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The Heckler

The Heckler: Curators were once donnish scholars. Now they’re hip illiterates

Jonathan Meades sees today’s growing curatocracy as a ‘conspiracy against the laity’

25 April 2015

9:00 AM

25 April 2015

9:00 AM

As a purveyor of lairy souvenirs Venice outdoes even Lourdes. The scores of shops and booths that peddle this lagoonal kitsch are manned by graduates of hard-sell whose market-barker schtick does not need to include descriptions as their goods are self-explanatory.

Every other year they coexist with a different sort of operation: the galleries, ateliers, showrooms and studios of the Biennale.

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