The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 4: Cecilia Alemani
“What if the world was without ethics” or “what if financial value was no longer the way we talk about success?” This time, art journalist and host, Charlotte Burns, welcomes Cecilia Alemani, artistic director of the 59th Venice Biennale, and the director & chief curator of Highline art, New York City. Cecilia masterminded the Biennale production through the pandemic, to rave reviews, notably for the cool manner in which she presented a new version of art history, bringing focus without fanfare to female and non gender conforming artists and to Indigenous artists. Charlotte and Cecilia discuss the role of the curator (and how it could be different) what value really means in art and whether ethics and art are compatible.
Transcript:
Charlotte Burns:
Hello and welcome to The Art World: What If…?! I’m art journalist Charlotte Burns, and this is the podcast all about imagining different futures.
So far, we’ve had conversations with some brilliant people including Glenn Lowry, Kemi Ilesanmi and Naomi Beckwith. With their help we’ve tackled some big “what ifs” that could shape and change the art world for years to come.
[Audio of guests]
In this episode we welcome Cecilia Alemani who was the artistic director of the 59th Venice Biennale, the biggest exhibition in the art world. Cecilia masterminded its production through a pandemic, to rave reviews, notably for the cool manner in which she presented a new version of art history, bringing focus without fanfare to female and non gender conforming artists and to Indigenous artists.
Cecilia is also the director and chief curator of High Line Art, the public art program presented by the High Line in New York City.
We talked about some great “what ifs.” What if curators could simply be curators without having to think about fundraising? What if the art world did away with ethics? What if value was not lead by the market?
First, we began with the Biennale…
Charlotte Burns:
Cecilia, welcome, thank you so much for being on the show.
Cecilia Alemani:
Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
Charlotte Burns:
Someone had asked you how did it feel to be in Venice, and you said, “it's been so long working on this virtually that I just want to get my hands dirty. I want to install, I want the artists to be here. I want to get to the juice of things.”
And I love this, and I want us to get to the juice of things.
Cecilia Alemani:
For many curators, the installation part is the most exciting part. I worked on this show for so long, completely isolated, I couldn't travel, I couldn't go and do actual studio visits. So when I finally got to Venice, I was so excited to be there. And finally, you’re there with the artists, I mean, it's still quite a construction site, but the crates start coming in. It was finally wonderful to be there to see in practice what you've worked on for so long, virtually.
Charlotte Burns:
It was the first time since the Second World War that the exhibition had been postponed. And, of course, your show opened with land war once again in Europe. Meanwhile, you prepared the show during Covid-19. And so it feels like the entire process was engaging in a series of “what ifs.” You know, what if the pandemic never ends? What if the war spirals and Venice can't open? What if, what if? It feels like the whole thing was planning very pragmatic things. There's a lot of details and logistics involved in an exhibition. But meanwhile, you're in this quite abstract space, trying to imagine what the world will look like. How do you navigate that space, it's, it's always a creative space. But this feels particularly ambiguous.
Cecilia Alemani:
There was never the desire to present something online or virtually, you know, the Venice Biennale is a show that happens in Venice, in the physical spaces of the Biennale, which have been always the same. So we worked for that target—full of uncertainties, of course, and full of incredible complications going from, you know, the shipping costs to the lack of many materials—but in a way, you know, those are all logistical issues. And there is always a solution. And then, of course, the pandemic hovers above us. But at some point, there is nothing you can do about it. And so we just push forward and try to think and stay positive and remain optimistic.
Unfortunately, with Russia invading Ukraine something like six weeks before the opening, it was a traumatic event, especially thinking of the Venice Biennale, how close we are to Ukraine and how close we are to Ukrainian culture. And the attention that is on Venice, because of the structure of the national pavilion, you know, it becomes a sort of big UN meeting when the Biennale opens with all these pavilions. So there was a lot of attention but also a lot of stress on the institution to make sure that all the decisions were taken to support Ukraine and the Ukrainian art scene.
Charlotte Burns:
You talk about Venice being sort of the UN of the art world, which it is— for people who haven't been to Venice, there is the main pavilions, which Cecilia was curating. And then around that, there are national pavilions. And there's been this sense of internationalism in the art world. But now, there's a new kind of conversation coming in, which is the death of globalism.
