In Minor Keys? That's not the music I heard.

This is not a very serious survey of the Venice Biennale of 2026, yet some of the points I make are important to me. Now you're warned. - Also blogspot is an old platform and I've been here for many years: its formatting is a bit problematic!

In my opinion, the title for the 2026 Biennale In Minor Keys** has to be ironical for this show.

Opinion*, because this is what this text is about. I'm not sure about anything except what my reaction is. No one knows, not even critics with a PhD in Art History. Everyone can look at art and have a valid reaction to art.

The exhibition was conceived and curated by Koyo Kouoh, who died unexpectedly in 2025 from liver cancer, before she could see it open. The Biennale decided to realize the exhibition according to her vision, including the artists, works and overall curatorial project.

I was impressed by the strong curatorial direction to the Biennale. I could tell they were very personal choices, yet the personality of the curator was not intrusive.

But to me, it's anything but minor keys. It's spectacular. Impressive. Beautiful. Striking. Intriguing. It has a lot of "wow" factor. Many of the works come from Africa, and many, whether African or not, offer a profusion of images. A lot of African art is highly stylized by opposition to busy and complicated. In fact the stylizaton of forms hugely influenced 20th century contemporary art, allowing to get rid of the overwrought styles of the 19th century Western art. The curator went for complexity and exuberance.

Africa seems to be in creative effervescence: literature, music, cinema, visual arts. Maybe it always was but we didn't know. It's the moment for Africa right now internationally: a long history of beautiful art and lots to say from being the most direly exploited continent by capitalist forces.

The blue walls give the work the magical quality of the night: glamorous, mysterious, unexpected.

Many of the works are intricate, convoluted, bizarre. That's what the world is like. Human emotions are complicated when not contradictory. Nature is complicated. Economy is complicated. Politics are complicated.

Fascists try to tell us things are simple: you're hurting financially? It's the fault of the immigrants that take away our jobs! Your energy and food are more expensive? It's the fault of the environmentalists!

In this sense, this Biennale is a great antidote to the veering of the world toward the far right.

110 artists participated but it feels like there are less in this Biennale than in others because some of the artists are represented by many works. I enjoyed that an artist's work might be in more than one room.

The juxtaposition with other works brings out different qualities in a particular artist's art. I found that I appreciated an artist's work in one room, after having been left indifferent by that same artist's work in another room's juxtaposition.

I realized that I like to marvel when I see art. I'm not saying that's a particularly appropriate way to approach art, to criticize, to curate. Everyone is different in their approach to art, and that's one of the beauties of our humanity.

Some people might want to be stimulated intellectually: think conceptual art. Others are looking to be impressed by skills and techniques: think oil painting and sculpture. Others look for narrative, and they find it in figurative art. Other prefer subtlety and understatement rather than big and powerful.

I prefer to look at art like a four year old sitting at the circus for the first time. I like the spectacular, the dramatic, the stunning effects. And there is plenty of that in this Biennale.

I like large works, and many were offered, it gets monumental when people are represented larger than in life, and then arises the question of a monument to what? And very small can be dramatic too.

So I am renaming the Biennale. And I'm not going to look for something smart along the lines of "Personal Structures" or "The Exchange Value" or "Memory For The Future" but here are some:

Wait Until You See This!

If This Doesn't Blow You Away, Nothing Will!

The Bold and The Beautiful.

I Prefer Art That Is Strong, Daring, Exciting, Powerful, Dazzling. How About You?

The Big Exhibit With Big Art for Big Hearts And Big Minds.

A few years ago, exhibit titles had to be long, at least one sentence, such as It Doesn't Have To Make Sense. A great title - not that long even - for a show by Amoako Boafo, but now the trend for titles is back to being short. This Argentinian artist also didn't catch the trend, and just as well that not all artists & curators follow the same trend.

First I went to the Giardini, enjoyed it thoroughly though I did skip some pavilions, and that include the Russian Pavilion. I would have also skpped the Israeli pavilion and it seemed closed.

Then I went to the Arsenale. And I did get a bit numb from the art after a few rooms. This is the pieces where I felt I had seen something like it before, and had no reaction to it:

I spoke with a German man at the restaurant. I asked him how he liked The Biennale. He said: It's too much. I asked: Is it too much art (it is) or is the art too much? He said the art was too much. I understood what he meant.

