Biennale Art  53rd International Art Exhibition  53rd International Art Exhibition to run from 7th June to 22nd November 2009 

Venice, 17 May 2008
The Venice Biennale's 53rd International Art Exhibition will run from 7th June to 22nd November 2009 in the traditional venues of the Giardini and the Arsenale, as well as in various other locations around the city. The dates have been fixed by the Biennale’s Board of Directors, chaired by Paolo Baratta. As already announced, the Director of the Visual Arts section of the Biennale is Daniel Birnbaum, with specific responsibility for curating the 53rd International Art Exhibition.

Born in Stockholm in 1963, Daniel Birnbaum is curator for institutions and exhibitions internationally and has since 2001 been Rector of the Staedelschule in Frankfurt-am-Main (Germany), an international Academy that brings together contemporary art and the development of new practices and techniques. Since 1998, he has been an editor of Artforum, New York, for which he has been regularly writing since 1995. He has also regularly contributed to other periodicals, such as Parkett and Frieze since the early 1990s.

Upon being nominated on 7th April 2008, Daniel Birnbaum declared:
“My recent exhibitions have all been realised in close collaboration with the artists, often through an individual relationship, and sometimes in a broader context. La Biennale di Venezia is a new kind of challenge but the principle remains the same: the artist’s vision must remain at the centre of everything”.