Calling the Shots

MOSCOW—Since its launch, in 1996, the Moscow Photobiennale has become one of the major events on the international photography calendar. This year’s edition—the seventh—with a budget of $1.5 million to $2 million (40 percent funded by the state), runs from March 20 through late May. It features 100 shows at venues around the city, covering photography of all periods, many works on the themes of “movement and speed” and “light and color,” starting with an exhibition of pioneering autochromes by the Lumière brothers.

The event is the brainchild of Olga Sviblova—a trim, chic 54-year-old admired for her drive, vision and charisma but berated for her chronic lateness—“Two o’clock in the morning is the only time I’m free,” she reveals.

Sviblova shot to prominence when her documentary on Russian underground artists, Black Square, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988. Eight years later, after her inaugural Photobiennale, she founded the House of Photography, Moscow’s first photo museum. It has since staged 150 shows, acquired 80,000 prints and negatives and proved so popular—attracting more than 30,000 visitors a month—that a new 97,000-square-foot, purpose-built venue is slated to open by the end of this year.

In addition to curating exhibitions at home and abroad, the workaholic Sviblova is keeping one eye on the Venice Biennale: She was reappointed curator of the Russian Pavilion for 2009 after last year’s acclaimed “Click I Hope,” a group show of installations utilizing new media. “I had just six months to put that together and find €900,000 ($1.2 million) to pay for it,” she recalls. “I didn’t have money, but I have a reputation—and I know how to take risks.”

"Calling the Shots" originally appeared in the March 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's March 2008 Table of Contents.