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By Nate Freeman
On Saturday, a week before the public opening of the Venice Biennale, Lebanese retail magnate Tony Salamé opened a new exhibition of works from his vast collection of fresh art in Rome at Palazzo Barberini, the birthplace of the Baroque. It has a staircase by Bernini, a staircase by Borromini and houses the Triumph of Divine Providence, a large fresco by Pietro da Cortona commissioned by Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, after he was elected pontiff and became Pope Urban VIII. It has 187 rooms and spans approximately 130,000 square feet of early Roman times. realty.
“Even if this exhibition sucks, it possibly isn’t, because of the space,” said Massimilliano Gioni, artistic director of the New Museum, who was co-curator of the exhibition and has been directing with Salamé for years.
We were having lunch in Rome before the inauguration. Salamé asked for the table without a menu, hours before the exhibition, which, when the time came, would be zero.
“It’s the first time I’ve been clean-shaven since COVID,” Salamé said. “And I think it’s also the first time I’ve worn a suit. “
Although born in Beirut, Salamé built his fashion empire by traveling back and forth to Italy and bringing the newest collections to his multi-brand boutique Aïshti, bringing designer looks to Lebanese consumers with new purchasing power in a post-civil war society. He turned Aishti into an empire and began collecting art with the help of his advisor, Jeffrey Deitch. The Aïshti Foundation has a personal museum in Beirut and Salamé asks Gioni to organize off-site exhibitions of his collections. When he heads to Venice in mid-April, Salamé expected artists from his collection and gallery owners to make a stop in the Eternal City along the way.
“Once again, all roads lead to Rome, semper e sempre,” said Hans Ulrich Obrist when I met him at the inauguration. Not only had the public come to see Salamé’s exhibition, but it was probably the biggest new art birthday party in the world. cradle of Western civilization since the inauguration of MAXXI in 2010. Inside Palazzo Barberini, Laura Owens, Henry Taylor and Wade Guyton had replaced the permanent exhibition. Carravagio and El Greco and Raphael, with a gigantic sculpture by Charles Ray installed in an upstairs rotunda.
The dinner venue was another not-so-subtle display of comfortable power: It took place at the Villa Medici, the 16th-century palace built for a wealthy family, perched atop the Pincio, the highest point on the island. Napoleon bought it in 1803 to house the Académie Française, where French artists could visit the interior of antiquity and copy the drawings of the ancients. So, this meant that Salamé had to haggle with the French over how many other people he could invite to attend. dinner. They initially limited it to 150, Salmé explained, but after submitting a donation, they opted for 250.
“I have a lot of friends,” he says, shrugging.
Golf carts took those lucky visitors to the top of the hill and provoked a view of the city (the Colosseum, the golden part of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Vatican City) and deposited them under the portico of Villa Medici, facing the façade with interventions by Michelangelo. Salamé is a voracious collector who buys artists from galleries around the world, but for one night, the fierce competition lived in harmony. “After all this, global art is one big family,” said Rachel Uffner. , a Lower East Side. Se dealer joined through other New York gallerists, including Andrew Kreps, Anton Kern, Brendan Dugan of Karma, Friedrich Petzel, Carol Greene, Stefania Bortolami, Lawrence Lurhing, and senior directors Gagosian and David Zwiner. here Massimo de Carlo, Eva Presenhuber, Pilar Corrias, Max Hetzler and Xavier Hufkens.
“There are more dealers here than at Art Basel,” Gioni said in his toast. There were also artists, Nate Lowman, Josh Smith and Maurizio Cattelan, who wore T-shirts that said “Yes, Bruce Nauman. “such as wealthy Greek shipper Dakis Joannou, Los Angeles-based Lauren Taschen, Madrid-based Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, and French collector Laurent Asscher.
To end his speech, Gioni said of Salamé: “I believe that tonight we will crown the Pope of art. “But it is also true that Pope Francis, the genuine Pope, the one who lives at the foot of Vatican Hill, will soon enter the scene. His Holiness will be the first pope at the Venice Biennale this month, visiting his own Holy See pavilion. filled with new artists (even Cattelan!) and housed in an operational women’s prison. The excursion will be documented through photographer Juergen Teller.