And whilst you were curating Venice, there was one of the art world's other major events, documenta [fifteen], which took place at the same time. And there's this schism developing in the curatorial world over this idea of collective visions versus authorial ones. Documenta was alternatively heralded as life-affirming, and lambasted as a dreadful embarrassment. Writing in The New York Times, the critic Jason Farago said, “It will never recover its aim of imagining the whole world in one show, the dream of a global art world has died. And I fear a lot of people, reactionary and radical alike, prefer it that way. The incomprehension and anger the show has elicited are the proof they always wanted, that we have no common future.”
You were in charge of curating a totally different kind of event, one that had a theme. You said it was important to give the visitors an entryway into this. I wanted to ask you what you think about that; the sense that the world has become more nationalistic and fragmented and that international globalism has become more fraught.
Cecilia Alemani:
I think it's a very complicated question. And thank God they exist at the same time. Otherwise, you would only have the same exhibition in different cities in the world, and it would be extremely boring. So I think, of course, the idea of globalization is very much embedded in the fabric of the Venice Biennale because it was founded on the idea of these sort of international expositions of the 19th century. So it's hard to overcome that idea. But it's the job of a curator to sort of use that maybe obsolete model at your advantage and to actually maybe challenge that same notion of nationalism and national identity with the work that you exhibit.
Charlotte Burns:
One of the authorial visions that you've invoked is the 2003 biennale, Francesco Bonami’s. And you've talked about the freedom of that show. You thought that a lot of these kind of big Biennale exhibitions had become “more professional or more perfected and kind of lost.” How did you move away from that professionalism?
Cecilia Alemani:
I don't know if I fully moved away. If I think about Francesco Bonami’s exhibition in 2003, what I remember, you know, was incredible energy that just was ebullient and effervescent as you walked through the spaces. After that exhibition, there is a sort of professionalization of that exhibition that happened because, you know, all exhibitions grow and become adult. [Laughs]
I wish I had been able to convey that spirit that Francesco’s exhibition had, but it wasn't necessarily my goal. I think, in a way, the conditions I had prepared this exhibition in were so specific that I've made the decision of creating an exhibition that was extremely tight conceptually and thematically because maybe I just needed that clarity of thoughts and process in a very chaotic and unpredictable time. So I wanted the exhibition to be very clear and for the viewer to be able to grasp like a journey through space that was thematic and was artistic and was quite clear, while I think Francesco’s exhibition was celebrated, maybe more like an effervescent creativity of the artists.
Charlotte Burns:
This was also the biggest art Biennale to be put together by a single curator, more than 200 artists from 58 countries. And so I want to talk to you about ambition here. What were your personal ambitions and your professional ambitions, as well as your ambitions for the show and its place in art, and art history?
Cecilia Alemani:
I wanted to organize an exhibition where the participants were happy. I know it sounds a bit cheesy, but you always hear horror stories about these big biennials in which artists are desperate because they could not do what they wanted, they didn't have the space, they were just next to someone they didn't like. So this is a lot of negotiation and real estate.
But I wanted to make sure that, ideally, every single artist invited and that worked with me for so many months could have a great experience and could have a great way of exhibiting their project and their work. I wanted the artists to be pleased and think about this occasion as the most important exhibitions they will ever be featured in.
And then on the other side, the ambition to create an exhibition that could be approachable and could be really appreciated by a wide audience, and maybe that comes very much from my training and working for the High Line, where I have a very, very broad audience that is definitely not the art world. But I wanted to make sure that the exhibition—which is, you know, highly visited by just, schools and people that are not expert in Venice—could come and learn something and maybe through the historical capsules they also learn something that is not just about contemporary art. So I wanted to create an experience of learning and discovery that could talk to a broader audience and not just the art world.
Charlotte Burns:
Typically, a curator will travel to an artist studio to look at their work. It's one of the great privileges and pleasures of being a curator. You obviously couldn't do that. So you traveled through your imagination. You also asked a group of advisors, curators and other museum professionals from regions you couldn't visit to recommend artists. You looked at thousands and thousands of lists, portfolios and you did more than 400 studio visits. This is extremely productive. And there's so many interesting strands here of collaboration and travel and imagination. But the thing I want to ask you about first is that you've said these conversations over zoom, these studio visits that you might think would be more sterile, you said that they became almost a confessional space for conversations. And this is you talking to artists about what they're making, what they're doing with their lives with their time and their creativity. And so that's a lot of space and weight to hold for those conversations during a time of such fear and anxiety for so many people. How did you carry that and then also have the ability to remove yourself from it enough to sort of look at the intellectual threads and the creative links to make a strong thesis of an exhibition?
