THE BIENNALE - DEAL WITH IT

A longstanding tradition at the Biennale is that of dealers, many of them en route to the Basel Art Fair, attending to support their artists appearing in the putatively non-commercial show. On Wednesday, a handful of dealers could be found standing near their artists' works like proud parents (or car dealers). Here was Jack Shainman next to Subodh Gupta's installation of stainless steel tools and utensils (Shainman had another artist in the Biennale, Zwelethu Mthethwa). There was Jeffrey Deitch, chatting with artist team Tim Noble and Sue Webster in front of Mariko Mori's giant pod, Wave UFO, into which visitors go wearing electrodes that supposedly read their brain waves. And there Anton Kern was spotted, attending the raucous performance of his artist John Bock. As usual, with Bock's messy spectacles, food stuffs and stuffed animal-like elements were flying about. One dealer without an artist in the fair was Paul Kasmin, who turned up at the posh cocktail party on the roof of glass designer Marie Brandolini's palazzo. Kasmin freely admits he hasn't been to the Biennale in 15 years. "You know who was at the British pavilion the last time I was here?" he asked with a smile. "Howard Hodgkin!" At the cocktail party, there was talk that the general impression of the Biennale so far was that it is a bit conventional. What was Kasmin's take? "It looks like an art fair."

ALLEN'S PET OCTOPUS DRAGGED FROM LAGOON

Just in time for the Biennale, Microsoft honcho and art collector Paul Allen had pulled his massive boat, The Octopus, into the lagoon. Indeed we hear he was paying a pretty penny — €40,000 per day - to keep it there. But there were so many complaints from Venetians that Allen's Vessel was banished – forcibly towed from the lagoon.

PUTTING THE FREEZE ON PRINCE?

At the mob scene that was last night's Frieze magazine party, artist Richard Prince was spotted banging on the door to be let in.

STAR SPOTTING IN VENICE

Earlier in the week, a tanned and chic Lauren Hutton was spotted going to the Biblioteca Nazionale. Asked by the man taking her €500 note (for an €11 admission) if she was who he thought she was, she reportedly responded, "Sometimes..."

NO GO GO

Rumor had it that the place to be on Thursday night was a wee little event being thrown by Larry Gagosian. According to word of mouth, Gagosian's shindig was originally meant for a mere 200 attendees, but was then expanded to meet the growing need. But did the event peeve more art world types than it pleased? It seems some high-profile figures were not invited and couldn't get on the list. Which raises the question: who were these hundreds of supposed glitterati?

PAPAL BULL

Spotted near the Arsenale on Thursday morning was roving curator, New York City Wrong Gallery proprietor, Charley magazine co-founder, and all around art guy Massimiliano Gioni. Gioni was excited about the announcement card he was creating for the upcoming Berlin Biennial, which he is co-curating with Wrong Gallery cronies Ali Subotnik and Maurizio Cattelan. "It has a picture of the pope," he said rather cryptically, and rushed off...

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Word has it that Golden Lion winner Barbara Kruger's originally planned piece for the façade of the Italian pavilion featured a large picture of right-of-center Italian premier Sylvio Berlusconi's mug. It was replaced by what appears there now: "Admit Nothing Blame Everyone." That's politics, folks.

PALAIS SOON TO BE SANS SANS

Palais de Tokyo co-directors Nicolas Bourriaud and Jerome Sans were on hand near the French pavilion to talk about their plans for the eighth Lyon Biennial, which opens in September. They have a list of over 50 artists of generations new — such as Paul Chan and Melik Ohanian — and old — like Robert Crumb and Jonas Mekas. They say they don't want to do a biennial where the point is, in Sans' words, "we showed this artist first!" They also say the show is based around the notion of time, in particular the amount of time viewers spend with artworks. Does this mean loads of video and other works of some duration? No. It's just about time for a show about time. There will soon be a changing of the guard at the Palais de Tokyo. Sans and Bourriaud have done their three years as directors and will be involved in the choice of a new director or directorial team, to be announced in October. A jury has been assembled to make the choice, which includes the French Ministry of Culture and the Palais board. Of the Venice Biennale, Sans commented on the competition between highly-funded pavilions and the rest as "a race between cars that are not the same. Some are Ferraris."