Over the summer, I traveled to Venice, Italy, where I attended the Venice Biennale—a global contemporary arts collective that meets once every two years—as a part of my Student-Faculty Collaborative Research project with Dr. Susan Libby in the Department of Art and Art History. Our project probes the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art in an effort to use these contemporary art objects as case studies illustrating the multiple issues that arise in the preservation of contemporary cultural heritage. Thus, visiting the Venice Biennale, with its numerous contemporary artists employing a wide variety of media, greatly assisted me in understanding issues of collection care for contemporary art collections.

While I was in Venice, I visited the two exhibition venues of the Biennale—the Giardini and the Arsenale—and attended the curated exhibitions there. The theme of the curated exhibitions this year, May You Live In Interesting Times, dealt with the concept of holding two seemingly dichotomous ideas in the mind simultaneously. Perhaps the most jarring artwork was Christian Marclay’s 48 War Movies (2019), where 48 video files were projected in overlapping, concentric boxes with volume blaring. Due to the violent nature of the movies, the sound was a deafening mix of explosions and gunshots. The didactic for the installation stated that because the video files are each a different length, and because they are all looped continuously, the artwork can essentially broadcast forever without repeating.

Additionally, at each venue, numerous participating countries host pavilions where they display contemporary art by their own artists. Visiting each of these pavilions helped me become more familiar with the big names of international contemporary art scene, something that will surely be valuable as I pursue a career in contemporary art conservation.