Cecilia Alemani:
I kind of just changed gear and accepted this new medium or this new format of studio visits. We put aside more like the idea of looking at works. There was this sort of hiatus and this kind of bubble space in which they found themselves, in which they couldn't even talk so much about art. And so I think what happened is that we opened up much more in talking about personal feeling and emotion and personal state of being in these very uncertain times. And that's why I'm saying that very often, these conversations felt like confessions because, eventually, you end up talking about very profound things and very profound aspects of your existence. And for many of these artists, I feel like the pandemic, in a way, also became the practical manifestation of many of the concerns that were actually maybe just studying and thinking about, you know, the idea of climate change, or the idea of the sort of the pressure from technology onto our bodies. All of a sudden, all these concerns became extremely factual with the pandemic. And so, in a way, I think, for the artists themselves, it became a very kind of revelatory moment in which we found ourselves fighting against this force and this virus that was invisible and unbeatable for the first few months. And it was kind of a revelation also, in terms of how to think about these large themes in a very practical way.
Charlotte Burns:
One of the things we’ve talked about when we were planning this show was this idea of the value of art, what we value, what we venerate, and whether we’re in the beginning or the midst of the beginning of a massive shift in what we value. In your biennale, when I walked around it, I felt that. I felt that it was of now, whereas some exhibitions I've walked around since I feel are pre-internet, you know, and that might be artists I love. And I might think about their art as being as revolutionary as I thought about it 10 years ago, but I don't feel the same way about it, it doesn't feel like something I need to see.
And I think that felt so exciting about your show that you offered something that really did feel of now and in a very elegant way, you opened up art history looking at artists and ways of thinking that are different. Specifically, one of the things you did was make it mostly female or non-gender conforming biennale. Of the 213 artists, only 21 were male. And this fact is worn very likely, it's not something that you've talked about that much in statements. When you're asked to talk about it, you tend to sort of downplay it. I know you're asked about it a lot and it seems to me that in your responses you don't really like dwelling on it, you don't want it to be known as like the “women biennale.” Tell me, tell me what your discomfort is with that.
Cecilia Alemani:
Not necessarily discomfort, I think it's important to remember I'm Italian, and I work in America, so I know both cultures fairly well. And I know, and this is more like an Italian reflection, but I know that we are not very advanced when it comes to discussions and conversations about equity and equality in the art world, but also in our society, especially in our society. And I did not want the Italian people or the Italian audience to just dismiss the show because it's a show that features a majority of women artists, which has happened already anyway, even if I didn't make big claims. But I wanted this show to be meaningful for Italy and for Italian culture. And I do feel like there is a huge separation between Italian culture and the rest of the world. And I wanted people to be able to come and see the show and then maybe in a second moment realize, oh, you know what, there are so many actually women artists in the show that I've never seen anything like that before. And you can see a good show by featuring women artists, which is the reverse of the last 125 years. So I was very aware of that context. And that's also one of the reasons I did not care about making big statements.
But I wanted to prevent also the Italian audience dismissing because they don't want to entertain those conversations because they're very uncomfortable. And so they just dismiss it. “Oh, it's a women biennial, so who cares? It's just politically correct.” That's been very much in the Italian press, which I think is, of course, very reductive, but I want people to be able to have that conversation and have that discussion. Even if it's uncomfortable for many of them.
Charlotte Burns:
I think what you're saying is so interesting because things do just get reduced to, “it’s the women's show, it's the politically correct show,” and what your exhibition did so empowering and generous for your audience was that you just focused on the work and you quietly made the case that this was art that should have been seen and should have been looked at and that it should be taken seriously, on its own terms, and there should be more space for it. And more exhibitions could look like this without being called “the women show.”
Two women, let's talk about in particular, you knew you wanted to start the Biennale with a work by Katharina Fritsch and Simone Leigh. So talk me through that. And like imagine you're someone who hasn't seen it, seen the Venice Biennale. Can you describe to someone what they're going to see in those two entrance points to the show?
