Qatar May Get a New Pavilion in Venice Biennale’s Giardini

Qatar may become the first country in nearly a decade to build a new national pavilion in the Giardini, one of the main venues of the Venice Biennale.

Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, the Venice Biennale’s controversial new president, announced a proposal for the pavilion on Thursday, noting that it was the result of a new deal between the city of Venice and the Qatar Museums.

That agreement, reached in June, came after Qatar Airways resumed direct flights between the country and the Italian city. Specifics of what would result from the collaboration were left vague, however.

Calling the Venice Biennale “the thermometer of geopolitics,” Buttafuoco said in a statement, “The reading of the world and its transformations – where the Pavilions of the many nations present in Venice are the fresco of that precise destiny that is the future – sees in Doha, today, the artistic tension consistent with the reason proper to the Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia.”

It is rare for new pavilions to be built in the Giardini, a highly trafficked section of the Biennale that is home to a range of dedicated structures for countries such as the US, Great Britain, France, and Germany. There are currently 29 pavilions of that kind in the Giardini, although many other nations participate in the Biennale via shows staged in rented spaces in the Arsenale and across the city.

Some of those national pavilions date back nearly a full century while others have been built more recently. Australia’s is technically the newest pavilion in the Giardini, having been fully rebuilt in 2015. (The Australian Pavilion was first opened in 1988.)

For some in the Middle East, Qatar’s historical lack of a Venice Biennale pavilion has seemed odd. “Qatar does not have its own pavilion at the Venice Biennale – which is rather surprising given the length of sustained cultural investment in the country,” wrote Melissa Smith in the National this year.