The Vernissage Homefront

homefront

/hōm ˈfrənt/

noun

        the participation of civilians in sacrifices, resourcefulness, and extra labor for national activities (often one with armed forces) abroad. ^[1]

The term resurged during World War I & II when civilians experienced food and material shortages and provided vocational support.

As a former Museum Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; a commissioning institution for the Venice Biennale in 2022, I was privy to the unseen laborer absent from La Biennale. For many institutional arts workers who contribute towards big-budget international showings, they are not awarded the opportunity to witness the outcome in-situ. Over the course of 9 months, I witnessed the unfortunate double burden of an already-stretched staff supporting those workersabroad whilst keeping regular operations at bay.

For the past two Biennales, the US has upended the identities excluded from representing the nation. For the first time in the Biennale’s history, the US featured the work of a Black woman (Simone Leigh) in 2022 and the first Indigenous person (Jeffrey Gibson) in 2024. However, “When museums continue to practice inclusion through programs and exhibits but fail to address the culture of museums, it is like treating the symptoms of a disease rather than the disease itself.”^[2]

I admit my privilege. I forfeited my opportunity to attend the Vernissage (pre-launch event). I had joint appointments in the Institute’s Curatorial (historically, recognised department) and Education (often kept out of content-driving endeavours but relegated to the stewardship and interpretation of such content) departments. From my perspective the historic power struggle between departments ensnared me: Curatorial had over a year’s head start while Education joined around the six-month mark before exhibition delivery — layers of confidentiality separating us. I declined a trip to Venice because my representation in one department meant my absence in another. Also, what concerned me was that my role/s within the Biennale project itself were never explicitly defined.

At ICA/Boston, 18-20 employees visited the Venice Biennale out of 100 full-time staff members. “Organising the US Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2022 was an organisational feat, accomplished by the US and Italy during a pandemic. Much of the focus is on the curatorial staff it is important to recognise the contributions from across the museum including our registration, marketing, design, development, events, logistics, government relations, finance, and education colleagues,” says Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA and 58th Biennale di Venezia US Pavilion Co-Commissioner.^[3]

Even Brian Ferriso, Portland Art Museum Director says, “The Portland Art Museum and SITE Sante Fe teams went above and beyond to manage this major initiative while ensuring the regular activities of each institution were not interrupted. In total, 24 staff from the Portland Art Museum will have worked on the project, and 12 traveled to Venice to help with its implementation.” ^[4] Copy editor Kristin Swan worked on the bilingual catalogues, website text, labels, event and dinner invitations, and event-related text with care whilst citing tribal affiliations. Her story of the Biennale is often untold. Swan says:

"In Jeffrey's exhibition, he and his team insisted on crediting everyone who contributed to the project, in the takeaway publication and the text in the show. I have never in my career had my name on the wall of the exhibition where I edited the text before and had people sending me selfies next to my name (on the wall). It's informative to the public how many people contributed to the exhibition."

Time is a precious commodity that commissioners don’t have. On one hand, “The artist has little time to produce the body of work and curators have little time to respond. Ancillary people have little time to do their magic,” says Swan. However, the entire point of the Biennale, an avant-garde and innovative art fair with multi-national representation, “wouldn't be the latest in contemporary art without a tight timeline.” Furthermore, Swan says, “We worked with a designer, based in Italy, and one of the two exhibition curators is based in Oregon and one in Chicago. Because of the global spread, the workday on this project went from 6:00am to midnight most days.”

While many colleagues working behind the scenes declined to comment, for fear of being reprimanded or going against the current of what is typically done, it is no secret to state the hierarchical silo-ing of art museums. Visitor services (who are public-facing and answer many questions), project managers, educators, conservators, senior staff assistants, registration assistants, development, human resources, contract translators, editors, and more ensure art museums operate like a well-oiled machine, especially in busy moments like the Biennale. Taylor Gonda, who obtained an MPS in Arts and Cultural Leadership from the University of Minnesota, explores this exact question of how cross-departmental collaboration on public-facing projects affect internal hierarchies in Heterogeneity & Hierarchy: Collaborative, Cross-Departmental Work and The Dissemination of Power in American Art Museums. They found that in their studies most collaborations were temporary rather than permanent and top-down projects were less collaboratively successful than the ones shared with the teams (I might add from its conception).^[5]Some aggregate data on barriers to inclusive collaboration include a lack of trust among departments, a zero-sum perspective, physical separation of offices, rigid parameters, mismatched audience expectations, and miscommunication.^[6] In the case of the Biennale, donors are an extra stressor and reminder of our place in the fragility of late-stage capitalism. All of these factors contribute to who goes and who stays. If the Biennale were truly for artists, wouldn’t art handlers, installers, preparators, conservators, graphic designers, and visitor services staff and interns who may be paying their way through art school should be the first to be invited?

When talking to SITE Santa Fe’s Exhibitions Manager and Registrar Max Holmes, I was struck by and remembered the amount of precision preparing for the Biennale’s vernissage events. “It gave me this energy to keep on top of these little details and have a moment in the shower where I'm like, “oh shit, we need to think of that and that needs to happen immediately tomorrow morning. I need to send this e-mail,” Holmes says. My memories flooded back: booking hotels as close to the Giardini as possible for education staff when many places were booked, encountering VAT tax, European collaborators on Italian holidays or Daylight Savings, and refining the scope of contractors for clarity and budget requirements.

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Holmes discussed the details of current US Pavilion representative artist Jeffrey Gibson’s murals on the exterior of the building:

For each mural in the pavilion [three in the interior and three on the exterior], Jeffrey’s Studio, Jeffrey, myself, and our team worked with Golden Paints to formulate colors. There was color matching, testing swatches, mixing, and finalizing colors. From my end, we finalized, matched, batched, mixed, produced, bottled, labeled, went through the safety regulations, packed, and shipped 300 unique colors. [These] comprised six murals into paneled sections and were ghost-printed with painted-by-numbers in a fine detailed geometric [patterning]. We did them on panels because there wasn't enough time to do them on-site. It would have taken months to do those with the rain and the crappy weather. We worked with [Symphonia] to match the exact dimensions of the panels. There's a lot of math. When installed, they looked like wallpaper or vinyl. They don't look hand-painted; individual brushstrokes [are visible upon close inspection].

While the world watches, those on the ground and those left behind worry about potential malfunctions, weathering, artwork damage, or changes in the political climate affecting international relations. The difference in each position is being there to make changes versus hoping that all goes well while continuing to uphold their positions from their base.

There have been Biennales since the COVID-19 pandemic and a further two opportunities that “could be the chance for [a] radical rethinking of the social role of the arts and art institutions instead of the mere desperate attempt to hold on,” Curator, Researcher, and Activist Member of Venetian experimental art entity Sale Docks, Marco Baravelle, imagines.^[7]While we take large strides in representative artists, and naming of workers, there is still far to go with honoring laborers at home. Commissioning the Venice Biennale is a massive undertaking with stress, big and small wins, and the best and worst parts of a group project with an ensuing deadline; most notably, there are the people who get all the credit and those who remain unacknowledged.

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