The Shifting Policies of Exhibiting Conceptual Art from Yugoslavia Abroad: The Case of the 1976 Venice Biennale

For the 37th edition of the Venice Biennale in 1976, organized under the newly established, politically left‑wing leadership of President Carlo Ripa di Meana and the Director of the Visual Arts Section, Vittorio Gregotti, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia presented for the first time an exhibition of recent conceptual art practices in the national pavilion. The preparation process of the exhibition became the subject of a rather controversial chain of events, including the censorship by the Yugoslav authorities of original proposal to present the country’s earliest and most radical conceptual art practices, which led to the withdrawal of Yugoslav participation in Venice. As a result, the representatives of the Venice Biennale sent a note of protest to Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, whereupon the exhibition was realized in the Yugoslav Pavilion, albeit with a compromise solution regarding the original curatorial concept. During the same period, however, Yugoslavia officially participated in other international biennials, such as the São Paulo and Paris Biennials, where the exhibitions showing the latest positions in conceptual art were not subject to censorship or similar political interventions. This article presents and analyzes the ambivalent Yugoslav institutional and exhibition policies at the biennials in the 1970s, with a focus on Yugoslav participation in the 1976 Venice Biennale.