Tickets
Admission: $18.50
Seniors: $15.50
Youth $14.50
A $3 discount will be applied to all The Church members. Members will receive an email with the discount code.
TAKING VENICE uncovers the true story behind rumors that the U.S. government and a team of high-placed insiders rigged the 1964 Venice Biennale –the Olympics of art – so their chosen artist, Robert Rauschenberg, could win the Grand Prize. Directed by Amei Wallach, an award-winning art critic, television commentator and filmmaker of the critically acclaimed films, Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine and Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here. The screening of the film in its entirety will be followed by a conversation between Wallach, the Cinema’s Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan and the Church’s Executive Director Sheri Pasquarella.
At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. government is determined to fight Communism with culture. The Venice Biennale, the world’s most influential art exhibition, becomes a proving ground in 1964. Alice Denney, Washington insider and friend of the Kennedys, recommends Alan Solomon, an ambitious curator making waves with trailblazing art, to organize the U.S. entry. Together with Leo Castelli, a powerful New York art dealer, they embark on a daring plan to make Robert Rauschenberg the winner of the Grand Prize. The artist is yet to be taken seriously with his combinations of junk off the street and images from pop culture, but he has the potential to dazzle. Deftly pulling off maneuvers that could have come from a Hollywood thriller, the American team leaves the international press crying foul and Rauschenberg questioning the politics of nationalism that sent him there.
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Amei Wallach is an award-winning art critic, filmmaker, and television commentator. Her critically acclaimed films, Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine and Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here, remain in international demand. In her articles, books, media appearances –and more recently in her films –Wallach has chronicled, and known, artists from Willem de Kooning and Lee Krasner to Jasper Johns and Shirin Neshat. As an art writer, she watched Robert Rauschenberg make prints in New York and paintings in Captiva, Florida. She is uniquely able to tell this story. Wallach haswritten or contributed to more than a dozen books and was an on-air arts commentator for the PBS MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour. Her articles have appeared in such publications as The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Art in America, and ARTnews.
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Prior to joining The Church as Executive Director in 2022, for 17 years Sheri owned and operated SLP, LLC, a NYC-based consultancy with service categories across the contemporary art ecosystem, including a popular art advisory and philanthropic advisory for museum board members and legacy collectors. From 1998 – 2002 she was an Associate Director of Marlborough Gallery, NY and 2002 -2005 Director of Gorney Bravin + Lee gallery. In 2002, she conceived and co-founded the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), a global 501c6 organization of which she is President Emerita, and that spawned a successful, eponymous art fair. In 2020 she founded the SLP Women’s Group, a national network of female arts leaders; and in 2021 co-produced, with the Black Women in Visual Arts, The Convening. From 2003 – 2012 she was Adjunct Faculty in the Art Market M.A. Program at SUNY FIT and delivered lectures about her unique research on the American art market and its culture at Yale University, Columbia University, and others. She holds a B.A. (Art History and Criticism) and a B.S. (Biology) from SUNY Stony Brook; did post-baccalaureate course work at Reid Hall, Paris; and in 2022 earned a certification in CORe Business Fundamentals from Harvard Business School online. Sheri has lectured widely at museums and institutions around the country, was the editor of more than 10 art monographs, and was a contributing editor to Tar magazine.
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A film writer and curator, Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan has served as U.S. Programmer and Selection Committee member of the Venice Film Festival since 2008. From 2003 to 2006 she was the co-director of the Torino Film Festival. Her retrospectives have been featured at renowned institutions worldwide, including Film Forum, The Metrograph and the Museum of Moving Image in New York, the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles, La Cinémathèque Française in Paris, and the Brisbane and Melbourne Film Festivals.
Among her books are monographs devoted to Clint Eastwood, John Carpenter, George Romero, Walter Hill, John Milius, Robert Aldrich, William Friedkin, John Landis. Her most recent volume, Altman, was published by Abrams Books in 2014. Her writings have appeared in major Italian publications such as Il Corriere della sera, La Stampa and Marie Claire, as well international ones like Cahiers du Cinema and Film Comment. She is still a regular contributor to the Arts pages of the Italian national daily newspaper “il manifesto”, for which she served as correspondent between 1995 and 2020.
D’Agnolo Vallan has lectured at Williams College, Harvard University and UCLA. Her involvement in the Sag Harbor Cinema, of which she is the Founding Artistic Director, started in 2009. She was responsible, together with producer Andrew Fierberg, for the original proposal that has served as the blueprint for the new cinema.