Cecilia Alemani:
Yeah, so the exhibition takes place in two venues. One is what is called the Central Pavilion, which is located in the Giardini, which is the historical side of the Biennale. The pavilion itself was built in 1893, it's a rather traditional space. One could say it's a more museum-like or kind of white cube space. The only historical room that remains from the foundation is the first room which is this octagonal room, which is called Sala Chini. Galileo Chini was the gentleman who decorated the cupola with this beautiful Art Deco or like Liberty style frescoes, which were realized, I believe, in 1910 or 1912. And then during the fascism, they were completely covered by a sort of fake cupola, which was removed only in the 1980s—actually just restored in 2013, I believe. But it's this beautiful historical space. And also, it's a reminder that in the past, for the first edition pre-Second World War, those spaces were decorated. They didn't necessarily have white spaces or white walls. So they were decorated with textiles and frescoes and things that were actually adorning the space beyond the artworks that were exhibited. And so I always love this space. I wanted to start with a sort of monumental gesture, and I always had this vision of having this incredible artwork by Katharina Fritsch, who is a wonderful German artist, and to me, one of the most relevant sculptors in our time. The piece I chose is a very, very early piece from 1987. It’s her first hyperrealistic large-scale piece, and it's called Elephant (1987), and it's basically a giant elephant. The scale is right, it’s actually modeled after an elephant that was in a natural history museum, but the color is very weird, this kind of dark green color. And you enter this beautiful space, and you find on a fairly high and tall pedestal this creature that, of course, we can all recognize, but, it's this weird sense of something gone wrong because the color is completely unnatural and surreal in a sense, or super real. And I also wanted to start the show with a traditional gesture of a figure on a pedestal. But instead of having a man or a woman, having an animal, also an animal that is part of a matriarchal society—because elephants are led by women. So there were many layers of my thinking. But most importantly, again, this kind of monumental gesture of starting a show with a giant animal on a pedestal.
And when it comes to the other entrance, the Arsenale is a very different space that was built in the 16th century. Its main features are these Greek columns everywhere, and nothing can sort of be changed or can be touched. So, in that case, when you walk through the Arsenale, you have to build your own architecture. And I wanted to start with this sort of monumental gesture by bringing a sculpture called Brick House (2019) by Simone Leigh, who is an American artist with whom I worked on the High Line and actually produced the sculpture that is on view now in Venice for the High Line back in 2019. And in this case, the sculpture is a portrait of a Black woman whose body becomes a form of West African architecture. So Simone is someone that has been very interested in seeing the conflation between portraiture and architecture. And so I love the idea of starting part of an exhibition where the idea of metamorphosis and transformation is very strong by bringing this very iconic sculpture in the first room of the Arsenale.
Charlotte Burns:
They’re such powerful starts, punctuation points and entry points to the show. But also, so much of the retrograde thinking you might hear about female artists is, “oh they’re very collective,” or “they work more in craft, it's a smaller scale thing.” And this is a very immediate rebuttal of the sense of ambition and power in those works by those female artists.
What I want to talk to you about here is how do you fund that, then? Because we know that funding for exhibitions is tied very strongly, often to the market. When you're funding a big show like Venice, you do get some institutional support, you get some funding from the Italian government, but you have to fundraise a lot for that show. How do you do that when you're funding artists that people may not have heard of, whether they're female artists or Indigenous artists or artists from further afield? It felt like a show that wasn't situated enormously in the market. Was that harder to fundraise for?
Cecilia Alemani:
You know, just know you got to do it. [Laughs] So you start from day one. You kind of just know that you have to raise money. And that's, I think it's always the case in Venice. I think in my case, unfortunately, it was an expensive show to produce because the shipping was completely messed up and because I had a lot of artwork. The approach that I had, I tried to fundraise for the exhibition as a whole. So I had lots of support from donors and foundations that sort of stood behind my choice and my concept, and my theme. Then, of course, you know, when you have to produce new installations and new projects, then you can also target specific foundations or supporters or individuals. But as a general practice, I tried to fundraise for the whole show.
To be honest, because the show was mainly women artists, I did find a lot of good responses and people that actually wanted to stand behind this choice. Maybe they're not the usual suspects, but there were both foundations and individuals that were very, very generous and really believed in my vision.
Charlotte Burns:
So you kind of presented us with a vision of “what if?” What if the art world mostly put out shows by female artists and were funded by people who wanted to support artists? What did you learn from that? Is that replicable? Is that something that you think the art world could do more of? You sort of made this theoretical a reality.