The Venice Biennale is said to be the Olympic Games of global art, and indeed they are. It’s also Davos, the Aspen Institute, and the Cannes of global art all rolled into one, with a certain air of a trade show if you know who. ask.
And as in those exciting transcontinental superexposures, there are a lot of geopolitical maneuvers. Two years ago, Russia left its flag empty as a result of its war against Ukraine. This year they lent it to Bolivia, which will have to be extremely happy to take possession of one of the largest structures in the Giardini. This would possibly have something to do with the 23 million tons of lithium held in Bolivian reserves, or the $450 million “white gold” deal that Russia and Bolivia signed expired last year.
Israel has rejected calls to close its pavilion as fighting continues in Gaza, announcing on Tuesday that the pavilion — at the request of artist Ruth Patir, whose paintings are fully installed — will remain closed to the public until a ceasefire is announced and the hostages are released. they are released. There were still protests by pro-Palestinian activists, who covered the dusty roads of the Giardini with leaflets proclaiming “NO DEATH TO DEATH. “VENICE / NO TO THE GENOCIDE PAVILION. “
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The U. S. Pavilion is front and center with new works by Jeffrey Gibson, the first Indigenous artist to constitute the United States with a solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Gigantic sculptures occupy the main rotunda, reflecting the project’s estimated budget of $5. 8 million. The State Department alone shells out more than $375,000, fearing they will be accused by law of spending too much. (“Our goal is to maximize the price for the American taxpayer,” a State Department spokesperson told the Times. )The Ford Foundation invested $1. 1 million, the Mellon Foundation invested $1 million, and Sothethrough’s sold dozens of Gibson’s artworks, raising $350,000. By the way, it’s not just the United States that’s doing this. The UK pavilion is sponsored through Burberry, Christie’s and Frieze.
And, of course, there are also Americans who come to Venice. Over the past two decades, luxury billionaire François Pinault bought two palaces and commissioned architect Tadao Ando to reinvent them as huge museums. The two exhibitions that are presented, one of them is a magnificent solo exhibition. of new and recent works by master Pierre Huyghe, the second, a majestic retrospective of the painter Julie Mehretu, as well as works by other artists, are among the most discussed things in the city. Miuccia Prada owns a Prada Foundation outpost in a palace, named after the Queen of Cyprus, born in 1454 here, which she bought from the city for €40 million in 2001. Nicolas Berggruen bought the Casa dei Tre Oci le La Giudecca and the Palazzo Diedo, in the Cannaregio district, where he is showing new commissions.
In some ways, though, things are a little more low-key in Venice this year: at press time, there are only a few yachts parked near the Arsenale. There’s the “Sea Pearl,” a 269-foot ship that wealthy Indonesian petrochemist Sri Prakash Lohia, with a net worth of $8. 3 billion, bought from Nancy Walton in 2022. The owner of Tod’s, Diego Della Valle, traveled to San Marcon in his “Altair III”. Several sources indicated that Len Blavatnik’s “Odessa 2” toured the islands. But it’s still a difference from the past few years, when there were so many boats at anchor that locals complained they ruined their view.
Speaking of billions: On Tuesday, True Colors spotted Leon Black walking with his wife near Palazzo Gritti. Earlier in the day, the Times reported that Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden sent a letter to Bank of America on April 4, asking about the art transactions involved in the payments.
At the VIP opening of the art exhibition that we are going to attend, those chosen by the Italian government to be the first in the category. . . they were dissatisfied with the organized sector of the Biennale. I heard the word “horrible” several times. Other grips were more generous: “easy to perform” was something I heard more than once.
