Edited by Elena Filipovic, Marieke van Hal, and Solveig Øvstebø.
Official launch at Art Basel Miami Beach, 5 December 2010. Public dialogue with Ute Meta Bauer at the Art Salon.
Texts by Donald Preziosi, Marian Pastor Roces, Caroline A. Jones, Lawrence Alloway, Thomas McEvilley, Rafal Niemojewski, Simon Sheikh, Carlos Basualdo, John Clark, Daniel Buren, Michael Brenson, Paul O’Neill, Federica Martini, Vittoria Martini, Raqs Media Collective, Maria Hlavajova, Ranjit Hoskote, Gerardo Mosquera, Marieke van Hal, Solveig Øvstebø, Elena Filipovic, Bruce W. Ferguson, Milena M. Hoegsberg, Jan Verwoert, Charlotte Bydler, Okwui Enwezor, George Baker, Yakouba Konaté, Vinicius Spricigo, Sabine Marschall, Oliver Marchart.
This anthology on the global biennial phenomenon includes seminal republished texts collected from around the world as well as newly commissioned contributions from the leading scholars, curators, critics, and thinkers of biennials today.
By tracing the genealogy of the perennial exhibition format (understood here as including not only biennials but also other recurrent exhibitions such as triennials and quadrennials), and by examining some of the most emblematic examples of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—from the Biennials in Venice to Johannesburg, Havana to Gwangju, and from Documenta to Manifesta—this collection reads the artistic, theoretical, political, and other ambitions of such large-scale exhibition projects against the grain of their resulting exhibitions.
Poised to be a vital resource, The Biennial Reader reflects on the past, promise, and future of these exhibitions and argues for a new history of art to be written alongside their analysis. In the process, this “reader” of essays explores the perennial exhibition and the global hegemonic shifts that made them possible as well as their impact on contemporary art, curating, culture, and art institutions writ large.
The Biennial Reader can be ordered at: