international curating students assembly venice 2026

INTERNATIONAL CURATORIAL STUDENTS’ ASSEMBLY

Venice 9th May 2026

MA Curatorial Studies, Savvalja Summer School, 2024. Photo: Kate Švinka. Courtesy of the Art Academy of Latvia.

Inter-institutional Collaboration

For the 61^st Biennale Arte, we will launch the groundbreaking International Curatorial Students Assembly, bringing together graduate curatorial students from numerous institutions to engage in shared learning, critical reflection, and professional exchange.

Led by members of the Workshop, this one-day conference will foster dialogue among its international participants, exploring the curatorial, political, and institutional dimensions of large-scale international exhibitions, with a specific critical focus on the current Venice Biennale’s exhibitions. The Assembly includes participants from NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan; the School of Visual Arts, New York; HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg; the Art Academy of Latvia, Riga; and the Doctoral School of Visual Arts, Universitatea Nationala de Arte “George Enescu,” Iași. The Assembly is hosted by the Università Iuav di Venezia.

This Assembly is one of a number of conferences and symposia that have been organized by its members in the UK, Latvia, Romania, Italy, Finland, Sweden, Thailand, the US, and forthcoming in South Africa. During this event there will be an informal launch event to mark recent publications by members of the EARN working group.

Schedule

11:00-11:45 Welcome and introduction to the EARN Assembly

11:45-13:00 Breakout groups: Discussion and preparation of short report presentations

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-14:15 Weclome back, short introduction

14:15-15:15 Group presentations

15:15-15:30 Short break

15:30-16:10 Group presentations

16:10-16:30 Concluding discussion and remarks

16:30-17:00 Informal presenation of various publications

17:00-17:45 Reception

PROMPTS FOR BREAKOUT GROUPS

Regarding the breakout groups, as noted in the schedule, each group will likely have five students that intermingle members of all the programs present. We want each group to focus its internal discussions on the following prompts:

1. Koyo Kouoh (1967–2025) was a major contemporary art curator, whose work foregrounded decolonial, Pan-African, and relational approaches to art. As Artistic Director of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2026), her exhibition, In Minor Keys, proposed that it be experienced as a “collective score,” prioritizing affect, listening, and other sensory experiences, centering artists as agents of poetic, social, and epistemic transformation. See her statement below, pages 8-11. She completed the plan for her Biennale before passing away. It has been brought to fruition by her curatorial team.

Alongside this main exhibition dedicated to collectivity, the national pavilions, which were established as the model for the Venice Biennale ever since its founding in 1895, have been engulfed this year in geopolitical controversies around wars, nationalism, human rights violations, artistic recognition, and curatorial agency. The international jury resigned after their support of human rights and the participation of Russia and Israel were ignored by the Biennale administration, and artist protests abound.

Does your experience of the main exhibition feel aligned with or dissonant from Kouoh’s curatorial statement, as well as with the geopolitical crisis present in the Biennale’s nationalist model? Is this model still relevant for the contemporary art world? And does Kouoh’s sensorial, relational exhibition actually resist in a meaningful way the extractive logic of this and other global biennials? Therefore, what responsibilities and agency do curators, institutions, and the public hold in shaping—or reimagining—the political and ethical framework for exhibitions of this kind?

2. In light of these preliminary questions, is there a “minor key” that is personally resonant with your own curatorial positioning? What do you take away from this experience as a curator? What do you feel is the most meaningful contribution that this Biennale offers its viewers and what is, from a curatorial perspective, most problematic for you? For your breakout groups, consider the exhibitions, installations, and artworks that most strongly represent your critique.

These articles may help you frame your argument:

Your task within your group is to articulate clear responses, which you will support with images projected during your presentation to the Assembly. You will have the allotted time noted in the schedule to work out which works you wish to present in association with the prompts. Your critical reflections as emerging curators will be informed by what you have been able to see, take notes on, and document with photographs over the three preview days. As well (for SVA’s students), the opportunity to have these discussions and present will help shape the arguments you present in your reviews for The Curatorial. It will make sense for you to organize as a cohort some time before the Assembly–perhaps on May 8 when you’ve had a chance to see a great deal by then–to share your ideas with each other and begin to articulate your positions.

Publications

Most recent publications by members range across key concerns for the fields of artistic research, curatorial research, and art history, with ongoing publication series and journals engaging crucial critical thinkers.

The new series, On the Curatorial (Floating Opera Press), edited by Carolina Rito, explores the debate around “the curatorial” that arose in the mid-2000s. The first two volumes are On Discourse and the Curatorial by Mick Wilson and Beyond Caring: Para-Hosting as Curatorial Escape Paul O’Neill, with a third volume, written by Beatrice von Bismarck, forthcoming this spring.

The series, Thoughts on Curating (Sternberg Press/MIT Press), edited by Steven Henry Madoff, has published Curating the Complex & The Open Strike by Terry Smith, Unannounced Voices: Curatorial Practice and Changing Institutions by Zdenka Badovinac, and Pidginization as Curatorial Method: Messing with Languages and Praxes of Curating by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung; and the anthology, Why I Do What I Do; with a forthcoming volume by Charles Esche.

Cătălin Gheorghe and Mick Wilson co-edited the open-access volume, Curating beyond Exhibition: On the post-exhibitionary condition in a post-political world , in the series Vector – Critical Research in Context. Gheorghe also co-edited with Lorena Marciuc the open-access volume, Under the Last Magnetic Sun: Practices of (Counter)Research Imagination, published by the Doctoral School of Visual Arts, UNAGE, Iași.