Venice, 10 June 2007
The La Biennale di Venezia Foundation, chaired by Davide Croff, inaugurates the 52nd International Art Exhibition entitled Think with the Senses – Feel with the Mind. Art in the Present Tense, curated by Robert Storr, the first director from the United States in the history of the exhibition, and which opens to the public from June 10th to November 21st, 2007.
The main international exhibition, located in the spaces of the Corderie and part of the Artiglierie dell’Arsenale and in the Padiglione Italia in the Giardini, presents one hundred artists from all over the world with many site-specific works and new productions created for this particular exhibition with the collaboration of the Biennale di Venezia.
The Board of Directors of the Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Davide Croff, approved Director Robert Storr’s proposal to award the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Malick Sidibé (Soloba, Mali, 1936). The Golden Lion was awarded in Venice on Sunday June 10th, on the opening day of the Exhibition, during a brief ceremony at the Giardini della Biennale, that was followed by the official inauguration at 10.30 a.m.
The awards ceremony will take place in October for the first time in the history of the International Art Exhibition. The international jury will award the following official prizes: the Golden Lion to an artist present at the main international exhibition, the Golden Lion to an artist under the age of 40 present at the main international exhibition or in a national participation, the Golden Lion for the best national participation, and the Golden Lion to a critic or art historian for his contribution to contemporary art.
The national participations and the collateral events have grown considerably in number in recent editions of the Biennale Art Exhibition and have become a structural part of the main exhibition, increasing its stature even further; they constitute a wide range of exhibitions and events that reach beyond the boundaries of the Arsenale and the Giardini to extend throughout Venice, and now characterise the “Biennale archipelago” in a unique and original way.
Confirming the international vocation of the Biennale di Venezia, the foreign countries that have chosen to take part in the 52nd Exhibition have reached the record number of 76 participations: 34 in the exhibition venues with their own Pavilions (31 in the Giardini and 3 at the Arsenale) and 42 countries in the historic city centre of Venice. The national participations in this edition feature a number of debuts – such as Azerbaijan, Lebanon, Mexico, the Republic of Moldova, Tadzhikistan – and some returns – including Bulgaria and the Syrian Arab Republic. The countries come from the five continents and include 35 European nations, 20 from Latin America, 17 from Asia, 2 from North America, 1 from Oceania and 1 from Africa: Egypt.
The national participations have always represented an essential and distinctive component, an extraordinary asset for the Biennale Art Exhibition, allowing a better grasp of the best of each country’s artistic production, representing a veritable global “snapshot” of the contemporary in the world. An extraordinary contribution by the national participations which the Biennale di Venezia intends to underline because it was the first and hitherto only exhibition to institute permanent national Pavilions, some of which have celebrated their centennial this year, such as Belgium (owner of the first pavilion built in the Giardini; in 2009, it will be Hungary’s turn). The participation of the People’s Republic of China has become consolidated since 2005 at the Arsenale – a central area for the future development of the exhibition spaces at the Biennale – representing an early signal of a decisive engagement towards new areas of the world.
