VENICE, ITALY.- The 51st International Art Exhibition, organized by the Fondazione la Biennale di Venezia and directed by María de Corral and by Rosa Martínez, will open to the public on Sunday, June 12, 2005.
The 2005 edition of the oldest and most famous exhibition of contemporary art presents several important innovations: first and foremost the beginning of a new cycle that will initiate a creative dialogue with the Artistic Direction by setting new objectives and confirming the central role of the Biennale in the international cultural and artistic debate.

For the first time in the history of its 110 years of activity the direction has been entrusted to two Directors, María de Corral and Rosa Martínez - art historians, critics and independent curators from Spain -, and the exhibition will be composed of two specific and complementary shows that will offer an articulated yet homogeneous reading of international contemporary art from the Seventies through today, with an eye to the near future. The two exhibition projects - The Experience of Art and Always a Little Further conceived respectively by María de Corral and by Rosa Martínez - will present, from different points of view, the best of contemporary art through a rigorous selection of artists, invited in a limited number and each represented by a series of works that document their creative history, to demonstrate the variety of artistic languages and aesthetic trends. The works on display will mostly be new or made in situ, and will be installed so that they dialogue with the extraordinary spaces of the exhibition in order to offer two levels of interpretation, as research for experts in the field, and as impact for the visitors.