Perhaps this Biennale was going to be a bit divisive, or at least galvanize the reflected image on another scale. Curator Adriano Pedrosa is the first user from Latin America to curate the exhibition, and most of the artists featured are absolutely unknown to an intermediary or collector who has been charting the new art market for several decades. Possibly it wouldn’t even be accurate to call it a new art exhibition: most of the artists are dead. In 2019, the Biennial had no dead artists in the curatorial sector. In 2022, curator Cecilia Alemani included what she called “time capsules” around the exhibition to explain the history of surrealism, rightly relying on dead artists to tell that story. But Pedrosa has arranged an exhibition in which only 35% of the artists are still alive.
And yet, on Tuesday, there were enough positive rumors for attendees to see the first trailer. Collector Komal Shah fled the Arsenale to a café to avoid rain and, briefly, hail. Kurimanzutto’s co-founder, Jose Kuri, had the excitement to introduce Mark. Bradford to Prada co-creative director Raf Simons, who seemed genuinely impressed by the encounter with the artist.
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And when the next group of VIP visitors arrived on Wednesday, when a much larger organization was admitted to the show, long lines climbed a hill toward the German pavilion. Artist Ersan Mondtag had blocked the front door and covered the porch with a sea of land. , then created an immersive installation-performance inside, which became terrifying the longer it stayed, accompanied through a video by Yael Bartana. Nearby, there were queues for John Akomfrah’s multi-screen video installation at the British Pavilion. Julien Creuzet’s paintings in the French pavilion – sponsored through Chanel, of course – also drew a large crowd outside.
“I won’t queue, I won’t queue,” shouted a Briton outdoors in the crowded pavilion of his homeland.
There were also queues once the exhibition closed, lines of other people running from one occasion to another. On Sunday, collector Pamela Joyner hosted an opening dinner for the artist’s exhibition business, attended by Louis Fratino, the New York-based painter who has generated the most excitement in the foreign pavilion. The mega galleries will call. After Tuesday’s first preview, Met director Max Hollein toasted Gibson, who will unveil his commission for the museum’s Fifth Avenue façade in late 2025, along with Mellon Foundation president Elizabeth Alexander, Studio Museum director Thelma Golden, and the curators of the American Pavilion. Abigail Winogrand and Kathleen Ash-Milthrough. There would be other occasions to celebrate Gibson – dinner at the American Pavilion on Wednesday, cocktails at the Peggy Guggenheum on Thursday – but there would also be a dinner for the Michael Werner Gallery at Harry’s, the venerable Grand Canal restaurant favored by expatriate Italophiles like Orson. Welles, and also the birthplace of Bellini and the home of those mayonnaise sandwiches that Hemingway and Capote swore by. Gagosian hosted a dinner for Rick Lowe at the Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, which features features dating back to a 13th-century Byzantine house, and Marian Goodman hosted a party at the elegant Aman boutique hotel, where she tapped takeover legend Henry Kravis and his wife. , Marie-Josée Kravis, president of MoMA’s board of directors, was among the guests.
Montauk runner Max Levai has mounted an exhibition of the works of 92-year-old London School painter Frank Auerbach, who won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1996, in a palace that has been closed for years. A party, of course, and when visitors arrived at the more sensible floor, it felt familiar. The living room, built in the 16th century, is where Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) kills Freddie Miles (Philip Seymour Hoffman) by smashing his head with an ashtray. in the harvest The talented Mr. Ripley.
Mendes Wood Gallery rented a boat and organized a party that lasted until nine in the morning. Hundreds of people flocked to collector Michele Lamy’s birthday party at a warehouse near the airport, located near the home she shares with her husband, designer Rick Owens. On Thursday, Björk hosted a party for the Icelandic pavilion and White Cube hosted a dinner at the palace. Most exciting was the dinner hosted through David Kordansky and the Gagosian Gallery for Lauren Halsey, the Los Angeles-based artist who has a series of monumental Hathoric columns carved with the faces of other people from South Central, where she lives. A year ago, she won the Met rooftop commission and built her edition of an Egyptian temple floating above Central Park. She now becomes the young rising star of the Venice Biennale. At dinner, the gallery’s Antwaun Sargent toasted Halsey and her wide circle of family as one of the week’s most stacked seating charts filled the narrow confines of the small Corte Sconta restaurant: Los Angeles collector Maria Bell, the founder by LUMA Maya Hoffmann, artist Charles Gaines, PAMM director Franklin Sirmans, American museum board members, philanthropic emissaries, and Milanese fashion designer Daniel DelCore. The gallery then took visitors to the Giudecca on rented boats, and a party was held in a gigantic villa with a candlelit pool. Swizz Beatz arrived next and headed to the bar near the DJ booth.
