LYON, FRANCE.- The Lyon Biennale will run from late September 2003 to early January 2004. For thefirst time it will enjoy a central, newly renovated location – the Sucrière – and four additionalvenues: the Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, the Villeurbanne Institute of Contemporary Art, theLyon Fine Arts Museum and the Lyon Rectangle. Organisation of the Biennale has been in the hands of Thierry Raspail and Thierry Prat since 1991.This time round they’ve opted for working with the team from Consortium, the Dijon contemporaryart centre. Consortium directors Xavier Douroux, Franck Gautherot and Eric Troncy have in turninvited three freelance curators: Anne Pontégnie from Brussels, Jan Winkelmann from Leipzig andRobert Nickas from New York. The objective for 2003 "Fresh experience, but less in the sense of experimentation than of a formal, cognitive experiencefor the visitor – and ultimately the experience offered by artists whose commitment is to creativecommand. A mix of artistic generations, with the underlying notion that what is currently being said bymany long-time figures on the art scene goes to the heart of immediately contemporary experience. A view of the creative landscape entailing no emphasis on the eccentric and openly concerned morewith individual characteristics than with matters of provenance or identity. Such are the choices that make a Biennale, where works caught at the "right moment" provide theirown right moments for the visitor, and where a quest for internal narrative will encounter thestories and commentaries the exhibition seeks to generate. The Lyon Biennale, then: a stancebacked by a few brief words."