Established in 1993 and handed over to the Sharjah Art Foundation in 2009, the Sharjah
Biennial has grown into a reliable showcase for local, regional and international developments in contemporary art.
Biennials, like any large institution, are always caught between being seen as income generators and drains on resources.
So
biennials are the Meryl Streep side of things, above even the museums.
The
Biennial, open till May 13, has taken up residence at the newly inaugurated SAF Art Spaces led by SAF President Shaikha Hoor Al Qasimi.
Biggs sat on the board of trustees for the very first festival in 1999, r un by Australian curator Anthony Bond, then stepped in as the
Biennial's chief executive in 2000.
So it's farewell to Biggs, who stepped in as the
Biennial's chief executive in 2000, having sat on its board of trustees as Tate Liverpool director for the very first festival in 1999,run by Australian curator Anthony Bond.
Throughout the entire month of July, the
Biennial celebration will offer visitors cross-cultural experiences through a wide array of art exhibits, live music, and special cultural programming.
Whichever
biennials you choose to sow, they all look best when planted in profusion, not in straight lines.
In preparation for the 2009 Sharjah
Biennial, Jack Persekian, the artist director of the event, says that there are new plans and new directions to be taken.
For the Fifth Berlin
Biennial, opening on April 5, curators Adam Szymczyk, director of the Kunsthalle Basel, and Elena Filipovic, an independent art critic and curator, have extended this nascent tradition by dividing their exhibition into halves, which they call "Day" and "Night." "Day" consists of artworks and commissioned projects on view at three main venues--the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, which oversees the
biennial; the upper level of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Mies van der Rohe's late-modernist glass box just southwest of Potsdamer Platz; and the artist-run Skulpturenpark Berlin Zentrum, a network of sixty-two centrally located vacant lots situated in the former no-man's land between East and West Berlin.
The 1995
Biennial was noted for a heavy representation of works exploring sexuality and the body, implying, again, that these reflected preoccupations in American society as a whole.
In response to the success of these three major exhibitions, and the desire of national and local governments to signify their own status as international hubs,
biennials and triennials mushroomed across Asia from the mid-1990s onwards.