Fine Art

The prestigious international art fair Art Basel recently opened in Basel Switzerland. It runs from the 13th of June until the 16th of June 2013. It includes 245 art galleries, with half that number from Asia, exhibiting.

With sales projected at US$ 2 billion, it shows that the art market is booming for the incredibly wealthy.

Vienna is home to some excellent art museums.

Here are two worth checking out:

• Kunst Haus Wien is also home to the Museum Hundertwasser.
• BAWAG P.S.K Contemporary hosts cutting-edge exhibitions which will help you think of the world at large.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria is one of the world's most beautiful art museums with an impressive collection which is aesthetically displayed.

The Museum also posts job listings when they become available. Being bilingual in both German and English is a plus.

Vienna is such a beautiful and artistic city. This month we'll feature art museums (including employment information) in Vienna.

• Kunsthalle Wien hosts various temporary exhibitions of the avant-garde and of contemporary art from both local and international artists.
• Palais Liechtenstein was originally established in the 1700s as the home to the rulers of Liechtenstein.
• The Albertina is renowned for its vast collection of prints.
• The Picture Gallery at the Academy of Fine Arts has the "Last Judgment" by Hieronymus Bosch.

The Venice Biennale is a lot like the Olympics, in regards to national representation, and the underlying political problems which exist. But it also provides opportunities for artists to participate on the world stage.

The photo is a general view of the installation by Professor Bashir Makhoul at the Palestine Pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale.

I was an art critic based in Taipei for a number of years, so I often wrote about Taiwan's representation at the Venice Biennale. Even though Taiwan has been exhibiting at Venice since 1995, due to pressure from China, Taiwan is unable to be known as the 'Taiwan Pavilion', and is known as a side event by the "Taipei Fine Arts Museum".

Taiwanese identity has been a major issue for many of its exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, so I was surprised to see the list of artists included non-Taiwanese. The title of the exhibition is 'This is not a Taiwan Pavilion'.

Artists include Chia-Wei Hsu, Bernd Behr, and Kateřina Šedá.

Taiwanese curator Esther Lu states: "This project resonates with the context of the historical circumstances and current conditions of Taiwan's participation in the International Art Exhibition in Venice. Parallel artistic and curatorial narratives will explore and engage with questions of subjectification to conceive of the Pavilion not only as an exhibition space, but also as a concept evolving on a temporal axis in order to illuminate the formation of cultural subjectivity."

Miuccia Prada attends the opening of 'When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013' exhibition at Fondazione Prada's Ca' Corner della Regina, Venice, on May 29, 2013 in Venice, Italy.

The exhibition 'When Attitudes Become Form' was originally curated by Harald Szeemann (who was also the first independent curator) in 1969 and is one of the most seminal art exhibitions of the 20th century, focusing on process art and arte povera.

For the restaged exhibition at this year's Venice Biennale, artist Walter De Maria reenacted his famous artwork 'Art by Telephone' (1967), by calling the phone exhibited in the show and Miuccia Prada was the first person to answer.

Installation at the China Pavilion. Photo by Marco Secchi/Getty Images

The Venice Biennale was established in 1895, when world's fairs were in vogue. When it began, several countries, such as England, had their own pavilions to showcase the best of their nation's artists.

China is a late-comer to the Venice Biennale, as it recently got its own pavilion in 2005.