This course explores highly anticipated international art spectacles in Venice and Kassel, as well as the city of Berlin, capitol of the international art world.

We begin at the 2022 Venice Biennale, an event that brings creatives from all over the globe to exhibit in unique venues throughout this dramatic city of canals and islands. Themed this year as The Milk of Dreams, the Biennale aspires to be “an optimistic exhibition celebrating art and its capacity to create alternative cosmologies and new conditions of coexistence.”

We will then travel to Kassel, Germany, to attend the opening of documenta 15, an international exhibition that takes place only once every five years. In 2022, documenta is being curated by ruangrupa, a Jakarta-based artists’ collective organized around the idea of lumbung—an Indonesian principle rooted in sustainability and communal resource sharing. The large exhibition that spans the city brings together artists and collectives, primarily from the Global South (Asia, Africa, South America) who share values of solidarity and collectivity in imagining a better world.

Finally, in Berlin, we will explore the reinvention of the German capital as one of the most innovative and cutting-edge centers for contemporary cultural production. The Berlin cultural scene draws much of its energy from the city’s tumultuous history: the complex intertwining of past and present that make up Berlin’s ever-changing political, artistic, and architectural landscape. Students will be introduced to a wide range of international practitioners and experts: we will visit artist studios, private collections, and non-profit spaces; meet with curators, artist collectives, architects and gallerists.

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