On Saturday, a full week before the public opening of the Venice Biennale, the Lebanese retail magnate Tony Salamé was in Rome to open a new show of work from his sprawling contemporary art collection at the Palazzo Barberini, the birthplace of the baroque. It has one staircase by Bernini, one staircase by Borromini, and is the home of Triumph of Divine Providence, a massive fresco by Pietro da Cortona that was commissioned by Cardinal Maffeo Barberini—after he was elected pontiff and became Pope Urban VIII. It has 187 rooms and sprawls out over nearly 130,000 square feet of prime Roman real estate.
“Even if this show sucks, it won’t, because of the space,” said Massimilliano Gioni, the artistic director of the New Museum, who cocurated the show and has worked with Salamé for years.
We were at lunch in Rome before the grand opening. Salamé ordered for the table without a menu, hours before the show—which in due time we would see does not suck.
“This is the first time I’ve been clean-shaven since COVID,” Salamé said. “And I think it’s the first time I’ve worn a suit too.”
Though born in Beirut, Salamé built his fashion empire by going back and forth to Italy and bringing the latest collections to his multibrand store Aïshti, delivering designer looks to Lebanese consumers with fresh purchasing power in a post–civil war society. Flush with cash, he expanded Aïshti into an empire and started collecting art with help from his adviser, Jeffrey Deitch. The Aïshti Foundation has a private museum in Beirut, and Salamé often has Gioni curate shows from his collections off-site. With the whole art world heading to Venice in the middle of April, Salamé hoped the artists in his collection, and their gallery owners, might be down to stop by the Eternal City on the way.
“Once again, all roads lead to Rome, sempre e sempre,” said Hans Ulrich Obrist, when I encountered him at the opening. Not only had people shown up for Salamé’s show, it was probably the biggest contemporary art shindig in the cradle of Western civiliazion since the opening of MAXXI in 2010. Inside the Palazzo Barberini, Laura Owens, Henry Taylor, and Wade Guyton had replaced the permanent hang of Carravagio and El Greco and Raphael, with a gigantic sculpture by Charles Ray installed in a rotunda upstairs.
The dinner venue was another not-so-subtle display of soft power: It was to be held at the Villa Medici, the 16th-century palace built for a family synonymous with riches, plopped on the top of the Pincio, the tallest point in the City of Seven Hills. Napoleon bought it in 1803 to house the French Academy, where Gallic artists could come to the belly of antiquity and copy the designs of the ancients. So that meant Salamé had to haggle with the French over how many people he could invite to dinner. Initially they capped it at 150, Salmé said, but after he offered a donation, they settled on 250.
“I have a lot of friends,” he shrugged.
Golf carts shuttled those lucky guests up the hill and unleashed a vision of the city—the Colosseum, the golden top of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Vatican City—and dropped them off at the portico of the Villa Medici, past the facade with interventions by Michelangelo. Salamé is a voracious collector who buys artists in depth from galleries all over the world, but for one night the cutthroat competitors lived in harmony. “After all this, the art world, it’s a big family,” said Lower East Side dealer Rachel Uffner. She was joined by fellow New York gallery owner-operators, such as Andrew Kreps, Anton Kern, Karma’s Brendan Dugan, Friedrich Petzel, Carol Greene, Stefania Bortolami, Lawrence Lurhing, and senior directors at Gagosian and David Zwiner. From Europe came Massimo de Carlo, Eva Presenhuber, Pilar Corrias, Max Hetzler, and Xavier Hufkens.
“There are more dealers here than at Art Basel,” Gioni cracked in his toast. There were artists too, including Nate Lowman, Josh Smith, and Maurizio Cattelan, who wore a T-shirt that said “Yes Bruce Nauman.” And there were collectors, such as the Greek shipping magnate Dakis Joannou, Los Angeles–based Lauren Taschen, Madrid-based Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengode, and the French collector Laurent Asscher.