Cecilia Alemani:
I think so. Again, I'm an optimistic person. And I think the world is changing. I know that your report, unfortunately, doesn't show that the world is changing that much, but I want to believe that we can make a difference. Money's out there, you just need to know where to go get it. And maybe it's not the usual funders of exhibitions. But there are lots of people that do believe in the power of women artists and want to support that and want to advance equity. So I think it's about shaking a little bit the fundraising and the philanthropic net. But it's not an impossible mission. It’s just about being creative and looking maybe other ways to find support.
Charlotte Burns:
One of the big funders for the show was the Teiger Foundation, right? And the Teiger Foundation has, in recent years, started really focusing on this idea of supporting curators as a concept, as a funding proposition to just give curators more freedom. Do you think that's something curators need? There is a sense in the field that the role of the curator has slightly diminished, particularly institutionally, since the sort of 1970s. That it's much more tied to the trustees now and to funding. What would you suggest that curators need?
Cecilia Alemani:
Well, what the David Teiger Foundation does is really unique and really, really incredibly generous. They were the first foundation to support my show—I believe it was even before the pandemic--and David Teiger was a dear friend and supporter also of previous exhibitions of mine. It's an incredible resource because, in a way, grants and funding that go to curators eventually go to artists and exhibitions. [Laughs] I didn't put anything in my bucket. It’s just, you know, to support my vision and to realize the artists’ visions.
And while there are lots of grants and residency and programs that support artists— which there can be more and more—but there is a good wealth of supporters in that sense, at least in the Western world. For curators, there is very little in terms of grants and support. Of course, the Venice Biennale is an extreme, and it's an institution that has already a foundation, has already a structure, but thinking of an impact of a grant of a few thousand dollars that can go to a young curators who wants to realize a small show in a nonprofit space can be so impactful and so meaningful. So I hope that in the future, there will be more people that also look at the curatorial practice as a way to support the entire ecosystem of the art world.
Charlotte Burns:
What are the threads you take from Venice in terms of the high-level concepts? And the practical realities, by which I mean, you now know how to do a really big show. Does that make you want to do another really big show again? But also kind of more grounded in the art itself—that you've had 400 studio visits? How are you following up on all that tapestry of conversation with those artists? And where is it taking your curatorial practice now?
Cecilia Alemani:
One of the best outcomes of doing a show like this is that you learn so much. I got to know, first of all, so many artists. Many of them did not make it in the show because of different reasons. But that does not mean that I will not work with them on the High Line or on a next project. So I feel very enriched in that sense. But also, especially when it came to the historical presentations, I feel I was very lucky to have the time to study and learn, and that experience is one of the most rewarding aspects of our job. So, I hope that there will be things coming out of this deep research. It was a giant show to organize, yes. I would love to do another show of that scale. But at the same time, I can also do things that are a bit less conventional or a bit more outside the regular circuit because I have, I'm not necessarily a museum curator, I like to look at other way to other places to find locations to curate.
Charlotte Burns:
Where are you looking now, then?
Cecilia Alemani:
[Laughs] Now I'm just, you know, happy to be back at the High Line. And it's a job that I love very much. I'm focusing on that for now and back home.
Charlotte Burns:
You're back home and not doing as many zoom calls. I imagine.
Cecilia Alemani:
No. [Laughs] I actually desintalled Zoom from my computer, so…
Charlotte Burns:
Throw it in the river, burn it [Laughs].
Charlotte Burns:
We talked a little bit about value. Do you think there is a kind of shift in value, the kind of art people, the public wants to look at? The kind of art the artists are interested in?
Cecilia Alemani:
I don't know if I feel comfortable with the term value but what I can say, I think the biggest challenge or what I think still now is, can we look at what's happening now, what's been happening since the pandemic, as a sort of a new wave that is coming through the art world, and without making, of course, big declamation? I think that was one of my goals, try to identify if there was something new happening—I still think it's happening right now. So it's very hard to name what it is. But what I can say, and what I hope is a little bit visible in the exhibition, is, I think, there are many artists that, for instance, are using methodologies of introspections, and the dream or you can say the irrational, which were shared with, of course, Surrealism, to kind of look at our current reality, which is not exactly exciting both in terms of political and social. And so while I would say a few years ago this show could have been, in a way, much more openly political, I think the artists that I talk to are still investigating political themes but are doing that in a much more intimate and introspective way.
