Looking Ahead: Culture Clash Schedule

Every two years the global art world falls into the clutches of the Venice Biennale industrial-complex, an ever-expanding network of national pavilions and off-site exhibitions that keep the sinking city’s industries above water. There may be drama in store for 2024, as Italy’s rabidly anti-immigrant government appointed the right-wing cultural provocateur Pietrangelo Buttafuoco as the Biennale organization’s next president. His post commences in March, less than two months before the Biennale’s first Latin American curator, Adriano Pedrosa, opens his edition titled “Foreigners Everywhere.” On April 20, the Biennale will honor Italian-born Brazilian artist Anna Maria Maiolino and the Paris-based Turkish artist Nıl Yalter for works opposing military governments and spotlighting migrant communities, respectively. The event seems unlikely to conform to the political agenda of the far-right.