Venice Biennale special

We are back in Venice for the latest edition of the biggest biennial in the world of art. The 60th Venice Biennale comprises an international exhibition featuring more than 300 artists, dozens of national pavilions in the Giardini—the gardens at the eastern end of the city—and the Arsenale—the historic shipyards of the Venetian Republic—and host of official collateral exhibitions and other shows and interventions across Venice. The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, Louisa Buck, editor-at-large Jane Morris and host Ben Luke review the international exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere/Stranieri Ovunque, curated by the Brazilian artistic director, Adriano Pedrosa. We talk to artists and curators behind five national pavilions—Jeffrey Gibson in the US pavilion, John Akomfrah in the British pavilion, Romuald Hazoumè in the Benin pavilion, Gustavo Caboco Wapichana, the curator of the Hãhãwpuá or Brazilian pavilion, and Valeria Montii Colque in the Chilean pavilion—about their presentations. And we like to end our Venice specials by responding to an example of the historic work that made la Serenissima one of the world’s great centres for art. So for this episode’s Work of the Week, Ben Luke gained exclusive access to one of the most significant paintings in Venetian history: the Assunta or Assumption of the Virgin made between 1516 and 1518 by Titian. Since the last Biennale in 2022, the Assunta has been unveiled after a four-year conservation project, funded by the charity Save Venice. We spoke to the man who restored this incomparable masterpiece, Giulio Bono, right beneath Titian’s painting.

The Venice Biennale, 20 April-24 November. Listen to the interview with Adriano Pedrosa in the episode of this podcast from 2 February.

The website that Giulio Bono mentions, which will present the findings of the conservation of Titian’s Assunta in detail, will go online later this year.

Save Venice, savevenice.org.

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