Breaking the Dead Paradigm For Design Exhibitions - ArchDaily

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

The problem with being a deliberative writer is that pretty much everything has already been penned by the time you’re ready to write about something. Such is the case with the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB): The Available City. There have been several well-written, insightful essays about the CAB by Zach Mortice, Anjulie Rao, Marianela D’Aprile, and others, so it would be foolish to travel the landscape they have so expertly traversed. Instead, I’m offering a trip through this edition of the CAB, which concluded a successful and significant run on Saturday, down a road less traveled.

So … biennials, right? Staged every two years, these events ostensibly perform as premier high-end art exhibitions. Curated primarily to showcase new trends, they are exceedingly influential in determining who and what are vital to follow in the art world. As such, biennials bestow significant, if not outsized, cultural and economic capital on the selected artists and their work. Of the more than 300 biennials now staged worldwide, the first, and perhaps the most prestigious is La Biennale di Venezia, a preeminent art event first staged in 1895. By comparison, the first biennial in America was organized by Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1907, followed by New York’s Whitney Museum in 1932. In 1980, the Venice Biennale added an architectural component. While more recent biennials include a category for architecture,...

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