiple voices, nationalities, approaches and media to inter- ‘economic’, as indicated
act (Bonito Oliva 1993a: 35). The whole project revolved around the keywords by its title at the
of ‘nomadism’ and ‘coexistence’. Bonito Oliva refracted through these words time: the European
Economic Community.
the numerous debates of the time around multiculturalism, migration, post- However, after the
colonialism and globalization, transforming the Biennale with what Beat Wyss Maastricht treaty,
described as a ‘bazaar approach’ (Wyss and Scheller 2011: 129). matters of culture and
art were also discussed
It is crucial to recall that he’s project coincided with calls to radically trans- (Veiga 1992: 35, 53).
form the understanding of the ‘national pavilion’. Bonito Oliva, however,
30. See Vertovec (1999).
supported the pavilion system and firmly believed that each country contrib- Transnational theory
uted to the cultural and material richness of the exhibition. However, the includes a variety
of sub-categories
form of national representation began to seem even more contentious after about communities,
the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (Young and Light 2001). A conference was notions of citizenship,
organized shortly before Bonito Oliva’s nomination as Director of the Visual identity politics,
social movements
Arts section in order to discuss the future form of the institution. The most and networks, ideas
significant issue was whether or not it was reasonable to allow the European about family, ethnicity
Union to adopt the institution, or to make it an international institution based and nationalism, and
economic issues (trade,
on an agreement between the nations participating at the Biennale.29 None migrant workers, etc.).
of these proposals were ever realized, but the conference itself was sympto-
matic of a moment in which the redefinition of national borders after the fall
of communism, the at times violent calls for recognition of new nations, and
global migration were topics at the forefront of public debate. At the Biennale,
the political changes that prompted these debates were all physically evident
at the 45th exhibition, not only in their metaphorical representation in the
broken floor of the German pavilion, but also in Yugoslavia’s empty pavilion,
which was used for one of the fifteen exhibitions conceived by Bonito Oliva:
Macchine della Pace (‘Machines for Peace’).
Despite Bonito Oliva’s calls for a ‘transnational approach’, the phrase
was used infrequently by the curator, who claimed that it was synonymous
with the ‘old concept of nomadism’ (Ente Autonomo ‘La Biennale di Venezia’
1992b: 8). The reasons were both political and personal. If, in the world of
politics, the word ‘transnational’ was increasingly being used – in particular
to describe how multinational firms operated (United Nations 1989) and in
reference to the model of what philosopher Jürgen Habermas (2012: 341) calls
the ‘complementary dependence and interconnection’ posed by the European
Union30 – it became an exhausted political concept in Italy during the 1980s,
mainly because of its association with the Italian Radical Party leader Marco
Pannella. Bonito Oliva, as a proponent of the Socialist Party, avoided the word
and reclaimed ownership over it as connected to nomadism:
As far as the pavilions are concerned, I have had to overcome the ‘expo’
scheme that was inspired by the Venice Biennale […]. I wanted there to
be the opportunity for a transnational culture (and I can use this prefix
before Pannella since I theorised the Transavanguardia before him),
which entails conferring a new concept upon internationality […]. [T]he
concept of internationality nowadays has to take in migration, nomad-
ism, eclecticism, interracialism.
(1993b: 15)
The second and more personal reason why Bonito Oliva tended not to employ
this word was its association with ‘Transavanguardia’, a term that he coined
in 1979 and that in established art narratives is called Italian postmodernist

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Clarissa Ricci
31. ‘Transit’ was also the painting. The prefix, ‘trans’ instead of ‘post’ or ‘neo’, was chosen to distance the
title of part of the
45th Venice Biennale’s
movement from a linear ‘Darwinist’ concept of history (Bonito Oliva 1979), and
Italian national to highlight the ability of such art to ‘move nomadically’ through any territory,
representation (Opera whether it be historical, aesthetic or material (Dantini 2017).
Italiana), which was
divided into Transiti The use of this approach in 1993 was clarified in the catalogue of the 45th
and Trittici. On the Biennale by the Italian philosopher Mario Perniola, who affirmed the neces-
concept of Transit in sity to move away from thinking of art as history in favour of a topology of art
Perniola, see Bianchi
(2019). that ‘would examine and analyse the most diverse and contradictory artistic
experiences’. Such aesthetic topology introduces a ‘permanent spatial dyna-
mism’, which makes the artist a nomad. However, Perniola also warned that
‘a topology of art that avoids the false alternative between ethnicity and
nomadism must be based on the concept of simultaneity, mixture and transit’
(1993: 103–04). Perniola’s concept of transit is specifically understood to be the
aesthetic, historical and material adventure of the artist:
This movement can be defined as neither travel nor transport, but as

