Art Biennials as Emerging Global Institutions

More than anything art biennials are fascinating as institutions. Beyond the glitz and hype, it is far from clear how the transition from few major biennials to scores to hundreds biennials around the world has been accomplished. There does seem to be a parallel between globalization and proliferation of art biennials as if there were a correspondence between the structures of period preceding World Wars, when one thinks of Venice biennale, Cold War, with Documenta in Kassel close to its fault-lines and San Paulo biennial sitting aside Latin American struggles, and post-communism, when the floodgates for the biennialization of the world had seemingly been open. Definitely there are multiple driving interests behind the events. One should only think of Istanbul biennale set up with an eye towards Turkey's efforts to make a case for its accession to the European Union. However, the background for sprouting art biennials seem to be less trivial than those for art museums that reply on a combination of urban and regional politics, real estate development and urban revitalization. Tantalizingly art biennials do not let themselves to be narrowing traced down to a configuration of interests that could be traced in their stability.

The fluid, ephemeral and anti-institutional nature of art biennials forces one to think in terms that are probably proper to the contemporary art itself as it becomes increasingly dependent on its institutional framing to claim its very status of art. While the role of geography and origin in the sphere of celebration and valuation of contemporary art may have remained undiminished, the very growth of art biennials internationally does open a greater field for institutionalization of art works and of consecration of artists from global peripheries that might not necessarily claim same valuation and recognition for themselves as those from North America and Western Europe do. However, as wealthy art collectors are as likely to hail from global margins and from global centers the center of gravity of the international art world might consequently shift or become complemented with other competing centers of cultural production. In other words, New York as a preeminent global city, as far as modern and contemporary art is concerned, may be entering into a period of competition with other cities that might be vying for a comparable position internationally.

To a some extent this approach gives back the lie of global city rankings to their constructors in that it assumes that indicators of globality, however one might conceptualize it, miss the dimension of relations between global cities. Since mid-20th century, New York has been an unquestioned center of modern and contemporary art. Should this city be losing this singular standing, not only New York's role in the international art field might be coming into question, but also other rival urban centers might be arriving at the global art scene to show off their cultural vibrancy. One might look at the two components that have historically made up the trappings of what went down into the annals of art history as art movements and preeminent artists later: culture and money. The latter is easier to trace since, one needs only to look at interviews with people from leading art auction houses to get a sense of the shift from the West, be it Europe or America, to the East, be it Hong-Kong, Shanghai or Beijing. Christie's website immediately offers two other language interface options other than its default English: French and Chinese. In its dropdown selection, German, Spanish and Italian are followed by Russian and Japanese. Sotheby's adds Arabic as its interface language, given its presence in the Middle East, while keeping its immediate language options to the same three languages: English, French and Chinese.