The Value of Venice Biennale

　　I would also like to highlight the important return of some selected artists from Veneto to the Padiglione Venezia - a space originally created for this particular aim: this initiative has been made possible thanks to the support of the Veneto Region and of the City and Province of Venice.

　　Finally, I would like to announce an initiative I consider emblematic of the spirit with which we have worked for the Biennale contemporary art in the last four years.

　　In 2006, while we were preparing the International Architecture Exhibition, our Visual Arts section started communicating with the organizers of Documenta in Kassel, of the Skultur Project in Münster, and of ArtBasel.

　　It was the first time a dialogue took place among such authoritative, important and famous institutions: as you may know, Kassel is actually considered Venice's most important rival, Münster is considered a relevant competitor of the latter shows, and Basel hosts the first international Contemporary Art fair.

　　The Venice Biennale has suggested to start a co-operation effort, and in many months' work an European network project has been set up - a project in which the organizing staff of each of these four institutions have exchanged opinions about their methods, thus launching a promotion campaign recognized by each institution and addressed at cultural media and magazines in world regions none of us had reached so far (the Far East, Asia, Africa, Latin America).

　　Thanks to this project, this year the four involved institutions will offer their public a new additional service: Venice, Kassel, Münster and Basel have jointly opened a website (www.grandtour2007.com) where each visitor will find what they need to book a hotel room, buy plane and train tickets, move around the cities and use other necessary services. The public will thus be able to easily visit, in an ideal European Grand Tour, each of the most important contemporary art events in the world on an extraordinary occasion which, due to the diversity in the temporal terms of these expositions, only recurs once in a decade.

　　A precise idea lies behind these international initiatives of organizational exchange, joint promotion and offer of useful services to the public: the project of a cultural network, of co-operative relationships among institutions which respects each show's differences and cultural identities and, in the meantime, locates them in a wider and more important context of art and culture promotion.