transit. In fact, travel is the movement of a subject from a point of depar-
ture to a point of arrival; transport is the movement of an object from its
fixed place to a destination. Transit, instead, presupposes that the places
through which it moves are neither set in a hierarchical nor temporal
order nor are they final.
(1993: 104–05)31
This was the ‘core’ idea of Bonito Oliva’s Biennale: that it should be a non-
hierarchical place of ‘transit’ between styles, genres, media, temporalities and
diverse cultures (Ricci 2020). This understanding of trans(it)nationalism makes
it possible to understand the wider project that Bonito Oliva had in mind
when proposing to rearrange nationalities in the different pavilions. It was
the need to confer ‘a new concept upon internationality’, to revamp one of
the ür-principles of the Biennale that gave new life to the outdated model of
national pavilions, which ironically enabled it to address current topics.
However, art historian Caroline Jones questions the usefulness of this term,
asking ‘what does “transnational” imply that “international” does not?’ (2016:
153). Jones goes on to argue that ‘international’ is the precondition that ‘models
relations of hubs and spokes, defined by the borders of nation states with their
economies [and] official commissioners’, while the prefix ‘trans’ is used ‘to cut
across or dissolve these units, even as it depends on their infrastructures’. ‘The
trans can be regional, hemispheric or global; what is consistent is that it seeks
to chart a vector across national or international circuits of exchange, establish-
ing alternative relations’ (Jones 2016: 153–54). This interpretation emphasizes
an abstract approach and makes sense of what Bonito Oliva calls the ‘very civil
idea’ to host artists from other countries (Juneja 2019). However, according to
Bonito Oliva, ‘transnational’ has a more complex meaning. The curator continu-
ously used the notion of nomadism to describe the present condition of artists
and as a helpful illustration of the ‘horizontal’ movement that is germane to
them (Ente Autonomo ‘La Biennale di Venezia’ 1992b). The theme of migra-
tion was a significant issue in the Mediterranean during the 1990s, when the
national and international press was full of images of boats of migrants arriving
at Brindisi, Italy. Despite the fact that, in the catalogue, Bonito Oliva underlines
the importance of the ‘system of politics’, and that many artworks – such as
those by Doris Salcedo and Yukinori Yanagi – were centred on these themes,
he carefully avoided any political implications (1993a: 11–14). His reference

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to transnational migration does not challenge state sovereignty and does not 32. See Ong (1999: 4). The
importance of Fluxus
refuse national policies. It is more connected to what ethnographers described in Bonito Oliva’s
as a ‘contact zone’ in reference to spaces where cultures meet and clash (see understanding of
Pratt 1991). It also draws on what anthropologist Arjun Appadurai called contemporary art can
be traced through the
‘ethnoscapes’ to describe ‘a landscape of people who constitute the shifting large retrospective
world’ (1990: 297), and what art historian Terry Smith would describe as a ‘tran- on the movement,
sition in the context of all other nations also in transition’ (2019: 128). Ubi Fluxus Ibi Motus
1990–1960 (1990).
Through the concept of nomadism, Bonito Oliva referred both to the
physical movements of artists and cultural cross-contamination, close to what 33. See Maffesoli (1988),
Hall (1990), Attali
anthropologist Aihwa Ong calls ‘transnationality’ (distinguishing it from trans- (1991), Giddens (1991),
nationalism) in a manner closer to the attitude of Fluxus during the 1960s.32 Braidotti (1991) and
Beck et al. (1994).
More specifically, Bonito Oliva borrowed the term ‘nomad’ as a description
of artistic experience from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Mille plateaux 34. On the first decade
of Manifesta, see
(1980). Deleuze was, since the beginning of Bonito Oliva’s career in the late Vanderlinden and
1960s, together with philosophers Arthur Danto and Theodor Adorno, an Filipovic (2005).
important point of reference in his curatorial thinking (Chiodi 2009: 272).
Despite the fact that, during the Countries Meeting, Bonito Oliva described
nomadism as an old concept, it was a concept at the forefront of discussion
around identity at a wider cultural level, especially in Europe.33 The ‘nomadic
character’ of the roving biennial Manifesta, the first steps towards the creation
of which were taken between 1991 and 1993, can in practice be used to define
Bonito Oliva’s conception of nomadism:
Inherent to Manifesta’s nomadic character is the desire to explore the

