GIONI APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF GWANGJU BIENNALE

Carol Vogel reports in the New York Times_ that Massimiliano Gioni, the Italian-born director of special exhibitions at the New Museum in New York, has been appointed artistic director of the eighth Gwangju Biennale, which is set for September 2010. One of the first biennials in Asia (it was founded in 1995) and an influential event in itself, it is held in Gwangju, the industrial South Korean city.

In 2006, Gioni was a curator of the Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art along with Maurizio Cattelan and Ali Subotnick. In the case of the Korean event, he will be the youngest curator and its first European. His predecessors in the job include Okwui Enwezor, who organized the 2008 biennial and was also artistic director of several important shows like Documenta XI in 2002, the giant contemporary art exhibition that takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. While he is working on the biennial, Gioni intends to keep his position at the New Museum, where he is one of the three curators who organized the current triennial, “Younger than Jesus.” He also intends to continue his work as artistic director of the Nicola Trussardi Foundation, a nomadic museum in Milan that stages exhibitions in abandoned buildings, public spaces, and forgotten monuments around the city.