Venice School Art Trips to La Biennale di Venezia

If you’re thinking of taking your art students abroad for their school trip, in 2019, Venice will be one of the best places to go! With one of the world’s most famous exhibitions kicking off on 11th May 2019, there is no better time than now to book your school art trip.

La Biennale di Venezia was founded in 1895 and is now one of the most famous and prestigious cultural organisations in the world. La Biennale is renowned for being at the forefront of research and promotion of new contemporary art trends, a variety of other exhibitions and research in all such as Arts, Architecture, Cinema, Dance, Music and Theatre. In 2019, it will be opening a brand-new art exhibition that is a must-see for all art school trips!

La Biennale di Venezia’s exhibition model which in the past has offered the world a huge selection of thought-provoking artistic creations, has been recognised as the world leader in contemporary art exhibitions and the countries participating have increased from 59 (in 1999) to 86 in 2017 - even more are expected for the 2019 exhibition. The relationship with the local community has been strengthened through creating more educational activities and guided visits of La Biennale di Venezia. They believe that by sharing the exhibitions with school students, it spreads the creativity on the new generation - which is exactly why we recommend that you take your students too!

To encourage this, in anticipation of the new exhibition launching in May 2019, there has been more research and production opportunities addressed to the younger generation of artists by La Biennale di Venezia, by being directly in contact with local recognised teachers, asking for their input on how to make the exhibition as engaging and inspiring to school students as possible.  

The mastermind behind La Biennale di Venezia’s latest art exhibition is Ralph Runoff. He has titled this incredibly prestigious 58th international art exhibition ‘May You Live in Interesting Times’ which, although a known phrase invented in the English language, has long been mistakenly cited as an ancient Chinese curse which evokes periods of uncertainty, crisis and turmoil. Runoff claims to have named the exhibition after this as he believes we are currently living in ‘interesting times’, battered with insecurity and unpredictability. A fantastic quote from Rungoff on his choice of exhibition theme is:

"At a moment when the digital dissemination of fake news and 'alternative facts' is corroding political discourse and the trust on which it depends, it is worth pausing whenever possible to reassess our terms of reference. In this case it turns out that there never was any such “ancient Chinese curse,” despite the fact that Western politicians have made reference to it in speeches for over a hundred years. It is an ersatz cultural relic, and yet for all its fictional status it has had real rhetorical effects in significant public exchanges. At once suspect and rich in meaning, this kind of uncertain artefact suggests potential lines of exploration that are worth pursuing at present, especially when the “interesting times” it evokes seem to be with us once again. Hence the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia will be titled after a counterfeit curse.” (found http://www.labiennale.org/en)  

The La Biennale di Venezia’s exhibition aims to highlight a generic approach to making art a social function that embraces both pleasure and critical thinking and wants the public to feel an ‘expansive experience of deep involvement, absorption and creative learning that art makes possible’. This is bound to be a highly unique and one-off experience for your art students that will allow them to experience modern art in a deeper, more meaningful and creative sense than other art school trips can even begin to rival.

Our art school trips to Venice come May will be able to offer this outstanding exhibition alongside our other usual Venice school trip activities. To find out more about our school art & design trips, click here.