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And then, the first look at the Academy’s new show, “Willem de Kooning and Italy,” which was followed by a reception to celebrate the show’s providers at Teatro La Fenice, the city’s premier opera house. The crowd was a kind of demented constellation of museum directors. . Hollein of the Met. Mary Ceruti of The Walker. Sandra Jackson Dumont of the Lucas Museum. Jeremy Strick of the Nasher Sculpture Center. Glenn Lowry of MoMA. Melissa Chiu of the Hirshhorn. Thomas Campbell of the San Francisco Museums of Fine Arts. Klaus Biesenbach of the Neue Nationalgalerie. Scott Rothkopf of the Whitney. James Snyder of the Jewish Museum. Stefanie Hessler of the Swiss Institute.
When Sothethrough’s executive director, Charles Stewart, was about to introduce me to de Kooning’s three grandchildren, he approached me through a colleague who wanted to introduce him to Mariët Westermann, the new director of the Guggenheim Museums.
“If this position were to blow up, all conservatives would disappear,” Jessie Washburne-Harris, vice president of Pace, told me. In fact, the theater exploded not once or twice. It got stuck in the fire position in 1836 and was the victim of arson in 1996. They rebuilt the building to make it look as old as the rest of the city.
Still, the Venice Biennale’s ultimate exclusive delight isn’t an invitation to dinner or a seat at the bar at Harry’s. This is one of the visits prior to the inauguration of the Holy See Pavilion in Vatican City in the prison. To make an appointment and they were all booked, so I did what anyone would do in that situation: send an email to the Vatican. I arrived at the prison at five o’clock in the afternoon. on Thursday. Surely without having any idea what awaits us.
Giudecca Women’s Prison is a 19th-century complex located a boat ride across from St. Mark’s, where a trio of serious, armed criminal guards, with their walkie-talkies ringing incessantly, confiscated my phone and passport and then took me to jail. criminal. . . Once the dozen of us entered the prison yard, a guard closed the door on us. The carabinieri then took us to the cafeteria, where detainees can buy sandwiches and snacks, as well as beer and wine. After a few minutes, Marcella and Patricia, two women who were being held indefinitely and who refused to give their last names, came out of their cells. They would serve as excursion guides to the Holy See Pavilion, taking us through the courtyards to see the paintings of Claire Fontaine, to the chapel to see an installation by Sonia Gomes, and to a classroom to see a video filmed in situ through Marco. as a recluse.
But the star of the papacy’s first new art pavilion is the artist who made a sculpture of Pope John Paul II being struck by a meteorite.
“Maurizio Cattelan’s paintings are dirty feet, and for Maurizio Cattelan, it’s a symbol of intimacy,” Marcella said, describing a gigantic mural titled “Father. “(An earlier piece by Cattelan, “Mother,” is a photograph of Cattelan’s hands emerging from the ground while the rest of his body was buried alive by an Indian fakir. François Pinault is the owner. ) Marcella said Cattelan came here to talk about the meaning of the paintings and help inmates serve as tour guides. “Her stop in it moved her,” she said, and she is ready for April 28, when His Holiness will arrive in Venice for the first papal stop at the History Biennale. You will drive past the inmates on an electric scooter as they will not be allowed to leave. of their cells for security reasons.
While talking about “Father,” Marcella explained that she hadn’t even noticed the work. Cattelan’s paintings are installed outdoors in the prison, where he will not set foot until he has served his sentence. But you have to believe it, and what it will be like to see it – for free.
“Cattelan said, ‘Any one of us can end up in jail. It’s kissing when you’re free,’ he said.
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