Art Controversy
Politics Everywhere: conflict and diplomacy at the Venice Art Biennale
Foreigners Everywhere is the stirring slogan of the Venice Art Biennale’s 60th International Art Exhibition. At the helm this year is the first curator to be born and based in the Global South, the Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, who says his concept follows in the “rich tradition” of “foreigners from all over the world” coming together at the Venice Biennale. Dating back to 1895, it is the first large-scale exhibition of its kind, the namesake of all subsequent global art biennales.
But while Pedrosa promises a radically inclusive 2024 exhibition that celebrates migrants, outsiders, queer artists and Indigenous artists, the Biennale has long been—and remains—a hotbed of fraught geopolitics. The former president of the Venice Biennale Foundation, Roberto Cicutto, diplomatically described the event at a recent press conference as “a privileged vantage point from which to observe the state of the world” and “a unique meeting ground between the arts and the changes in society”. A chief reason for that, he noted, is the Biennale’s century-old system of national pavilions, through which different countries stage their own independent shows.
Art Controversy
Dramatic moment art collector’s son is arrested for stabbing family maid he believed was a demon
Dramatic footage shows the moment the son of a wealthy art collector was arrested after he stabbed the family’s maid who he believed was a ‘demon’.
Maximillian Bourne, 26, attacked Joselia Pereira Do Nascimento with a kitchen knife at the family’s five-bedroom, £20million home in Justice Walk, Chelsea, on February 25 last year
Police are appealing for information after the theft of two high-value paintings from a house in Penzance.
The paintings by west Cornwall artist Gill Watkiss were taken from an “empty but secure” home in Morrab Road between 1 February and 13 February, according to Devon and Cornwall Police.
The oil paintings, titled Sunday Walkers, Hayle, and Autumn Days, Penlee Park, were worth £6,000 each, the force said.
Both canvases are sized around 70cm by 50cm (27 ins by 19ins).
Art Controversy
Sarah Cunningham: Body found on tracks at London Underground station after search for missing artist
Police say the family of a missing artist have been informed after a body was found on the tracks at a London Underground station.
The last sighting of Sarah Cunningham, 31, was on Jamestown Road, in Camden in north London, at 3am on Saturday.