The pavilions at the Arsenale ended up being a relief from the main show. I enjoyed the Italian pavilion, the Indian one, and one I didn't identify that seemed to be a large landscape made out of salt and ashes.

But I always get numb by the end of the Arsenale. My mind, my psyche, whatever it is, stops taking in the art, it refuses to wrap itself around a new perspective, a new process, a new creativity.

Nota bene: An untold theme of the Biennale is its challenge to the visitors to find the bathrooms. They're few bathrooms, they're few stalls, and they certainly don't put them on their map. Also, once you're in the Arsenale it's very difficult to find an exit. Typically you have to go through exhibits that you've already taken in, adding to the saturation.

By that time, I was reconsidering contemporary art. Maybe it should be just really different, fill in simple needs, answer simple quesions. Does it have to be so esoteric? So unclear? So complex (wait, I'm contradicting what I said above)? So challenging? So provocative? Then I run into this video, and it's so simple, yet not fascistic at all: It shows the pure joy of people of modest means as they have a day of leisure. It's so beautiful. So needed.

I did make it to the Prada Foundation to see the Arthur Jaffa exhibit. His conveying of the Black experience is so poignant, so convincing. In one of the videos, a mother driver gets arrested in front of her children, then one child comes out of the car with their hands in the air. It's so painful to watch. The mother looks like such a good person, and the way she is treated is abysmal. I couldn't rip myself from watching Arthur Jaffa's work, it's so powerful.

I hope my reaction is of interest to other people, whether they have visited the Biennale and want to compare notes, or have not visited and want to have an idea what it's about.

Also, the walls separating exhibiting spaces seemed to have been made from recycled cardboard and they were not only ecological (help, I sound like AI!!) but also just beautiful.

Also here's an art installation for our enjoyment, that has something contemporary in its randomness:

*Opinion:a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular mattera belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge

A minor key;**a minor key is a tonal system based on a minor scale. It uses a specific set of seven notes that generally create a darker, sad, or melancholy sound compared to a major key.

I really apologize that I can't name the works and the artists, I am on vacation, and it was too much organization for a leisurely stay. After the Biennale, I went to eat bacalà with cuttlefish-inked polenta that was blacker than the night.

Some of the artists whose works figure below.

Khaled Sabsabi Pauline Oliveros Kaloki Nyamai Tammy Nguyen Manuel Mathieu Issa Samb Josephine Alacu Kambui Olijimi Daniel Lind-Ramos Ebony G. Patterson

And here's an installation by Nature, the great artist:

The Shed - New York City: press preview

I listened to the open remarks demurely, and now here are my opening remarks, not as demure, I guess.

Remark # 1: what a dull building

The cool structure outside The Shed

Well, from the inside, the building is a disappointment, because it looks like a building. And a pretty dull one at that. From the front, the structure looks like a suspended garden conceived by an alien. The architect Liz Diller worked with the brief of not having the architecture get in the way. It’s a rectangle. It might be an artistic center, but it has no center. The entrance and lobby look like they belong to a fairly nice company building. Also, you don't know what the building looks like from the outside, a weird feeling.

She says they looked to create something flexible, change on demand, agile without defaulting to the generic, with a reference to industrial NYC. Wish the reference were more obvious. The materials are generic, and so are the colors: white, grey and black. Looks like an office building. Large theater has been compared to cathedral, but transcendence is missing. Column free performances, telescopic devices can enlarge the spaces into the plaza which will serve for open air events. That sounds pretty cool. In winter, large indoor spaces. In summer, large outdoor.

 It’s impressive that the architectural conception of the center started in 2008, the apocalyptic year where the future looked bleak. It might have affected their ambitions.

Liz said: “We were challenged to serve artists and we hope the building will challenge the  artists back.” Nicely phrased, but it doesn’t relate to this particular building, unless the artists are challenged to produce dull art. And for the visitor, there is no joy from the building itself unlike, for example, the Whitney and its stunning spaces, it’s views, its terraces. Or the New Museum.

