ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
goals of the Venice Biennale when it was established in the late nineteenth century was to establish a market for contemporary art . In 1968 , the ban on sales was established as a result of student protests that saw the Biennale as a site for the commodification of culture ( see also Jones 2010:79 ). Despite this , several analysts note that it is difficult to distinguish contemporary art from various kinds of economic circulations . This is the case especially taking into consideration the financialization of contemporary art and the consolidation of the figure of the “ art investor ” ( e . g . Coslor 2016 ). The Venice Biennale plays a specific role in building momentum for art as an investment class . “ Showing in Venice speeds up sales , gets artistic careers going , cranks up price levels and helps artists land a dealer ranked higher in the market ’ s hierarchy ,” as Olav Velthuis argues ( Velthuis 2011:22 ). This “ Venice effect ” is built on a paradox : due to its noncommercial nature , the Venice Biennale enables demonstrating one ’ s independence from the market and autonomous interest in art . However , this symbolic capital can be easily converted into economic capital : “ So the paradox is that the curator ’ s resistance to commerce and Venice ’ s official status as a non-selling event is exactly what makes its quality signals influential in the art market ” ( Velthuis 2011:23 ).
In addition to the Venice effect on the art market , there is some discussion in the existing literature on the influence of funding and corporate sponsors on what is exhibited at biennials ( e . g . Grace 2015 ; Kabov 2016 ). Robert Grace , for example , points out while the ratio between governmental and private funding varies considerably between the participating pavilions at the Venice Biennale , corporate funding is often involved . The motivation of such funding for contemporary art is generally based on the logic of commercial exchange , which has implications for the autonomous status of art . Grace illustrates this with the example of a major sponsor of the French pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015 , who set a condition to serve beer produced by one of his companies at pavilion ’ s vernissage ( Grace 2015:25 – 26 ). Valerie Kabov has also scrutinized the influence of funding on the politics of biennials . She remarks that in the case of private and NGO funding , the paths often “ run along colonial and neo-colonial lines ” molding the artists from the “ emerging countries ” according to the needs of the Western funders ( Kabov 2016:4 – 5 ). When this is combined with the limited ability of governments from the global south to support the costs of mounting national pavilions at the Venice Biennale , their ability to participate remains dependent on the imperatives of northern funders : “ What this unambiguously suggests is that participation of Southern artists in Venice Biennale will continue to be is filtered to tune of Northern money and Northern audiences ” ( Kabov 2016:4 ).
The economic dynamics of biennials are not always as straightforward as the question of how the funding of biennial activities is tied to attempts to further specific interests . More complex economic processes are also at play . Two strands of discussion can be distinguished here : one focuses on the connections of biennials to processes of capital accumulation and the other on their role in the accumulation of symbolic capital . One of the scholars who have tried to tie their analyses of biennials to wider circuits of capital
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