Massimiliano Gioni named Curator of the Venice Biennale

by Will Brand on January 31, 2012 · 3 comments

You can be the most successful curator of your generation and still dress like a cartoon character.

If you have any kind of career in the art world, Massimiliano Gioni should make you feel bad. Since becoming the Editor of Flash Art at 26, he’s been racking up accomplishments: co-curator of the Venice Biennale in 2003, co-curator of the Berlin Biennial and Manifesta 5 in 2005, curator of the Gwangju Biennial in 2010, Associate Director at the New Museum, etc. In 2002, at 29, he opened a one-meter-square space, The Wrong Gallery, in Chelsea with Ali Subotnick (then of Parkett) and Maurizio Cattelan; when they lost the lease, they just reopened in the Tate Modern.
It was already a ridiculous list, and now it has a capstone: in 2013, Gioni will be the curator of the Venice Biennale. He’s a fitting choice; Gioni’s done well in Biennales in the past, and has shown with the New Museum’s Younger Than Jesus and Ostalgia that he can put together an excellent survey show. In Jerry Saltz’s words, writing about Ostalgia, “curator Massimiliano Gioni is now master of his own form of large-scale exhibition as narrative, time machine, pleasurable pedagogy, historical potboiler come to life, and insight.” We have no idea what happens to the grammar at the end of that quote, but we agree anyway. This should be good.