A highly-regarded art dealer whose sophisticated approach to showing art has been evidenced in such gallery shows as one last year spotlighting the late experimental filmmaker and "flicker" pioneer Paul Sharits — recreating his 1975 multichannel flicker installation "Shutter Interface" at Greene Naftali, along with Anthology Film Archives — Sanders actually joined the gallery in 2005, departing this November, at least in part to take the Biennial post. Before joining Greene Naftali he worked at Marianne Boesky Gallery. Speaking to the Times about his appointment, Whitney chief curator Donna De Salvo played down his gallery career. “Working in a gallery was only one chapter in his life," she told the paper. “He is also known as an independent curator.”

 

Sussman is no stranger to Whitney Biennial controversy. She organized the 1993 edition of the exhibition, bringing in a range of provocative voices for a show that today appears to have been a remarkably prescient survey of emergent trends in politically invested art that grew increasingly dominant over the course of the nineties. At the time the Biennial was savaged by critics. Times critic Michael Kimmelman famously blasted the exhibition, writing "I hate this show... There is virtually nothing in the biennial that encourages, much less rewards, close observation."

 

The pairing of Sussman with Sanders follows the museum's odd-couple match-up for the 2010 edition of globetrotting curator Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari, an assistant curator who was only 29 when the show opened and who is said to have been chosen for his grasp of art being made today in Brooklyn and on the Lower East Side. (These artists were notably prevalent at the exhibition.) The Biennial is traditionally a place to herald important new artists, celebrate overlooked talent, and frame significant developments in the direction of contemporary art. Artists who are included often reap financial rewards due to the exposure. 

 

The naming of Sanders as co-curator also comes at a time when the museum and commercial spheres seem to be increasingly swapping roles, as well as talent. Deitch Projects founder Jeffrey Deitch has assumed the directorship of Los Angeles's MOCA, former Guggenheim director Lisa Dennison is a chairman at Sotheby's, and in 2006 Corcoran Gallery curator Jonathan Binstock left that Washington, D.C., art institution to take an art advisory position at Citibank (where Deitch used to work as well). Meanwhile, blue-chip galleries like Gagosian and Pace have routinely organized shows that are presented as — and hailed as — "museum quality," with the former dealership bringing together world-class collections of work by artists like Picasso, Manzoni, Monet, Lichtenstein, and, currently, Rauschenberg. Sotheby's and Philips de Pury have begun organizing "curated" sales. Ireland's pavilion in next year's Venice Biennale is being commissioned by a Pace dealer who represents the artist being shown, Corban Walker.