Art is not only big business worldwide, it is big everything today, including city branding. Huge art festivals are taking place throughout the world.
At Heathrow in London, I was singled out by security personnel for an “interview” after X-ray clearance. When told that I was simply stopping over in London on the way home after attending the World Biennale Forum II (WBF, November 25-30, 2014) in Brazil, one of them demanded to know what a “biennale” is.
A timely question, and one I have never been as equipped to answer as I had at that moment. In fact, in the forum, which coincided with the Sao Paulo Art Biennale (September 6-December 7, 2014), participants and stakeholders discussed, excogitated and argued at length over three days to arrive at a defining if not definitive model, among other issues. But we were no nearer to it.
Still, how to put a complex animal such as an art “biennale” in a nutshell, nuances et al, to these officials? To anyone, for that matter.
