A Curator’s Guide to the Venice Biennale | Ebony L. Haynes with Adrienne Edwards
Dialogues: The David Zwirner PodcastShow Notes
Curator Adrienne Edwards joins guest host Ebony L. Haynes to share their tips, tricks, and must-see shows from the 2026 Venice Biennale, the sixty-first iteration of the world’s largest and longest-running art biennale.
This year’s Venice Biennale opened to great acclaim in May, under especially poignant circumstances: its acclaimed curator, the Cape Town–based Koyo Kouoh, had passed away in 2025, just a few months into the planning. The two discuss the impact of her passing as they call out a number of their favorite presentations to help listeners sift through the many on view. A veteran of many Biennales and former juror, Edwards also explains how to navigate the city and make the most of your visit.
The Biennale Arte 2026 is now on view through November 22, 2026. Learn more here: https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2026
Adrienne Edwards is the Engell Speyer Family Senior Curator and associate director of curatorial programs at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Ebony L. Haynes is a New York–based curator and is the global head of curatorial projects at David Zwirner. She is the curator of the forthcoming exhibition Roy DeCarava: the sound i saw, opening at David Zwirner Los Angeles on September 19.
Image: Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski, Liquid Tongues, 2026 (video still)
Presentations & Artists Mentioned:
8:45: Koyo Kouoh, In Minor Keys
10:04: Artist Issa Samb included in In Minor Keys
14:30: Alfredo Jaar, The End of the World (2023–2024)
14:40: Rose Salane, Panorama 94
15:14: Denniston Hill
15:33: fierce pussy, organized by Jo-ey Tang: arms ache avid aeon: fierce pussy amplified, Chapter Nine20:30 Sumakshi Singh in India’s first pavilion ever
21:16 Ei Arakawa-Nash for the Japanese National Pavilion
23:33: The Austrian Pavilion
28:33 Richard Prince and Arthur Jafa at Fondazione Prada, curated by Nancy Spector
31:57: Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski at the Polish National Pavilion 36:39: Lorna Simpson at the Palazzo Grassi - Pinault Collection
37:38: Michael Armitage at the Palazzo Grassi - Pinault Collection
More from Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast
Curator Mark Godfrey and painter Emma McIntyre discuss the importance of Sigmar Polke—skeptic, trickster, and visionary—on the occasion of Sigmar Polke: The Knowledge of Colours, a solo exhibition at the De Pont Museum in Tilburg, Netherlands, part of Sigmar Polke: Athanor NOW, a project by the Anna Polke Foundation. Polke is widely recognized as one of the most innovative painters and multidisciplinary artists of the postwar era, and the exhibition is on view through February 28 of next year.
The international avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama has passed away at 97, but her work and extraordinary legacy will remain for posterity. As our own small remembrance, we revisit a 2025 episode exploring her unmatched influence, in which art historian Jennifer DeVere Brody, art critic Johanna Fateman, and curator Catherine Taft unpack the many versions of Yayoi Kusama—and her singular importance in 20th and 21st century art.
Dialogues is pleased to present an episode podcast from our colleagues at The New York Review.
In this bonus live episode, Lucas Zwirner returns to the mic for an interview with Nicholas Fox Weber, the director of the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, to celebrate Weber’s new biography, titled Anni Albers: A Life. Over the course of the exchange, Weber opens up about the writing process behind this major new biography and shares some rare anecdotes from a lifetime spent working closely with the Alberses.
This special episode with Helen Molesworth and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh was taped in front of a live audience at David Zwirner New York for a 2023 exhibition of Gerhard Richter’s final paintings.