To end his speech, Gioni said of Salamé, “I think we’re crowning the pope of art tonight.” A bit of a reach. But it’s also true that Pope Francis, the real pope, the one who lives down the hill in the Vatican, will soon appear on the scene. His Holiness will be making the first ever papal trip to the Venice Biennale this month, touring his own Holy See Pavilion filled with contemporary artists—even Cattelan!—and housed in an operational women’s prison. The visit will be documented by the photographer Juergen Teller.
They say the Venice Biennale is the Olympics of the art world, and it is. It’s also the Davos, the Aspen Institute, and the Cannes of the art world all rolled into one—with a dash of a selling fair if you know who to ask.
And like those cross-continental, chest-thumping über-expos, there’s a lot of geopolitical maneuvering. Two years ago, Russia left its pavilion empty in the wake of its war with Ukraine. This year, they’ve lent it to Bolivia, which must be thrilled to take up occupancy in one of the grandest structures in the Giardini. Perhaps it has something to do with the 23 million metric tons of lithium held in the Bolivian reserves, or the $450 million deal for “white gold” Russia and Bolivia signed at the end of last year.
Israel rebuffed calls to shut down its pavilion while the conflict in Gaza is ongoing, only to announce on Tuesday that the pavilion—at the behest of the artist, Ruth Patir, whose work is fully installed—will be locked up to the public until a ceasefire is announced and hostages are released. There were still protests from pro-Palestinian activists, who blanketed the dusty paths of the Giardini with leaflets proclaiming “NO DEATH IN VENICE / NO TO THE GENOCIDE PAVILION.”
The American pavilion is front and center with new works by Jeffrey Gibson, the first Indigenous artist to represent the United States with a solo show at the Venice Biennale. Gigantic sculptures take up the main rotunda—a testament to the project’s reportedly $5.8 million budget. The State Department only forks over $375,000, lest they be accused by the right of over spending. (“We always aim to optimize the value to the US taxpayer,” a State Department spox told the Times.) So the Ford Foundation threw in $1.1 million, the Mellon Foundation threw in $1 million, and Sotheby’s sold dozens of Gibson’s blanket artworks, raising $350,000. It’s not just America that does this by the way. The British Pavilion is sponsored by Burberry, Christie’s, and Frieze.
And there are of course the individuals who come to Venice too. In the last couple decades, luxury billionaire François Pinault has bought two palazzos and had architect Tadao Ando reimagine them as massive museums. The two shows on view—one a magnificent solo display of new and recent work by the master Pierre Huyghe, the other, a stately retrospective of painter Julie Mehretu, along with assorted works by other artists—are among the most talked about things in town. Miuccia Prada has an outpost of the Prada Foundation in a palazzo—named after the Queen of Cyprus who was born at the site in 1454—that she bought from the city for €40 million in 2001. Nicolas Berggruen bought the Casa dei Tre Oci on Giudecca and the Palazzo Diedo in the Cannaregio district, both of which he’s used to show new commissions.
Though by one measure, things are a bit more subdued in Venice this year: There is, as of press, only a few yachts parked by the Arsenale. There’s “Sea Pearl,” a 269-footer that Indonesian petrochemical magnate Sri Prakash Lohia, who’s net worth is $8.3 billion, bought from Nancy Walton in 2022. Tod’s owner Diego Della Valle scooted up to San Marcon in his “Altair III.” Multiple sources said Len Blavatnik’s “Odessa 2” was putting around the islands. But still it’s a departure from recent years, when so many boats were anchored that locals complained their views were ruined.
Speaking of billions: On Tuesday, True Colors spotted Leon Black strolling with his wife near the Gritti Palace. Earlier in the day, the Times reported that Oregon senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to Bank of America on April 4, asking about the due diligence involved with vetting the $158 million that Black paid Jeffrey Epstein over the course of five years. The senator, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, also asked about any art transactions involved with the payments.
At the VIP vernissage of the actual art show were ostensibly there to see, those hand-picked by the Italian government to be the first on the scene were…not exactly pleased with the curated sector of the Biennale. I heard the word “horrible” more than a few times. Other takes were more generous—“easy to engage with” was something I heard more than once.
