Hanging out with Massimiliano Gioni, the art critic and curator, during the previews of the Venice Biennale.

The Venice film festival has a strong lineup of watchable and thought-provoking films from France, Italy, Russia and the United States, with the promise of more to come.

The film festival opens Wednesday and continues through Sept. 11 and will present dozens of features from 34 countries.

The residents of Nikola-Lenivets and nearby villages fell on hard times after their Soviet-era collective farm closed. Then the artist Nikolai Polissky set down roots, and helped to turn the villagers into craftsmen.

As two exhibitions in Venice reveal, glass is now being taken up by contemporary artists.

Goodie bags included in an installation at the 53rd Venice Biennale presented interesting challenges for some art collectors.

The marriage of painting and technology that is “The Wedding at Cana,” by the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, is possibly the best unmanned art history lecture you’ll ever experience.

The 53rd Venice Biennale is tidy, disciplined, cautious and unremarkable, suggesting a somewhat dull, deflated contemporary art world, professionalized to a fault, in search of a fresh consensus.

A blockbuster retrospective at the Venice Biennale is only the second major survey of John Wesley’s bright, funny, relentlessly flat and often unsettlingly erotic work.

There were fewer flashy parties, fewer celebrity sightings and an absence of hit-you-over-the-head installations at the Venice Biennale.

The Ca’ Giustinian, formerly a hotel, marks the scene of the suicide attempt in June 1880 of the new young husband of the British novelist George Eliot.

Ragnar Kjartansson, Iceland's representative at Venice Biennale, in June began painting one portrait per day of his friend Pall Haukur Bjornsson; performance, called The End, will continue through biennale's closing; photos

The United States entry for the Venice Biennale by the artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla will feature performances by gymnasts and runners, including former Olympians.

The Taiwan-based director Tsai Ming-Liang, best known for art house films like "Vive L'Amour'' and "The River,'' is finding sucess as an installation and video artist.

Venice has no permanent museum of contemporary art. Perhaps it has not felt the need for one because every two years the contemporary art world descends en masse for the Visual Arts Biennale.

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