The new Board of Directors of the Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta and composed of Giorgio Orsoni  (Vicepresident), Luca Zaia, Francesca Zaccariotto and Emmanuele Francesco Maria Emanuele, met today in the offices of Ca' Giustinian and appointed the Directors of the Visual Arts, Music, Theatre and Dance sectors.

The appointments were decided as follows:
• Massimiliano Gioni was appointed by majority Director of the Visual Arts Sector with the specific responsibility for curating the 55th International Art Exhibition to be held in 2013
• Ivan Fedele was appointed Director of the Music Sector for the four-year period 2012-2015
• Àlex Rigola, Director of the Theatre Sector for the years 2010-2011, has been confirmed for the two-year period 2012-2013
• Ismael Ivo, Director of the Dance Sector from 2005 to 2011, has been confirmed for the year 2012.

Massimiliano Gioni (Busto Arsizio, 1973) is a curator and contemporary art critic. In 2010 he directed 10.000 Lives, the eighth Gwangju Art Biennale in South Korea being its youngest and first European director ever of this contemporary art biennale; the edition he curated attracted 500.000 visitors. He was the curator of the section entitled “La Zona” within the 50th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia. His experience as the artistic director of biennials and other international exhibitions includes the organization of Of Mice and Men – the fourth Berlin Biennale (2006) – and the fifth edition of the travelling art biennale Manifesta (2004). He is the Associate Director of the New Museum in New York and the Artistic Director of the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in Milan.

Ivan Fedele (Lecce, 1953), one of the finest composers on the contemporary scene, also has an impressive career in teaching at the most prestigious musical centres in the world: the universities of Harvard and Barcelona, the Sorbonne and IRCAM in Paris, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and the Chopin Academy in Warsaw, the Centre Acanthes in Avignon, the CNSM in Lyon and the CNR in Strasbourg, in addition to the Conservatories in Milan, Bologna and Turin. Ivan Fedele has been asked for the next four years (2012-2015) to develop the educational-teaching and research activities that are the focus of the Biennale College. From workshops for the invention, practice and production of music, to ateliers for chamber music theatre, which will encourage collaboration with the other performing arts sectors, to studies of new technologies alongside the masters, with the contribution of renowned institutions.

Àlex Rigola will continue a work cycle focused on educational activities based precisely on the success of his experience in 2010-2011. During the preceding two-year period, the Catalan director fulfilled the aspirations of the Biennale by combining a festival of great directors with an international training and specialization workshop that encompassed all the aspects and complexities of the performing arts (stage technique, lighting, dramaturgy, movement, …). His experiment with this new “festival-workshop” has brought Venice to the centre of the debate on contemporary theatre art, not just because of the participation of the national and international press, but because of the significant participation of young people, professionals and theatre lovers.

Ismael Ivo was asked to stay for another year with the commitment to pursue the activities of the Arsenale della Danza which began in 2009, in order to ensure the necessary continuity in the educational activities of this Sector which has become an important element for the future of the Biennale College. Ivo himself has contributed to rebuilding and perfecting the Arsenale della Danza during its first three years, by means of exchange programs with internationally renowned institutions and academies, workshop that have involved other artistic disciplines, and performances starring the young dancers of the Arsenale della Danza. The most important result for an institution which responsibly raises the question of the future was the invitation to one of its dancers from the Arsenale della Danza to join Marie Chouinard’s company, and to another dancer to participate in two consecutive yearly sessions of the Alvin Ailey school in New York.

Each Director was given responsibility not only for the activities of the exhibitions and festivals, but in particular for the activities that constitute the Biennale College. The specific programmes for each individual Sector will soon be presented.

