While the last professional preview day for the 2024 Venice Biennale is Friday, the week’s hullabaloo technically ends on Saturday morning, when the exhibition opens to the public and the Biennale’s jury announces the winners for the Golden Lions at 11 am (local time). starwin88
The Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement were announced last November, ahead of the artist list being released in January. Those went to Italian-born Brazilian artist Anna Maria Maiolino and the Paris-based Turkish artist Nil Yalter, who are the only two artists to be included in both sections of the exhibition, the “Nucleo Contemporeano” and the “Nucleo Storico.”
The remaining prizes to be awarded are the Golden Lion for Best National Participation, the Golden Lion for Best Participant in the International Exhibition, and the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant in the International Exhibition, which this year carries the title of “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere” and is curated by Adriano Pedrosa. (Additionally, the jury can name a limited number of special mentions, one for a national pavilion and two for participants in the main exhibition, if they so choose.) starwin88
This year’s five-person jury, selected by the board of the Biennale’s foundation but recommended by Pedrosa, is chaired Julia Bryan-Wilson, an art historian and professor at Columbia University who has collaborated with Pedrosa on several exhibitions as an adjunct curator at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, where he is artistic director. The other four members are curators Alia Swastika, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Elena Crippa, and María Inés Rodríguez.
While it may be the jury who ultimately decides the winners, ARTnews senior editors Maximilíano Durón and Alex Greenberger and Art in America senior editor Emily Watlington are weighing in as to which artists they feel should win—though with the sheer amount of artists in the main exhibition (331) and the number of national pavilions (88), it’s like trying to get a bullseye on a dart board, blindfolded and using your non-dominant hand. starwin88