psychological and geographical territory of Europe, referring both to
border-lines and concepts. This process aims to establish closer dialogue
between particular cultural and artistic situations and the broader, interna-
tional fields of contemporary art, theory and politics in a changing society.
(Manifesta 2020)34
However, despite the lack of a clear definition from Bonito Oliva, the word
‘transnational’ was, at the beginning of the 1990s, already being used to posit
an alternative to the homogenization implied by globalism (Featherstone
1990), and to the more generic notions of pluralism and multiculturalism.
The (National) Pavilions after 1993

The ‘transnational spirit’ of the 1993 Biennale was part of a programme
designed to bring about the Biennale of the future, an idea that had been
discussed and attempted for nearly 30 years, and that Bonito Oliva partly
succeeded in realizing. However, this process was interrupted at the threshold
of the centennial anniversary. The 1995 Biennale, which was for the first time
directed by a non-Italian curator, Jean Clair, could not be a truly celebratory
moment, partly because no institutional change had taken place, and partly
because of the conflict between Clair and the board members who disap-
proved both of the interruption of Aperto, an exhibition dedicated to young
artists, and the placing of the main exhibition outside the Giardini (Ente
Autonomo ‘La Biennale di Venezia’ 1994). The 46th Esposizione Internazionale
d’Arte, entitled Identity and Alterity, was, in fact, held mainly at the Palazzo
Grassi. The process of expanding the exhibition’s boundaries and enhancing
its internationality was not simply the board’s pet project but an inevitable
consequence of the fact that more countries had started renting buildings as

