Biennial Boom

Paloma Checa-Gismero is Assistant Professor of Art History at Swarthmore College.

“Biennials are a definitive-some say, the definitive-exhibitionary form for contemporary art. This is a forensic study of three of the biennials that moved beyond the modern model of art battles between nations, staged at Venice since 1895, into contemporary modes. They laid key markers for the subsequent biennial ‘boom.’ Paloma Checa-Gismero combines archival research, personal experience, a wide-ranging knowledge of critical theory, along with an invigorating intolerance of clichÉ, to show the collisions between aspiration and reality in play at these times and places. She tracks how artists, critics, curators, and viewers from local communities responded to the ‘aesthetic conversions’ of social forces that these biennials enabled, paving the way for the multi-facetted phenomenon known as ‘global contemporary art.’” - Terry Smith, author of (Art to Come: Histories of Contemporary Art) “In this erudite, insightful, and immensely readable book Paloma Checa-Gismero puts her finger on how the profound inequality, chauvinism, Eurocentrism, and problematic space of the contemporary art world came into being. While others may wax poetic on contemporary aesthetics without necessarily being aware of the conditions of the art world, Checa-Gismero actually shows what makes contemporary art take on its cultural capital. Biennial Boom makes an important intervention into historicizing and making sense of the global art world.” - Tatiana Flores, author of (Mexico's Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30-30!)

• List of Illustrations  ixAcknowledgments  xiiiBiennial Conversions at the Borders of Liberalism: An Introduction  1Part 1. Anticolonial Collaboration in the Bienal de la Habana’s Early Iterations, Havana, 1984–1991  291. Polyphonic Internationalism  292. Curating the Third World  533. An Aesthetics of Production  72Part 2. Cosmopolitan Dreams at the US-Mexico Borderlands in inSITE94 and INSITE97: San Diego and Tijuana, 1994–19974. Sovereignty Claims over the Borderlands  995. Fears of Provincialism and the Desire to Be Global  1236. Globalizing Mexican Art  146Part 3. Art for a Unified Europe: Manifesta 1, Rotterdam, 19967. Manifesta: Placenta Europa  1738. Curating Conflict  1939. The Art of Belonging 217Epilogue  241Notes  253Bibliography  285Index  301