The celebrated international curator

This chapter explores the figure of the international curator, highlighting their central role in shaping major art biennials, with a particular focus on the Venice Biennale. It begins by tracing the emergence of the “star curator” back to Harald Szeemann, who foregrounded his own vision, mythology and sensibility in his practice, effectively transforming curating into a form of authorship. Thus, Szeemann established the model that still stands today for high-profile international curators. The chapter then investigates how this figure has been incarnated by the last ten artistic directors of the Venice Biennale (2003–2022) using a corpus of short vignettes published in the Power 100 , an annual ranking of the most influential personalities in the global art world. In these texts, curators are consistently portrayed as visionary figures with a singular grasp of the cultural zeitgeist, savvy talent scouts praised for their ability to identify emerging artists, and ambivalent intellectual figures: critical thinkers, but not overly bookish. The final section explores the curator as a celebrity whose public persona is constructed through a series of defining projects. While individual fame is often precarious and short-lived, institutions like the Venice Biennale have learned to harness curatorial celebrity to guarantee their own durable visibility, incarnating the aspirations of the art world.