Francesco Bonami (b. Florence, 1955) is an Italian art curator and writer. He lives in Milan and Manhattan, New York. [1]
Francesco Bonami (b. Florence, 1955) is an Italian art curator and writer. He lives in Milan and Manhattan, New York. [1]
Bonami was born in Florence. He studied Set and Theatre Design at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze. After a brief spell as an artist in Milan, Bonami relocated to New York City in 1991 where he was appointed U.S. Editor of Flash Art magazine, a post he held until 1998. From 1999 to 2008 he was Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Artistic Director of Fondazione Pitti Discovery in Florence and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin. [2] From 2004 through 2008 he was Artistic Director of the Villa Manin Contemporary Art Center in Codroipo, Italy. He directed the 2nd edition of the SITE Santa Fe Biennial in 1997, the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, [3] and was one of the curators of Manifesta 3 (2000) and the 2010 Whitney Biennial. [1]
Bonami has also organised exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (London), the Hayward Gallery (London), the Pinault Collection (Venice), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the Qatar Museums Authority in Doha, Mudam in Luxembourg and the JNBY Foundation in Hangzhou.
In 2013 Bonami wrote in La Stampa that the Venice City Council decision to remove the "Boy with Frog" sculpture by Charles Ray from the front of the Punta della dogana was "administrative cowardice" and that the lamppost which replaced it represented "a moment of cultural darkness". [4] In 2019, he started the new column on ARTnews , Ask a Curator. [5] In 2021, as a controversy sparked about the dominance of white men at senior positions in Chinese museums, Bonami responded with a rant challenging racial and gender stereotypes about white men: "Under the new identity rules and laws, this article assumes, by how we look, that inside of ourselves, we feel always like white, ageing, western man. And this is not true, for example in my case, I often, often, felt inside myself, to be, sometimes, a thirty-five-year-old Iranian lesbian. So they don’t know what I feel inside." [6] His rants on social networks also targeted far-right populism in Italy. [7] In 2021, he launched his own NFTs. [8]
Bonami has authored monographs on the work of Doug Aitken, Gabriele Basilico, Vanessa Beecroft, Glenn Brown, Maurizio Cattelan, Dan Colen, Thomas Demand, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Luisa Lambri, Albert Oehlen, Gabriel Orozco, Marjetica Potrč, Carol Rama, Rudolf Stingel and Jeff Wall, amongst others.
In October 2014, Bonami presented a partially available for sale exhibition of contemporary sculpture at Phillips in London. The following year, he organised an auction of 50 works of Italian art at Phillips New York, including Paola Pivi, Roberto Cuoghi and Maurizio Cattelan. [9]
The Venice Biennale is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy, by the Biennale Foundation. It focuses on contemporary art, and includes events for art, contemporary dance, architecture, cinema, and theatre. Two main components of the festival are known as the Art Biennale and the Architecture Biennale, which are held in alternating years. The others – Biennale Musica, Biennale Teatro, Venice Film Festival, and Venice Dance Biennale – are held annually. The main exhibition held in Castello alternates between art and architecture, and there are around 30 permanent pavilions built by different countries.
Maurizio Cattelan is an Italian visual artist. Known primarily for his hyperrealistic sculptures and installations, Cattelan's practice also includes curating and publishing. His satirical approach to art has resulted in him being frequently labelled as a joker or prankster of the art world. Self-taught as an artist, Cattelan has exhibited internationally in museums and Biennials. Maurizio Cattelan created his most important works of art at Viale Bligny 42 in Milan, where he lived for many years.
Germano Celant was an Italian art historian, critic, and curator who coined the term "Arte Povera" in the 1967 Flash Art piece "Appunti Per Una Guerriglia", which would become the manifesto for the Arte Povera artistic and political movement. He wrote many articles and books on the subject.
Flash Art is a contemporary art magazine, and an Italian and international publishing house. Originally published bilingually, both in Italian and in English, since 1978 is published in two separate editions, Flash Art Italia (Italian) and Flash Art International (English). Since September 2020, the magazine is seasonal, and said editions are published four times a year.
Giancarlo Politi is an art critic and publisher, mainly known for being the founder of Flash Art magazine.
Urs Fischer is a Swiss-born contemporary visual artist living in New York City and Los Angeles. Fischer’s practice includes sculpture, installation, photography, and digitally-mediated images.
Aperto ’93 is the title of an exhibition of contemporary art conceived by Helena Kontova and Giancarlo Politi, and organized by Helena Kontova for the XLV edition of the Venice Biennale, directed by Achille Bonito Oliva in 1993. It reprised and expanded the concept of the exhibition Aperto, a new section in the Biennale for young artists ideated by Bonito Oliva and Harald Szeemann in 1980.
Massimiliano Gioni is an Italian curator and contemporary art critic based in New York City, and artistic director at the New Museum. He is the artistic director of the Nicola Trussardi Foundation in Milan as well as the artistic director of the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation. Gioni was the curator of the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013.
Francesco Vezzoli is an Italian artist and filmmaker.
Beatrice "Bice" Curiger is a Swiss art historian, curator, critic and publisher who has been the Artistic Director of the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles since 2013. In 2011 she became only the third woman to curate the Venice Biennale.
Barbara Vanderlinden is a Belgian art historian, curator, and director.
Maurizio Pellegrin is an Italian and American visual artist. He works with installations, photography and video. He is married and has two sons.
The 55th Venice Biennale was an international contemporary art exhibition held in 2013. The Venice Biennale takes place biennially in Venice, Italy. Artistic director Massimiliano Gioni curated its central exhibition, "The Encyclopedic Palace".
The year 2019 in art involved various significant events.
The national pavilions host each participant nation's official representation during the Venice Biennale, an international art biennial exhibition held in Venice, Italy. Some countries own pavilion buildings in the Giardini della Biennale while others rent buildings throughout the city, but each country controls its own selection process and production costs.
Cecilia Alemani is an Italian curator based in New York City. She is the Donald R. Mullen Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art and the artistic director of the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. She previously curated the 2017 Biennale's Italian pavilion and served as artistic director of the inaugural edition of the 2018 Art Basel Cities in Buenos Aires, held in 2018.
The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is a non-profit contemporary arts institution based in Turin, Italy, founded by arts collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in 1995.
Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back is a 2016 documentary about the Italian contemporary artist Maurizio Cattelan It was directed by Maura Axelrod. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival as a special presentation of the Guggenheim Museum.
Andra Ursuța is a Romanian-American sculptor who has lived and worked in New York since 2000. Ursuța is known for her nihilistic portrayal of the human condition, confronting issues such as patriotism, violence against women, and the “expulsion of ethnic groups”. Ursuța's work is held in public collections worldwide.
Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is an Italian contemporary art collector, patron and private museum owner, known for her extensive collection, support of young artists, and her role in transforming cultural spaces. She is the president of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
