Slought and the Van Alen Institute in New York are pleased to announce a public conversation featuring Aaron Betsky, director of the 2008 Venice Biennale of Architecture, in conversation with William Menking and Aaron Levy, on Monday, April 12, 2010 at 6:30pm in the Van Alen Institute gallery. The event is the first public presentation of Architecture on Display, an unprecedented series of interviews that Aaron Levy and William Menking are currently conducting with each of the living directors of the Venice Biennale for Architecture, including Vittorio Gregotti, Paolo Portoghesi, Francesco Dal Co, Kurt Foster, and Kazuyo Sejima, among others.

The origins of the Venice Biennale for Architecture are generally traced to the 1970s, when it emerged from under the umbrella of the larger Venice Biennale, which was itself established in 1895. Since then, it has become one of the most prestigious forums for architectural discourse today, and has served as a model for a range of international exhibitions. Yet, even today, the details surrounding its informal origins remain relatively unexplored and no English-language publications exist on this rich history. This forgotten history of the Biennale itself also offers an incipient understanding of the complex relationship between architectures of use and architectures of display. The exhibitions staged there navigate tensions between nation-state representation, economic tourism, and the complex site of Venice itself. Moreover, the public expectation for spectacular graphic and visual display competes at the Biennale with curatorial ambitions to represent the image architecture has of itself, but also the very meaning of architecture in the world in which we live. These conflicts and tensions serve as the framework for this public event with Aaron Betsky, as well as the larger series of conversations that comprise Architecture on Display.