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Clarissa Ricci
35. See also Sciullo (1998). temporary national pavilions in the city of Venice. This was a practical solution
36. On the board’s that both allowed the number of pavilions to grow and relieved the Biennale
discussions with of the pressure of hosting these countries in the Central Pavilion. Although
Szeemann on national
pavilions, see La
moving out of the Giardini had been attempted many times – famously in
Biennale di Venezia 1972 with Sculture della Città (‘Sculptures of the City’) and in 1976 with a
(1999b); on Italian decentralized exhibition policy – it did not become normal practice until the
artists, see La Biennale
di Venezia (1998). 1990s (Ricci 2014).
Thanks to a new charter in 1998 that fulfilled the unfinished reforms of
1973, the oldest biennial in the world was relaunched in 1999 (Italian Council
of Ministers 1998).35 This new era started with the first of two editions of the
Visual Arts section directed by Harald Szeemann. The 48th Biennale dAPER-
Tutto (1999), which has been greatly celebrated because of its expansion into
the Arsenale, was not transnational, but global. Szeemann firmly resisted the
idea of national pavilions; however, he ultimately only had authority over the
Italian pavilion. He therefore removed Italian artists from the Central Pavilion
and dispersed them throughout the main exhibition.36 Under both harsh criti-
cism from the local press and pressure from the Italian government, however,
Szeemann reinstituted Italian representation in the form of a ‘virtual pavilion’,
nominating five female artists (Monica Bonvicini, Grazia Toderi, Luisa Lambri,
Bruna Esposito and Paola Pivi) as Italy’s representatives. The lively debates
around Szeemann’s attempt to abolish the Italian pavilion in 1999 demon-
strated once again the tenacity of national pavilions, not simply because they
were firmly established as physical structures (Jones 2016), but also because
their existence had a large amount of public, political and governmental impli-
cations. As sociologist David Boswell notes, nationalism is a great paradox:
on the one hand, its days seem to have passed, but on the other, it continues
to be vociferously reasserted (2007: 11). The awarding of the Golden Lion for
Best National Participation to Italy felt like more of a gesture of reparation for
the diplomatic incident with the Italian government, but the motivation of the
Lion reveals the criticality, as the judges declared: ‘it presents a new attitude
towards the reinvention of the territorial tradition of pavilions’ (La Biennale di
Venezia 1999a).
The debacle over the Italian pavilion demonstrates that, despite their
differences, Szeemann and Bonito Oliva had a similar goal: to give space and
attention to the main exhibition curated by the Biennale’s Artistic Director.
With a venue free from a ‘pavilion’s interference’, Szeemann could real-
ize the project of an international exhibition under the aegis of the Biennale
alone. The title of Szeemann’s second Biennale, Plateau of Humankind (2001),
revealed the next step towards a more international Biennale in which all the
exhibitions were equal. Szeemann, while abandoning what proved to be an
anachronistic project of abolishing national pavilions, intended to develop the
Biennale along the lines of the Documenta model of a supranational exhibi-
tion. He announced in a press release that the 49th Biennale was not an exhi-
bition but rather a ‘stage of mankind’. At the Countries Meeting, Szeemann,
like his predecessor, had to recognize that ‘many countries already made their
choices’; nevertheless, he asserted that ‘Plateau of Humankind […] involves
both the contributions representing the countries, and the international
section’. A declaration to which he added a bold finale: ‘only La Biennale is
able to provide both with such a persuasive platform’ (Szeemann 2000).
After 2000, the pavilions became the central point of reflection for the
curators of the Venice Biennale, who have increasingly incorporated into their
work an inquiry around what it means to make an international exhibition

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Song Dong, Para-pavilion: The Intelligence from Poor People (2011), installation view. Photo: Giorgio
Zucchiatti, courtesy of Archivio Storico della Biennale di Venezia (ASAC).
under what art critic Anna Detheridge called the ‘Venetian conditions’ (2005:
75). In particular, at the 54th Biennale in 2011, curator Bice Curiger self-reflex-
ively referred to the national pavilion structure in the title ILLUMInazioni –
ILLUMInations, in order to stress how the exhibition was meant to ‘create
possible unexpected meetings between works by artists from different cultural
horizons and who work according to different criteria’ (2011: 43). Curiger
advocated in her curatorial statement that the Biennale should be a ‘United
Nations’ of a different kind: more open, since it provides an arena of nego-
tiation (2011: 44). This project was also enabled by the creation of four para-
pavilions, small exhibitions within the exhibition itself, designed by artists
who invited other artists to exhibit. The idea of the para-pavilion was also inti-
mately bound up with the history of the Venice Biennale and incarnated what
curator Massimiliano Gioni called an ‘idea of hospitality that borders on the
parasitical’ (2011: 1). The idea of pavilions as temporary sheds refers even more
deeply to that ‘old’ concept of nomadism, as these temporary pavilions seem to
recall tents. They refer also to the original temporary exhibition spaces, such as
the Crystal Palace (1851) or Courbet’s Pavilion of Realism (1855), which were
the starting points of the exhibition’s centrality in art history (Bennett 1988).
Another exhibition that engaged self-reflexively with the Biennale’s struc-
ture was Okwui Enwezor’s All the World’s Futures (2015). In this case, Enwezor
addressed the Giardini’s disorder directly in his curator’s statement as one of
the ‘filters’ through which to present ‘multiple ideas’ and a ‘diversity of prac-
tices’, and as a structure that provides an opportunity to explore the ‘pervasive