It is fairly similar or parallel to what happened in the 1930s with Surrealism. But it's still very much evolving. But I hope that, like 20 years from now, looking back at this show, one could say those were some of the artists that started thinking about political and social issues but in a much more intimistic way.
Charlotte Burns:
Do you think the public is changing in that way too? Are they lockstep or the artists ahead in that?
Cecilia Alemani:
I think the public always grows, for better or worse; To me, the public is expanding and especially for these large exhibitions. What I can notice is that there is and maybe also the High Line, is this broadening of public reach. I don't know if it also means diluting expertise and losing some sharpness or critical gaze but I do think the public is expanding.
Charlotte Burns:
Does it make you crave something small and intimate yourself?
Cecilia Alemani:
Maybe. I think they can exist both at the same time. I think we should not necessarily think that these big shows are good because there are a lot of people going. Of course, it's great that lots of people are going to these big shows but that doesn't mean that you cannot create a different aesthetic experience which is much more domestic or intimate. Absolutely not.
The bigger risk is to judge and an exhibition just for the numbers because that's one facet of the whole situation. And I think it’s important to me, for instance, the idea that artists are pleased or they did create what they wanted to. So there are different kinds of clients or different kinds of audiences here, not just the public.
Charlotte Burns:
That’s a really interesting distinction.
I want to ask you a little bit about place. Where are the best places right now to be a curator? And I ask this because you've said in the past that Italy isn't as hospitable to younger curators because there's so much 1960s bureaucracy and that there needs to be a change of generation since there aren't that many positions open and not much turnover.
In New York, it's completely different. There are lots of positions, there's lots of activity, it's very fast-paced but you've said a difficulty there is that everything can be so “boxed in.” An artist comes from a school, they belong to a gallery. While as a curator, you're always looking for things that don't have a label already attached to them. If you are a young curator now or if you think of the next stages of your career, is New York still the best place to be a curator? Are you excited by other propositions? I know you've done a lot of work in Buenos Aires and places like that.
Cecilia Alemani:
I think it's, it's very hard. I think New York is still the one of the most important capitals of art. But what's happening, and it's clearly in front of all of us, is that the profession of the curator has become very cool and very trendy. And I'm part of it, of course, because I moved to New York to study curatorial practice. But while 20 years ago you had x amount of curatorial schools, now you have such an inflation of curatorial schools, which is great because the more curators, the better. But the problem is that there are no more curatorial positions because museums are pretty much the same. And yes, some of them are expanding, but they're not necessarily expanding the team exponentially. So I think it's very hard. Like, I know when you open up positions for curatorial assistants in museums, you have hundreds, if not thousands, of applications, which means there is such an eagerness to do this job, but there is very little positions.
So maybe New York is not the best place to start as a young curator. The good thing about America is that there are so many incredible museums scattered across the map of the United States. So it's also maybe New York is a place where you end up and not where you start.
I think of South America as, to me is one of the most interesting region to look at, not just for artists, but maybe also for curators, museums in Brazil, in Colombia, in Argentina, are doing an incredible job. So I think if you are lucky enough that you can maybe travel or start your career somewhere else, there are also other centers that are not necessarily North America.
Charlotte Burns:
Okay, what if? What if you could change three things about the art world? What three things would you change?
Cecilia Alemani:
“What if,” I mean, maybe the first one is, what if financial values was no longer the way we talk about success? And so what if we could say that it's amazing that museums have acquired works by female artists but regardless of their market values, because market values should not be, in my opinion, the sort of trigger or like the sort of model upon which we attribute value because it's got nothing to do with it. And we all know how the market and the auction houses, it's a sort of an unreal and surreal world that has very often nothing to do with the actual value of the artwork. So, could we actually reimagine art history where the monetary value is left out? And so we refocus on the artistic value and on other kinds of values but not the market value.
Charlotte Burns:
Do you think we can do that? Do you think that's possible?
Cecilia Alemani:
You know, what I think is happening that is rather scary, to be honest, is how and this is of course, my personal opinion. But how often there is completely like a hiatus between the sort of values attributed by museums and institutions, and let's say art criticism and the market value, because there is a big split there, of course.
But the last thing that I want to see is that the market value is what drives museums because it should be, of course, the other way around. Now, of course, you see young kids going to crazy millions of prices without ever being collected by a museum. And that's, of course, it's absurd because it's the museums and the sort of art historical institutions that should be driving this attribution of value, not for sure that market or auction houses. But I think we're in a very tricky moment because they don't reconcile so and they shouldn't. But the market is taking a big step in this picture. So it's very worrisome.
