Features

I.

The writer arrives at the Venice Biennale at about 10:15am. This seems quite good by her recent personal standards—these are somewhat loose after three weeks of mojitos in Rome. But it is not good enough for a hard-hitting journalist. She imagines the Arsenale, one of two venues for the Biennale’s International Art Exhibition, swarming with reporters. Probably they have all been up since six. Probably they have fancy voice recorders and notebooks with expensive French paper. Probably they are being paid.

Everything about this undertaking seems very glamorous. But by the time an efficient Apparatchik at the press office has fixed the Advocate up with a press badge—she is now The Harvard Advocate’s official envoy to the Biennale, to Venice, to all of Europe!—a packet of promotional materials from the sponsors—Enel, Nivea, Illy—and the Advocate’s first tote bag of the day, it is 11am. This is horrifying. But even more horrifying is the crowd of journalists. There is none.

The Advocate begins to worry. Perhaps this is the wrong place. Perhaps they have squirreled the press office away next to some adjunct show or collateral event that nobody goes to. However, twenty minutes of aimless wandering through the galleries reveals that the giant warehouse is indeed the Arsenale. The Italian Pavilion, largest of the national shows, is here. So are the Chinese and Turkish and Chilean pavilions. So are individual installations by big-name artists like Pae White and William Forsythe. So is a good chunk of the main international show—Fare Mondi, “Making Worlds.”

Slowly, it dawns: nobody is here yet. Probably all the journalists are hobnobbing at elaborate breakfast meetings. Probably they are sleeping off hangovers so colossal and expensive that the Advocate’s morning troubles seem juvenile by comparison.

Finally, around 11:45am, the Beautiful People start to filter in. The Advocate recognizes art critics, academics, some curators. The center of press activity appears to be a temporary outdoor café wedged between the Arsenale and a canal. The Advocate stands in line for ten minutes to buy a four-euro can of Pepsi—official soda of the Biennale—finds a seat at one of the tasteful molded-polyurethane tables, and surveys the scene. As one might expect, she sees a lot of black. As one might not, she sees many tote bags of varying size, shape, color, strap length, and fabric quality. Glasses are common. So are blazers. So are the dropped-crotch 80s-style bottoms that the Spanish call pantalones cagados, or “shit-pants.”

The Apparatchiks, who at 11am were huddled in purposeless clumps around the building, have swung into action. They are answering questions, giving directions, requesting contact information. If the Beautiful People dress like upscale vacationers, the Apparatchiks make an effort to look like professionals. Many are wearing (black) suits. They are young. They are bright. They are well turned-out. They cannot afford to be otherwise. The Biennale pays them to be pleasant, and they need the work.

Months from now, in late September, the international art press will circulate a report that 110 Apparatchiks have gone on strike to protest poor working conditions at the Biennale. The strikers will claim that the Biennale manages them badly, offering them only three-day employment contracts and withholding overtime pay. Furthermore, they will allege, they have been laboring under these conditions since the show began.

But there is not a glimmer of conflict, present or future, on anyone’s bright face right now. These three preview days are more important than all the rest of the Biennale, because the visitors are the pillars of the art world. Curators, journalists, academics, dealers, and collectors have assembled, and the valiant Apparatchiks stand ready to shepherd them along. “Making Worlds” stretches before them all. It will dictate tastes and change reputations.

II.