Perhaps this Biennale was always going to be a bit divisive, or at least thought provoking on a different scale. Curator Adriano Pedrosa is the first person from Latin America to helm the exhibition, and the bulk of the artists in the show are completely unknown to a dealer or collector who’s been charting the contemporary art market for the last few decades. It might not even be accurate to call this a contemporary art show—most of the artists are dead. In 2019, the Biennale had no dead artists in the curated sector. In 2022, curator Cecilia Alemani included throughout the show what she called “time capsules” to explain the history of surrealism, appropriately relying on dead artists to tell that story. But Pedrosa has put together an exhibition in which just 35% of the artists are still alive.
And yet, there was enough positive buzz on Tuesday to carry the attendees through the first preview. The collector Komal Shah ducked from the Arsenale into a cafe to avoid the rain and, briefly, the hailstorms. Kurimanzutto cofounder José Kuri had the pleasure of introducing Mark Bradford to Prada cocreative director Raf Simons, who looked genuinely star struck to meet the artist.
And when the next tranche of VIP visitors arrived on Wednesday, when a much larger group was admitted to the show, long lines snaked up a hill toward the German pavilion. The artist Ersan Mondtag had boarded up the front door and covered the front porch with a sea of dirt and then created an immersive installation performance inside, one that got creepier and creepier the longer you stayed, along with a video by Yael Bartana. Nearby there were lines for John Akomfrah’s multiscreen video installation at the British pavilion. Julien Creuzet’s work at the French pavilion—sponsored by Chanel, naturellement—also drew a large crowd outside.
“I am not queuing, I am not bloody queuing,” yelled a British man outside of his homeland’s packed pavilion.
There were lines once the exhibition closed too—lines of people rushing from one event to another. On Sunday, collector Pamela Joyner hosted an opening dinner for the artist in the curated sector, attended by Louis Fratino, the New York–based painter who generated some of the biggest excitement in the International pavilion. The mega-galleries shall be calling. After the first preview on Tuesday, Met director Max Hollein toasted Gibson—who will unveil his Facade Commission on the side of the Fifth Avenue museum in late 2025—along with Mellon Foundation president Elizabeth Alexander, Studio Museum director Thelma Golden, and US Pavilion curators Abigail Winogrand and Kathleen Ash-Milby. There would be several other events to fete Gibson—the US Pavilion dinner Wednesday, cocktails at the Peggy Guggenheum Thursday—but there was also a dinner for Michael Werner Gallery at Harry’s, the venerable Grand Canal joint favored by Italophile expats such as Orson Welles, and also the birthplace of the Bellini and home to these mayo-y finger sandwiches that Hemingway and Capote swore by. Gagosian threw a dinner for Rick Lowe at Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, which has elements that date back to a 13th-century Byzantine home, and Marian Goodman had a soirée at the swank Aman boutique hotel, where leveraged-buyout legend Henry Kravis and his wife, MoMA board chair Marie-Josée Kravis, were among guests.
The Montauk dealer Max Levai put together a show of work by the 92-year-old School of London painter Frank Auerbach, who won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1996, in quite the special palazzo that’s been closed for years. There was of course a party, and when guests got to the top floor, it looked familiar. The parlor room, built in the 16th century, is where Matt Damon’s Tom Ripley kills Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Freddie Miles by smashing his head with an ashtray in the classic The Talented Mr. Ripley.
The gallery Mendes Wood chartered a boat and threw a party that would last until 9 a.m. Hundreds trekked out to a birthday for the collector Michele Lamy to a warehouse by the airport, which was near the home she shares with her husband, designer Rick Owens. On Thursday, Björk DJed a party for the Icelandic pavilion, and White Cube threw a dinner at a palazzo. Most exciting was the dinner hosted by David Kordansky Gallery and Gagosian for Lauren Halsey, the LA-based artist who has a series of monumental Hathoric columns carved with the faces of people from South Central, where she lives. A year ago, she was awarded the Met rooftop commission and built her version of an Egyptian temple that floated above Central Park. Now she gets to be the young rising star of the Venice Biennale. At the dinner, the gallery’s Antwaun Sargent gave a toast to Halsey and the many members of her extended family as one of the week’s most stacked seating charts filled the tight confines of the tiny restaurant Corte Sconta: Los Angeles collector Maria Bell, LUMA founder Maya Hoffmann, artist Charles Gaines, PAMM director Franklin Sirmans, members of American museum boards, emissaries from philanthropic endeavors, and the Milan fashion designer Daniel Del Core. Afterward, the gallery shuttled guests across to Giudecca on chartered boats, and there was a party in a gigantic villa with a candlelit pool. Swizz Beatz arrived after midnight and zipped to the bar by the DJ booth.
