“The problem with the Biennale is that it takes place in Venice, the city in whose Frari church you can see Titian’s altarpiece of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, one of the world’s supreme works of art. It is the consummation of Venetian art, mysterious, modest and, as you find if you visit near the feast of the Ascension, still serving a community of worshippers. It seems a futile thing, championing the new in a city that is such a great advert for the old, but in recent years the Biennale has been so atrociously curated and so pathetically managed that it would disgrace a far lesser city.”