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Clarissa Ricci
37. On locality, see Hanru structure of disorder in global geo-politics, the environment, and econom-
(2005: 57–62) and
Kompatsiaris (2017). On
ics’ (2015: 92–94). In Enwezor’s view, pavilions were thus the embodiment of
the global, see Belting dialectical contradictions of the present time.
et al. (2012), Bydler Regardless of the critical approach of many of the Biennale’s contempo-
(2004), Elkins (2007) and
Stallabrass (2004). rary curators, the rhetoric of the board continued to project their overlapping
aspirations of both internationality and national representation. Paolo Baratta,
twice president of the Venice Biennale (1998–2001 and 2008–present), used
the ‘international’ parameter to measure the success of the exhibition (as
Filippo Grimani did in 1895), claiming that the continuous rise in the number
of pavilions was clear evidence of growth and a ‘pillar’ of the exhibition (2011:
31). More recently, though, he has placed emphasis instead on the openness
of the Biennale:
First of all, we are an international exhibition, a complex international

exhibition, in which numerous exhibitions promoted by participating
countries dialogue with each other, and, together, dialogue with the
international exhibition we organize in collaboration with our curator. In
turn, our exhibition must be open and without any boundaries.
(Baratta 2019)
The claim for the internationality of the contemporary Biennale is based on

a split between the exhibition’s national and supranational levels creates
constant asymmetry, fragmentation and dissonance. Nevertheless, this condi-
tion has parallels with Habermas’s description of European nationhood
that posits that ‘the tension between the universalism of an egalitarian legal
community and the particularism of a community united by historical destiny
is built into the very concept of the national state’ (1998: 115).
Regardless of Baratta’s (2019: 2) claim that the foundation of the contem-
porary Biennale lay in Szeemann’s 1999 exhibition, according to curators
Maria Hlavajova and Simon Sheikh it was the 45th Biennale, curated by Bonito
Oliva, that exemplified how art and the contemporary were developing:
[T]he 45th Venice Biennale: rehearsed as a quandary around national

representation in face of the emerging global-transnational prospects,
the meeting resulted in a strange conciliation. Characteristic of the art
world through to today, the commissioners settled on a compromise of
international nationalism – international in reach, yet national in origin.
(2017: 27, original emphases)
The main contribution of Bonito Oliva’s ‘transnational approach’ was to stop

the discussion over whether or not to abolish the national pavilions and
to shift the discourse to the complexities of what was becoming known as
‘globalization’. However, the framework that he provided further compli-
cated the scenario, since, while it was open to diverse curatorial and artistic
approaches, it also encouraged requests for new national pavilions.
The transnational approach acted as a Trojan horse that altered the
perception of the national pavilion system, transforming it from an outdated
feature of the Venice Biennale into a peculiarity that makes it what Wyss
terms a ‘mirror of intercultural encounter’ (2011: 10), an inevitable condition
of globalized contemporary biennials, which are not places of fixed local-
ity and where global production defines the contemporary.37 Moreover, the
transnational became the lens through which critics began to understand the

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biennalization phenomenon, in an attempt to provide a multidimensional 38. See Tang (2011), Smith
(2011), Frascina (2013)
account of it.38 and Kompatsiaris (2017:
Although asserting the value of the transnational was an important step 11).
for the Biennale, it happened largely at the level of rhetoric and artistic and 39. See Robins (1991),
curatorial practice. The way in which national pavilions were managed did Osborne (2013) and Cox
not change at all. As Bonito Oliva and Szeemann enacted their reforms, else- and Lund (2016).
where in Europe and beyond, other international large-scale exhibitions, such
as Manifesta and the Biennale de Lyon, grew in stature. By 1993, the Venice
Biennale had competed with approximately 25 other biennials, while in 2003,
Francesco Bonami, who started his international career as one of the curators
of Aperto ’93, had to compete with an expanded Documenta (which took place
between 2001 and 2002 in five continents) and 80 other biennial-type exhibi-
tions (Belting et al. 2012: 102–08). Moreover, as Fradeletto understood at the
beginning of the 1900s, making the countries partners of the exhibition and
involving them directly, both at a cultural and an economic level, would guar-
antee the survival of the Biennale and its financial competitiveness, allowing a
great number of potentially free exhibitions.
***
From its foundation to the present day, the Venice Biennale’s politics of
legitimation have been grounded in its unique combination of international
reach and national primacy. National representation and national pavilions
have played a pivotal role throughout its history and, despite the geopoliti-
cal turmoil of the twentieth century, this system has not been fundamentally
disrupted. After the Second World War, and even more so after the global
student protests of 1968, the notion of ‘national representation’ began to appear
increasingly obsolete, and the pavilion buildings at the Giardini seemed to
perpetuate a retrograde political and power system. Internationality, though,
remained the goal of the Venice Biennale and, in borrowing new formats from
similar exhibitions such as Documenta, the institution eventually found a way
to incorporate its traditional system into a contemporary setting and, in return,
continued to receive formidable economic support from the pavilion-owning
countries.
The transnational approach, introduced in 1993 as a means of giving more
importance to the main international exhibition, curated by the Biennale gave
a more appealing theoretical framework to the outmoded national pavilion
system and brought it up to date with globalized contemporary biennials.
Szeemann tried to remodel the Biennale as a contemporary exhibition plat-
form, and in so doing cooled down the discourse surrounding the issue of
national representation, shifting attention to the plurality of national pavilions,
where ‘national’ is more of an indication of the provenance of funds rather
than of a nation whose character is being artistically represented. Despite this
homogenizing ‘open’ approach, national pavilions have never stopped being
a controversial feature, as they reveal the apparent paradox in the contempo-
rary discourse regarding the relationship between extensive globalization and
intense localism.39
Acknowledgements
Research for this article was assisted by a Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowship
in the History of Art from the American Council of Learned Societies, gener-
ously supported by the Getty Foundation.

