Moving the opening of the Venice Biennale to May has set the cat among the pigeons.
When it was announced that the Venice Biennale was shifting the date for the opening of its 2015 edition to 9 May (with previews from 6 to 8 May), it sent the whole art market into a frenzy. The new date is a full month earlier than usual, and as the art world is largely articulated, every other year, around Venice, the change means that the Biennale, auctions and a number of fairs across the world will be crammed into the same fortnight in May.
To complicate the situation, Art Basel in Hong Kong (ABHK) then changed its dates from May to March, going head to head with other fairs. There was a scramble to find new dates between these events, while dealers, curators and collectors found themselves facing a travel schedule of Byzantine complexity.