Becoming Global: Contemporary Art Worlds in the Age of the Biennials Boom

This dissertation examines the global proliferation in recent decades of international large-scale perennial contemporary art exhibitions---"biennials" as they are generically known---and the increasingly unified global contemporary art world they have instantiated. Devoted to analyzing biennials in the aggregate, Chapter One firms up the vague estimates of their numbers prevailing in recent discussion; contextualizes the proliferation of such exhibitions within the expanding cultural sector generally (including other festivals); and defines the structural features of the 'biennial-as-medium' that explain its success in varied political and economic contexts. Social-professional networks and curatorial practices across geographically disparate art scenes are examined as the glue that binds together the global contemporary art world, with biennials serving as principal sites of exchange, integration, and discourse production.;Chapters Two and Three provide case studies of the Havana Biennial, founded in 1984, and the Shanghai Biennale, founded in 1996. These studies elaborate the transformations these events have undergone in relation to both domestic issues unique to each context and to the coalescing global contemporary art world as a whole. From the identification of founding impulses and key personnel, through analysis of specific biennial editions and their contents, to interpretive reflections upon the significance of (parallel) changes witnessed in each event, these narratives provide models for art historical examination of the information-dense biennials medium that is a primary facet of the globalization of contemporary art. Yet these histories clearly reveal that the globalization process has been driven by individual art world actors within evolving networks of relationships and varying circumstances, yielding a more nuanced view of how the art world has become increasingly integrated (and homogenized) in disparate contexts.;Although conceived as freestanding investigations, the case studies inform analyses and descriptions of systemic structures and processes offered in the first chapter. The broader perspectives of the first chapter provide a contextual background for understanding the art and institutional histories set forth in detail thereafter. The dissertation concludes by reconsidering the nature and extent of "globalization" as manifested in the working processes of the international contemporary art world and the continuing evolution of its structures.