About The idea for a biennial for contemporary art in Bergen was first announced in the City of Bergen’s Action Plan for Arts and Artists 1995-2005 (the Arts Plan). The next step in realizing this idea took place in 1999 with the establishment of BergArt, a collaborative, interdisciplinary annual festival involving several art institutions in Bergen. Although BergArt resulted in interesting collaborations among institutions in Bergen, some of the participating festivals, such as Oktoberdans and the Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF), proved to have a much stronger impact than the BergArt festival itself. At the same time, several well-known and widely recognized arts festivals focusing on music, theatre, film and dance have been flourishing in Bergen. However, the lack of a festival-like event for the visual arts was increasingly felt. In 2007, the City of Bergen’s Commissioner for Culture therefore re-introduced the idea of starting up a biennial for visual arts from 2009. In 2007, a new Arts Plan, ‘Bergen City of the Arts 2008-2017’, was unanimously adopted by the city council. The stated ambition of the plan is to make Bergen the most interesting and innova¬tive city for art and culture in the Nordic countries by 2017. An important part of this vision is the development of a biennial with significant artistic quality, as well as the plan to discuss the biennial format with respect to the dilemmas that arise when policy aims encounter artistic freedom. The issues relate to the institutional autonomy of art, its independence from overall public goals, and the political and instrumental use of the biennial, and of art in general, as an element in the development of the city. In light of these issues, the City of Bergen’s Departments of Cultural Affairs, Business Development and Sports have asked Bergen Kunsthall to host an international art symposium in 2009 that focuses on biennials. The planned launch of the biennial itself has been postponed from 2009 to 2011. This decision resulted from an acknowledgement that the biennial format is presently being discussed and evaluated internationally. It will be productive to participate in these ongoing discussions and to use them as a point of departure for the founding of a biennial in Bergen. Instead of regarding the increasing number of biennials around the world – and even within Norway – as competition and an obstacle, we can utilise the current recons¬ideration of the biennial concept in international discourse as an important backdrop and basis for discussion.