Venice’s daily risk of sinking frames the romance of the city and the Biennale’s atmosphere, even as spectators navigate rain during previews. The Biennale’s artistic direction and programming face disruption after artistic director Koyo Kouoh dies of cancer before realizing “In Minor Keys.” Provocation and exchange are questioned amid a prize jury’s moral withdrawal over the inclusion of Israel and Russia, followed by officials reinstating nationalism through people’s-choice awards vulnerable to bias and bot manipulation. Amid these tensions, a privately financed American exhibition at Fondazione Prada, “Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince,” becomes the most widely applauded show in Venice. Nancy Spector curates the exhibition with new, old, and previously unseen works across media, aiming to address the embarrassment of the United States pavilion and deliver a strongly affecting representation of American real life.
"How to feel about a Biennale whose widely admired artistic director, Koyo Kouoh, died of cancer before she could realize "In Minor Keys," a strangely docile exhibition for a realm where provocation is the active currency of exchange? Or about a prize jury that ran off in high moral dudgeon over the inclusion of Israel and Russia? If the panel's withdrawal effectively cleansed the Biennale of its troubling nationalism, officials quickly reinstated it by establishing people's-choice awards that clearly are open to personal bias and possible corruption by bots. Don't you love it?"
"But what to think, when a privately financed, independently curated show of American art becomes the most unequivocally applauded exhibition in Venice? That's not just my opinion. "Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince," at the Fondazione Prada's Palazzo Ca' Corner della Regina on the Grand Canal, was the talk of the town. In her first big show since relinquishing the job of chief curator at the Guggenheim Museum five years ago, Nancy Spector pulled out the stops to save us from the embarrassment of the Giardini's United States pavilion, whose Trump-appointed commissioner was too clueless even to have it listed on the Biennale map."
"It's no exaggeration to say that "Helter Skelter" is the single most powerfully affecting representation of real life in our country, anywhere. In rooms on two floors of the Prada's gorgeous, selectively decayed palace, Spector juxtaposed new, old, and never-before-exhibited, thematically linked paintings, sculpture, photographs, and films by two leading appropriationists, one concerned with the self-sustaining underbelly of white Amer"
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