U.S. pavilion dispute

Alma Allen’s 2026 U.S. pavilion in Venice has become a fight over who chose it, who funded it, and who got sidelined. (artnews.com) The U.S. Department of State announced on November 24, 2025 that the American Arts Conservancy would organize the pavilion, with Jenni Parido as commissioner and Jeffrey Uslip as curator. The exhibition, “Alma Allen: Call Me the Breeze,” opens May 9, 2026 and runs through November 22, 2026. (state.gov, almaallenvenice2026.org) For decades, museums submitted U.S. pavilion proposals to a panel assembled with the National Endowment for the Arts, and that panel made the final choice. ARTnews reported that this cycle the State Department dropped that model and handed the job to a new nonprofit with little exhibition history. (artnews.com, theartnewspaper.com) That change came after a turbulent year for federal arts policy. The Art Newspaper reported that the Trump administration cut into the National Endowment for the Arts’ role in the Venice process, and the State Department had earlier directly selected a different artist, Robert Lazzarini, before that plan collapsed. (theartnewspaper.com, artsy.net) By the time Allen was announced, the argument had shifted away from his sculptures. ARTnews said criticism focused on the process rather than the work, while Allen said he was focused on the installation itself and that some pieces “barely fit in the doorway.” (artnews.com) The people around the pavilion drew as much notice as the artist. The New York Times reported that the State Department gave control to a commissioner who had previously owned a pet food store, and ARTnews highlighted that detail in its roundup of the dispute. (nytimes.com, artnews.com) Parido’s nonprofit, the American Arts Conservancy, presents itself as a cultural diplomacy group, and its pavilion site says she leads efforts to connect artists, institutions, and government partners. State Department materials identify her as the founder of the organization but do not describe prior museum leadership. (almaallenvenice2026.org, state.gov) Uslip also arrived with baggage from an earlier museum fight. In October 2016, he resigned from the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis after protests over Kelley Walker’s exhibition, which critics and local staff said handled images of Black subjects in a racially insensitive way. (news.artnet.com, stlpr.org) The New York Times reported that photographer William Eggleston and sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud were approached and declined, citing concerns about the political setting and unfamiliar leadership. ARTnews said those withdrawals deepened the sense that the pavilion had been assembled outside the usual institutional channels. (nytimes.com, artnews.com) Allen, a Utah-born sculptor based in Mexico, is still moving ahead with a show of more than two dozen works, including new outdoor sculpture for the pavilion forecourt. When the Biennale opens on May 9, the art will finally share the stage with the process that put it there. (artnews.com, state.gov)