Shortly after taking on his new position at the Lucerne Museum - and not least because of the impact of his Acconci exhibition - the Venice Biennale appoints MK in 1978 as commissioner and curator of the main international exhibit at the Central Pavilion in the Giardini. He is the youngest among his well-established co-curators Harald Szeemann, Michael Compton (from Tate Gallery), and Achille Bonito Oliva who are chosen to collectively organize the main exhibition at the Giardini. This imaginative team pushes the Biennale administration to add an entirely new exhibit of young artists to the already planned review of representative works from the seventies. The Biennale president eventually agrees to the show, however, it is to take place outside the Giardini. Szeemann deserves the main credit for this decidedly of-the-moment art overview’s final iteration, which opens under the title "Aperto 80" in the Magazzini del Sale. This segment of the Biennale resonates strongly with the public and the concept becomes an integrated feature of future biennales, which are later presented in the Arsenale.