At the conclusion of the meeting of the Board of Directors, Paolo Baratta emphasized how “the Biennale is moving in the direction of pluralism and continuity. For Dance we have asked Ismael Ivo to stay for another year (his eighth) after he so effectively planned and developed the Arsenale della Danza, which requires organizational continuity. For the Theatre we have confirmed Àlex Rigola to complete, over a second two-year term, an equally productive experience in which he reconciled workshop and performance activities. The Board of Directors thanked Luca Francesconi for his artistic direction, which over the past four years has enriched the Music Festival with original inventions in innovative venues involving various realities in Venice. It is pleased to begin a new four-year commitment in the Music Sector with Ivan Fedele, one of the most significant composers on the international scene, who has also been entrusted with the task of developing workshops for the Biennale College. In the Visual Arts, after acknowledging the success of Bice Curiger’s edition, it has chosen to appoint the new Director far in advance, and among the possible solutions in the international field, has selected Massimiliano Gioni as a young personality who has already accumulated a number of important appointments, which he has honoured so well as to win the esteem of artists and critics around the world”.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Massimiliano Gioni (Busto Arsizio, 1973) is a critic and contemporary art curator. In 2010 he curated the 8th Art Biennale of Gwangju, South Korea, and he was its youngest and first European director ever. Since December 2006, he has been on the curatorial team of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.
In 2003, he curated the exhibition entitled “La Zona” within the 50th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia; in 2004 he co-curated the travelling contemporary art biennale Manifesta 5. In 2006 he curated the fourth Berlin Biennale in collaboration with artist Maurizio Cattelan and curator Ali Subotnik
Since 2003 he has been the artistic director of the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in Milan.
During the course of his career, he has developed a wide variety of independent projects: he founded the magazine Charley and opened a not-for-profit exhibition space, the travelling mini-gallery Wrong Gallery, initially opened in New York in 2002 and later moved to the Tate Modern in London in 2005.
The exhibitions he has curated include "Ostalgia", "Urs Fischer. Marguerite De Ponty", "The Generational" and "After Nature" at the New Museum, New York and several exhibitions organized with the  Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, amongst which “One of many” by Pawel Althamer, Arena Civica, Milan; "Still Life" by Tacita Dean, Palazzo Dugnani, Milano; "Altri fiori e altre domande" by Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Palazzo Litta, Milano; "My Religion is Kindness" by Paola Pivi, Stazione di Porta Genova, ex Magazzini, Milano; "Tino Sehgal", Villa Reale, Milano.
Editor-in-chief of Flash Art in New York from 2000 to 2002, he has collaborated with the magazines Artforum, Domus, Frieze, Parkett, Rolling Stone, Wired and with the publishing companies Charta, Mondadori, Phaidon, Les Presses du Réel, Dijon and Rizzoli.

Ivan Fedele (Lecce – Italy, 1953). One of his greatest admirers is Pierre Boulez and it is in France that Ivan Fedele consolidated his reputation as a composer whose opus, currently, counts nearly one hundred titles and includes composition of every type: orchestral pieces, works for the theatre, electro-acoustic and chamber music. Without rejecting the teaching of the masters of the historic avant-garde, Fedele seems to put its principles into practice, freeing the music from the laboratory environment and leading it back to the freshness of listening, to the need and urgency of keeping the channels open with the interpreters and listeners, thanks to the vigil and technically masterly control over the processes and the addition of new, exciting and instantly recognizable materials.
After studying at the Conservatory in Milan and the Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome (though he also studied philosophy at the Università degli Studi di Milano), at the early age of 28 he won the Gaudeamus award (for the first String Quartet and Chiari for orchestra), which launched him on the international scene. In 1989, his composition for orchestra Epos won the Petrassi Competition in Parma. Antigone, an opera commissioned by the Teatro Comunale in Florence for the opening night of the Maggio Musicale, was awarded the Premio Abbiati by the Association of Italian Music Critics as the best new work of 2007. The Cd Animus Anima received the Choc de la Musique 2003 from the magazine “Le Monde de la Musique”, whereas Maya was awarded the Coup de Coeur 2004 by the Académie Charles Cros and Mixtim won the Premio del Disco Amadeus in the contemporary category for the year 2007.  In addition to his many chamber works, he has also composed pieces for orchestra alone, concertos or symphonic-vocal music, of which the most recent include En archè and 33 noms (a commission from the Teatro La Scala in Milan).
His passion for mathematics, which he inherited from the teachings of his father, is the basis for much of his important research, which led to the creation of new composing tools and creative procedures in collaboration with IRCAM, such as a new system of capteurs and a prototype of “granular synthesizer”.
His music has been directed, among others, by Boulez, Eschenbach, Chung, Saalonen, Muti, Slatkin, Robertson, Kalitze, Wit, Valade and Rophè and performed by orchestras and ensembles such as the BBC, Berlin Radio, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart SWR, National de France, National de Lyon, Warsaw Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Santa Cecilia, Ensemble Intercontemporain, London Sinfonietta, Klangforum Wien, etc.
Ivan Fedele also has a impressive career as a professor and has taught in important institutions such as Harvard University, the University of Barcelona, La Sorbonne and IRCAM in Paris, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the Chopin Academy in Warsaw, the Centre Acanthes in Avignon, the CNSM in Lyon and the CNR in Strasbourg, in addition to the Conservatories of Milan, Bologna and Turin.
In 2001 he was honoured by the French Ministry of Culture with the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Lettres et des Arts. In 2005 he was appointed a Member of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. In 2007 the Italian Minister of Culture assigned him the Chair in Composition for the Master Courses in Music Studies at the Accademia.