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Clarissa Ricci
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Suggested Citation
Ricci, Clarissa (2020), ‘From Obsolete to Contemporary: National Pavilions
and the Venice Biennale’, Journal of Curatorial Studies, 9:1, pp. 8–39,
doi: https://doi.org/10.1386/jcs_00009_1
Contributor Details
Clarissa Ricci is adjunct professor at the University of Bologna. In 2019, she
was the recipient of a Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowship, and in 2010 she
was a visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York. Her work focuses
on the role of exhibitions in shaping contemporaneity, biennials, with a
specific interest in the Venice Biennale, art market, art system and contem-
porary sculpture. Her publications include editing Starting from Venice: Studies
on the Biennale (2010), co-editing Quando è scultura (2011) and Double Trouble:
Exhibitions Facing Fairs in Contemporary Art (2020), and contributing chap-
ters to Venezia: Città sostenibile (2020) and Abstraction Matters: Contemporary
Sculptors in Their Own Words (2019).

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Contact: Dipartimento delle Arti, Università di Bologna, Via Barberia 4, 40123

Bologna, Italy.
E-mail: clarissa.ricci3@unibo.it
Clarissa Ricci has asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format it
was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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Pavilions Obsolete

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The Japanese pavilion under construction, Giardini della Biennale, Venice (1956).

Photo: courtesy of the

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Journal of Curatorial Studies

From Obsolete to Contemporary:

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Venice Biennale’s International Aspirations and the

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(Rydell 1993: 6–11). 16. See Barbantini (1945:

The Obsolescence of the National Pavilions System After

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America) in order to contrast the hegemonic nations of Europe and North

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This movement can be defined as neither travel nor transport, but as

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Inherent to Manifesta’s nomadic character is the desire to explore the

The (National) Pavilions after 1993

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First of all, we are an international exhibition, a complex international

The claim for the internationality of the contemporary Biennale is based on

[T]he 45th Venice Biennale: rehearsed as a quandary around national

The main contribution of Bonito Oliva’s ‘transnational approach’ was to stop

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La Biennale di Venezia (1998), exhibition notes, Historical Fund, Visual Art,

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Dal Canton, Giuseppina (1997), ‘Venezia e la Biennale, una nuova internazio-

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Ente Autonomo ‘La Biennale di Venezia’ (1993), award deliberation, Historical

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Habermas, Jürgen (2012), ‘The Crisis of the European Union: A Response’,

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Exhibitions of Contemporary Art, Bergen and Ostfildern: Bergen Kunsthalle/

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Steeds, Lucy (2013), ‘Magiciens de la Terre and Development of Transnational

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Contact: Dipartimento delle Arti, Università di Bologna, Via Barberia 4, 40123

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