Remark #2: art & money

The first speakers patted each other’s backs, and the major players who have the kind of money that gets you well patted. And spoke about money. The Shed's chair, Dan Doctoroff, gave this definition  "A shed is defined as an open-ended structure with tools" -well actually this definition can not be found in any dictionaries, but it serves their PR so well: tools for the artists! For the arts! Of course, the real purpose of the name is the hilarious contradiction between the cost of the simple structure it alludes to, and the price tag of this building at 500 MYO $ (not including the commissioned work?). In fact, invitees to the opening could not find “The Shed” as they should have been looking instead for “The Bloomberg Building”. And then the next speakers spoke about community, “civic imagination”, human creativity for the greater good. So on the one hand, huge amount of donations from the moneyed community that goes to who exactly? That’s one more new art center in the last decade, after the Park Armory, PS1, Brick, the Fisher Theater, The Theater for a New Audience, The New Museum. I’m forgetting some. Well, selfishly, I like it, it works for me. I love art, shows, music. The bill for these centers must amount to a couple of billions dollars collectively. How many more art centers can the city absorb? It does brings tourists in, and that’s good for the economy. But if the city, if donors do not invest in affordable housing, the people of New York will be gone. Nowadays, the only real local people in Manhattan that work there and breathe there and make babies there and are not flying to the Hamptons at the weekend, and are not bicoastal, and are not bicontinental, and have an accent when they speak, live in the projects, or in Chinatown or the Northern tip of the island.

If they go, if the indigenous people of the 5 boroughs are pushed out, New York will lose its identity. And its gritty soul. And no amount of art will buy it back. Switzerland has the means to buy art, and they do. They bought the Béjart ballet, they founded massively endowed cultural endeavors. It has not made Switzerland the vibrant place that immigrant and working class people and foreigners build together out of need, out of striving hard to make their lives within an urban context.

Remark #3: Rehearsals but the art! The performances!

Alex Poots

The building offers no joy, but the rehearsals in progress conveyed the excitement, the range of works commissioned. Alex Poots was everywhere, apparently multiplying himself to be present at every event, like the good spirit of the place. The artistic director, he is passionate and convincing, compassionate even, possibly. Hans Ulrich Obrist, the programmer, also blessed the opening with his benevolent presence.

Rehearsal in progress: The Arvo Pärt/Steven Reich/Gerhard Richter collaboration. Singers sprinkled amongst the crowd sing church-like music. The gallery is hung with Richter tapestries and banners that are so rich visually it’s ecstatic. In a panel discussion, Steven Reich spoke about 12^th century music, but it was difficult to hear what he said, they did not use mics. Didn't matter too much, just good to see him, still alive, still kicking. He made jokes, used self derision but was not convincing at it, the maestro of minimalist music.

Then from Steven Reich up a couple of floors to a rehearsal with Renee Flemmmming and a libretto written by Anne Carson. Yep. That’s why I live in NYC despite the price of real estate. The rehearsal seemed so difficult because there is a lot of text, not necessarily set to music. I can understand saying by heart a play/libretto in its order. But there it was like: OK, let’s start at “Norma Jean when she was interviewed” , and the performers just had to go right into it, there and then. For 5 minutes. Then stop. Renee commented that the sound quality had become drier. She was funny, and discreetly flamboyant (that’s possible for opera singers). The performers waited for some sound issue. Then started again for a 2 min stretch. I felt honored to spy on the proceedings. Photos not allowed, but I can vouch the text is so intriguing, written by poet extraordinaire Anne Carson, the singing beautiful, interesting direction and staging.

Rehearsal of the history of African American music. Energetic and fun. From Ray Charles to Count Basie to a  vibrant rendition of “I’m just a jealous guy”, better than the original, no kidding. Not sure what John Lennon was doing there but he was certainly influenced by African American music. As Alex Poots noted, African American music has been one of the most influential art movements in the world and to the world.

A demonstration by the performers of a martial arts musical co-conceived by Chen Shi-Zheng and the Kung Fu Panda screenwriters. Because, as Alex Poots pointed out, martial arts are an art form. Obviously trying to reach a broader audience. After only two weeks of rehearsal, the performances were pretty breathtaking, under a huge skylight above which pretty trash was flying on that windy day.

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And so, it all comes together. The excitement of creation. The broad range of the commissions.  Performers, directors, artists, musicians, stage managers, producers. Buzzing on all floors. That big beehive.

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Written as witnessed by  - -  Arabella Hutter von Arx

This blog entry was written rapidly: it's fast and serious.
Here are some of my more cautious writings:

article about black artists Yiadom-Boakye and Wilmer Wilson IV

article about Manifesta, the Nomadic biennale out to change the world

poetic fiction: 100 women talk to their daughters