Charlotte Burns:
Is that tied to the funding structures, the way that museums are funded, you know, most people are collectors they're in the market?
Cecilia Alemani:
I don't know if it's all laid out, I mean, isn't that a big game, you know, who has the new shiny stars? And who can have it and then flip it? So I think it's just a different ecosystem? I mean, yes, they do cross and when collectors decide to donate and that's a whole different story.
But what's happening in the market is it's completely its own ecosystem that, again, has nothing to do necessarily with value that is attributed by museums or art historical institutions. So I think either the two will keep going apart from each other. And I don't know what's going to happen but it's going to be a very polarized world. Or when we reconcile them, you know, the big risk is that museums will be just following market values and market mechanism, which is, it's got nothing to do with what a museum should do. A museum should value things according to their intellectual and artistic values, not market values. So I think that's a big “if” in the upcoming years.
Charlotte Burns:
Okay, two other things. If you could change two other things about the art world, what if? What would they be?
Cecilia Alemani:
Ah, I often think, what if the funding system was completely provided by their institution? This is never gonna happen. But what if we could go back to doing our job and not fundraising because we all know that curators, in one way or the other, they have to do fundraising, either by raising money or by getting works from collectors? They’re just different forms of fundraising. So what if that was no longer in the picture and was no longer part of my job? Could I go back to being a more purer curator? Or is just, you know, the evolution of this job? That the curator is also fundraiser and she's also a manager? It's a more contemporary vision of what curators are.
Charlotte Burns:
Okay, your final change Cecilia, your last wish.
Cecilia Alemani:
Wish…well, this is not a wish, but I asked myself often, and I think that's something that you have touched upon in previous podcasts. What happens—and that is not a wish—but what if the world was without ethics? What if the art world was just focusing on the artistic language? And I don't think this is my desire by no means, but we talk a lot about the sort of overlap between artistic merit and moral issues of the artists. And that's a very interesting conversation. But I wonder where we will end up with that conversation. So I'm very curious to see happens if you split those completely. Is that gonna bring us back to medieval times? Or is that like a parallel way of seeing the art world?
Charlotte Burns:
Do you think you can split ethics from the conversation around art?
Cecilia Alemani:
No, not necessarily. That's why I ask myself if you could imagine a world in which you can. The idea that you can actually look back and reevaluate and reconsider and without being moralistic or pedantic, but the idea that you can look at someone's work, knowing more about the person, the man or the woman behind, to me as an art professional is just exciting, and it's just enriching. But in a way, I wonder where that conversation will take us. You know, I'm just, I'm just curious to see what's next when it comes to this, this conversation? Because in a way, as I was telling you about the idea of the women biennial like to avoid those simplifications, you know to avoid, how can we be more thoughtful when it comes to bringing ethics into the artistic discourse without the risk of being called, oh you just want to cancel Paul Gauguin. That's something that I think a lot when it comes to art. I don't have an answer necessary. So I wonder, you know, how can we move forward in a positive way that is not just about canceling and silencing histories?
Charlotte Burns:
It’s an interesting point about whose values as well? Because you mentioned earlier you're from Italy, you live in New York. So when you thought about your Venice Biennale, you thought about the Italian press and the Italian public and how they would receive it. That's a different conversation than the New York press and the New York public. And so, you know, perhaps you having that kind of dual identity, maybe that gives you a different intro into whose ethics they are anyway, who's deciding what's ethical, what's not ethical, what the correct way of looking at it is. I wonder if that's part of it.
Cecilia Alemani:
I think so, I mean, or maybe it's also thinking, what is the outcome that we want to reach? You know, it's because there is a process. But it's also the outcome, I think the outcome is that we want to see museums more diverse, so that we want to see museums and institutions and cultural institutions to just represent the world as it is, which is certainly not a white world. Talking about planet, but how do we get there? And so I guess, maybe being a bit more strategic, focusing on a more strategic thinking, how do we get there knowing how other people think and you know, in a way, what I was telling you about Italy also applies to gender, but it applies also to race and other imbalances. And so how do you get there? Is it by confronting and claiming that the world is different? Or is it by doing the job and showing through an exhibition that you can do an exhibition that is diverse, and it's female, without necessarily having to claim it, just showing it with facts? I tend to do the second one, because I'm necessarily not a big declaration person. But I'm very sure and I'm very convinced that the art world would be better if it was a more diverse also in the representation in culture and institutions. But how do we get there? And so that's in a way, the more managerial side of me is, can we be strategic about it? And can we get there? So, hard job that shows that you can do, you can collect, you can do exhibitions of a diverse group of artists. Clearly, you know, your studies and your data show that we're not there yet. But I wonder, once you have the objectives very clear is how do you get there?
