Biennial Foundation

Biennial Foundation was established in 2009 as a first of its kind initiative aiming to create a platform for dialogue, networking, and knowledge sharing among contemporary art biennials around the world.

In its first five years, Biennial Foundation developed new connections and exchanges amongst biennials and biennial practitioners worldwide. One of the Foundation’s main endeavours during that period was to act as catalyst and facilitator in the process of forming a new professional member association for biennial organisers: the International Biennial Association (IBA) founded in 2014.

Having consigned the professional networking to IBA, the Biennial Foundation became an independent think-tank directing its efforts towards research, discourse, advocacy and diversity without being tied to interest of any particular biennial.

With the success of the two editions of the World Biennial Forum conference organised in Gwangju (2012) and São Paulo (2014), a series of publications and research initiatives, Biennial Foundation has established itself as thought leader in the field, while its website became the single most important resource on biennials on the web.