In This Issue

Abstract

The U.S. art media's increased attention to international biennials in cities such as Brisbane, Cairo, Havana, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Kwangju, and Taipei has made the work of African, Asian, Caribbean, Central European, Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Pacific artists, including those who now live in the West, more visible to Western audiences. But if one reviews the permanent collections of most museums of modern or contemporary art in the West, collections that presume to survey the history of twentieth-century art, the possibility that one will encounter works from these regions is unlikely. The same is true if one takes a class in the history of modern or contemporary art in most Western universities. In this context, it is telling, as Olu Oguibe has observed, that the recent proliferation of biennials in the so-called Third World has been characterized by some as the Biennial Virus—an infectious agent to be feared.