It’s Official – It Seems No One Liked This Year’s Venice Biennale

Director Francesco Bonami had idealistic plans. He handed over the reins to 11 other curators, two of whom are artists. “He didn’t create a team of co-curators working together but gave all of them complete autonomy to do their own thing. He bestowed an idealistic title on this exhibition of exhibitions: ‘Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer.’ And somehow, despite the best intentions in the world, he fell, metaphorically, flat on his face with the biggest, sloppiest, most amorphous biennial ever. As we ought to know by now, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Am I the only one who hits a snag at the notion of the, uh, dictatorship of the viewer? Isn’t that what happens at art fairs? Isn’t that what Hitler proposed when he outlawed art criticism? Quite apart from that little conflict between the dream of individual freedom and the idea of dictatorship, the Abdication of the Director would have been far more precise.”