Charlotte Burns:
You're, of course, someone who could kind of answer that. I think part of the situation that we're realizing is that there isn't really that membrane of knowledge being transferred around how to do what you've done so your knowledge that you've gained from this, like, how would you pass that on? You talk about strategy, what would the strategies be that people might consider? Like, how can you share the knowledge you've gained from this to create that change and that strategy?
Cecilia Alemani:
I think there is a basic, basic level, which is literally knowledge. I am 100% sure that a lot of people simply don't know a lot of female artists, both contemporary and historical. So and of course, that's not nothing that I introduced, like an artist that was very important in my show is someone called Mirella Bentivoglio. She was an Italian artist who did concrete poetry, but most importantly, she was a curator and did a lot of exhibitions of concrete poetry in the 70s when it was a very popular movement in Europe and in South America. And the average number of women artists in these large exhibitions were 2%, while there were so many incredible women doing concrete and visual poetry. And so she made a point for 10 years to do shows on the female artists working with concrete poetry, including a very important one in Italy at the Venice Biennale called Materializzazione del linguaggio, the materialization of language that happened in 1978. And she said, you know, I'm not necessarily interested in doing women show for the sake of it. But after I did this 10 years of show, the average number or percentage of female artists included in shows created by men rose from 2% to 20%. And it was simply an educational tool for lots of museum directors and curators to get to know the work of artists that would not, maybe they couldn't find in the usual platform, they couldn't find in galleries, they couldn't find on the walls of collectors. So there is certainly an education factor. And then, you know, what's next? It's up to the next curator of the Venice Biennale to deal with that. But joking aside, I want to hope that this is not just an exception at my exhibition but there will be a way of again, loosening a little bit the sort of fabric of how you do an exhibition like that to include different stories and different perspectives that are not necessarily my perspective or Western perspective. But to me, the biggest risk is all of those voices that don't want to open up or don't want to rewrite and to reconsider other voices. And you know, here I see, much less in the US, but I can totally see it in Italy so much. And especially now, with the new political situation. You know, I think exhibitions, like Venice can make a change, at least for the younger generations that can see themselves represented in a show that has never included them.
Charlotte Burns:
That's such a great note to end us on. But before you go, I've got one question for you. So I'm just curious about because you don't strike me as someone who approaches things with very strict limitations to how you're going to perceive a situation. But I did read about one rule in your home, which is that if you have any art, you keep it in a cardboard box because it's nice to go home and look at white walls. That the ironclad rule of your marriage has been no art in the house. Have you stuck to that?
Cecilia Alemani:
I'm facing a very white wall where I used to have all the plans of Venice. Kind of, yeah, we have very little art. There is not a lot of white walls because we have a lot of books. So books are covering and kind of occupying every surface of our apartment. But it's nice to have a bit of a visual respite when you come home after having looked or lived so much art.
Charlotte Burns:
Cecilia, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.
Cecilia Alemani:
Thank you so much, bye-bye.
Charlotte Burns:
My huge thanks to Cecilia Alemani again—especially because on the winters’ day we recorded with her, it was a bizarre and boiling 25 degrees in New York City, and we asked her to turn off the aircon to better the quality of the audio currently ringing around your ears.
Next time we’ll be talking to Sandra Jackson-Dumont, the director and CEO of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, which is scheduled to open in 2025.
Sandra Jackson-Dumont:
What if we actually have some shared ideas? What if we actually can address certain structural issues? What if museums become the place that people truly look to, as a better business model for certain things? Or a better education model? You know what I'm saying? Like that, like, abundance place is so impressive to me.
Charlotte Burns:
So many brilliant “what ifs” coming up. That is next time on The Art World: What If…?!
This podcast is brought to you by Art&, the editorial platform created by Schwartzman&. The executive producer is Allan Schwartzman, who co-hosts the show together with me, Charlotte Burns of Studio Burns, which produces the series.