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24 November 2019The 58th International Art Exhibition organized by the Venice Biennale presided by Paolo Baratta and curated by Ralph Rugoff was closed today and they met the visitors to examine the legacy of the Exhibition and trace the final considerations on an edition that has this year too, great attention and a large number of visitors were recalled.

Duration little more than 6 months, the Biennale Arte 2019 ends by confirming the 600 thousand visitors (593.616), to which are added 24.762 presences during the pre-opening.

Great presence of young people: visitors under 26 represent 31% of the total. The visitors who saw the exhibition as a group were 17% of the total audience.

President Baratta commented: "The 58th International Art Exhibition closes today. Twenty-one years have passed since the Biennale reform. The 58th, with its title - May You Live In Interesting Times - invited us to always consider the course of human events in their complexity, an invitation that seems particularly important to us in times when too often an excess of simplification generated by conformism prevails and fears. A title that thus interpreted also summarizes the same reasons of a Biennale. But beyond the title also this Exhibition, like all those that have followed one another in the last twenty years, since the Venice Biennale was reformed, has been marked by a particular sensitivity to the theme of the relationship with the visitor. All the Biennials, in fact, have aimed above all to make the visitor participate in the reflection on art and on the investigation that contemporary artists continually develop about themselves ”.

The numbers of the exhibition
79 artists invited to the exhibition

90 national participations, 30 of which in the historic pavilions at the Giardini, 25 at the Arsenale (with Italy) and 35 in the historic center of Venice

4 National participations present for the first time: Ghana, Madagascar, Malaysia and Pakistan. The Dominican Republic participated for the first time with its own pavilion at the Biennale Arte; had previously participated in IILA

2 Special Projects: Pavilion of Applied Arts in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; Special Project Forte Marghera in Mestre

21 Collateral Events.