Looking for art's next big thing? Head to Venice

The Venice Biennale is where consensus is formed on what in art is important

Halfway through her second eight-hour day of looking at art in the Venice Biennale, Maria Giulia Maramotti took a break outside the Punta Della Dogana, an exhibition space on the Grand Canal.
 
“It’s been interesting to understand what the art world thinks is relevant,” said Maramotti, the senior director of North American retail for Max Mara Ltd, which was founded by her grandfather. “I’ll go home knowing about some artists who I wouldn’t have necessarily thought about collecting, but who now I think could be interesting as a part of the Collezione Maramotti,” the family art collection based in Reggio Emilia, Italy.

 
Over the course of one week in May, hundreds of the world’s wealthiest people converge on Venice for a bacchanal of openings, parties, and receptions that revolve around the commencement of the 57th International Art Exhibition, an ostensibly not-for-profit art show that’s known colloquially as the Venice Biennale.
 

The Biennale comprises 85 national pavilions, 29 of which are in a leafy park called the Giardini, where countries that include the US and Russia host contemporary art exhibits. The rest of the official show is in the Arsenale, a massive warehouse complex in which one curator (this iteration was organised by Christine Mace, the chief curator of the Pompidou Centre in Paris) assembles hundreds of artworks around a theme. This year’s is Viva Arte Viva, a show “inspired by humanism”. The Biennale will run from May 13 through November 26.

 
Satellite exhibitions will also be sponsored by philanthropies and museums, and in the case of the Punta Della Dogana, by billionaire François Pinault. (As Maramotti spoke outside, Pinault exited the building, which is currently hosting an exhibition of controversial and potentially vastly lucrative set of new works by artist Damien Hirst.)
 
Because of the large number of global rich, not to mention the cadre of art dealers who cater to them, the Biennale has become an unofficial forum where consensus is formed about art market standouts. (On the first few days of opening festivities, people as varied as pharmaceutical heiress Maja Hoffmann, San Francisco-based philanthropist Pamela Joyner, Farah Pahlavi, the exiled empress of Iran, and UK-based magnate Poju Zabludowicz were spotted at various events throughout the city.) New artists are anointed as stars, and the status of existing art celebrities is reinforced.

 
“It doesn’t always make careers, but it definitely can make careers,” said Heather Harmon, a director of the New York-based art advisory KCM Fine Arts, which is helping to build billionaire Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté's collection, Lune Rouge. “Take the Anne Imhof [performance installation] at the German Pavilion. That’s going to be one of the great takeaways from this Biennial, namely that she’s one of the people who need to be paid attention to on a global level.”
 
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