And then there was the first look at the Accademia’s new show, “Willem de Kooning and Italy,” which was followed by a reception celebrating the show’s lenders at the Teatro La Fenice, the city’s main opera house. The crowd was a kind of insane constellation of museum directors. Hollein from The Met. Mary Ceruti from the Walker. Sandra Jackson Dumont from the Lucas Museum. Jeremy Strict from the Nasher Sculpture Center. Glenn Lowry from MoMA. Melissa Chiu from the Hirshhorn. Thomas Campbell from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Klaus Biesenbach from the Neue Nationalgalerie. Scott Rothkopf from the Whitney. James Snyder from the Jewish Museum. Stefanie Hessler from Swiss Institute.
When Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart was about to introduce me to de Kooning’s three grandchildren, he was waylaid by a colleague who wanted to introduce him to Mariët Westermann, the new director of the Guggenheim museums.
“If this place blew up, all the curators would be gone,” Jessie Washburne-Harris, vice president of Pace, told me. In fact, the theater has blown up, not once but twice. It erupted into a fire in 1836 and was the victim of arson in 1996. They rebuilt the thing to look as old as the rest of the city.
Still, the most exclusive Venice Biennale experience wasn’t a dinner invite or a seat at the bar at Harry’s. It was one of the pre-opening tours of the Vatican City’s Holy See Pavilion in the prison. One had to make an appointment and they were all already booked, so I did what anyone would do in this situation: emailed the Vatican. It worked. I arrived at the prison on Thursday at 5 p.m. with absolutely no idea of what to expect.
The Giudecca women’s prison is a 19th-century complex a boat ride across from San Marco, where a trio of unsmiling, gun-toting prison guards, their walkie-talkies beeping incessantly, took away my phone and passport, then led me into the jail. Once the dozen of us on the tour entered the prison yard, a guard locked the door behind us. The carabinieri then led us into the cafeteria, where inmates can purchase sandwiches and snacks as well as beer and wine. After a few minutes, Marcella and Patricia, two incarcerated women who have been locked up for an indeterminate amount of time and declined to give their last names, emerged from their cells. They would serve as our tour guides for the Holy See Pavilion, taking us through the yards to see work by Claire Fontaine, through the chapel to see an installation by Sonia Gomes, and to a classroom to view a video filmed on-site by Marco Perego, starring his wife, Zoe Saldaña, as an inmate.
But the star of the papacy’s first contemporary art pavilion is the artist who once made a sculpture of Pope John Paul II getting pummeled by a meteorite.
“Maurizio Cattelan’s work is dirty feet, and for Maurizio Cattelan, it’s a symbol of intimacy,” Marcella said, describing a gigantic mural called “Father.” (A previous Cattelan piece, “Mother,” is a photo of Cattelan’s hands sticking out from the soil while the rest of his body has been buried alive by an Indian fakir. François Pinault owns it.) Marcella said Cattelan had come to talk about the meaning of the work and to help the inmates serve as tour guides. His visit really resonated with her, she said, and she’s ready for April 28, when his Holiness will arrive in Venice for the first papal visit to the Biennale in history. He’ll zip past the inmates on an electric scooter since the prisoners won’t be allowed out of their cells for security reasons.
As she talked us through “Father,” Marcella explained that she hasn’t even seen the piece. Cattelan’s work is installed on the outside of the jail, where she won’t set foot until she’s finished serving her sentence. But she must imagine it and what it must be like to look at it—free.
“Cattelan said, ‘Any of us can end up in prison. It’s important to embrace when we’re in liberty,’” she said.
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