Over 70 artists withdraw from Venice Biennale prize consideration

Art prizes are usually the easy part of the Venice Biennale. The art can be divisive, the politics can be messy, but the awards give the whole thing a clean ending. This year that broke. First the jury quit. Then the Biennale replaced the usual Golden Lions with a public-vote system. Now more than 70 artists — 81, by the latest count — have withdrawn from that new competition too, turning the prize structure itself into the story. ### What actually changed? The immediate trigger was procedural, not artistic. On April 30, the Biennale’s entire five-member international jury resigned after a clash over whether artists from countries whose leaders face International Criminal Court charges should be eligible for prizes — a position that effectively hit Israel and Russia. Organizers then scrapped the traditional jury-awarded prizes for this edition and created two “Visitors’ Lions” to be decided by public vote through November 22. (theartnewspaper.com) ### Why did artists pull out? Because the replacement system solved the institution’s problem, but not the artists’ political objection. In a statement published on May 9, artists from the main exhibition *In Minor Keys* and from national pavilions said they were withdrawing from consideration for the new awards in solidarity with the resigned jury. The point was simple — if the jury stepped away over principle, they did not want to legitimize a workaround. (kanw.org) ### How many artists are we talking about? The number moved fast. On May 9, reports put the group at 54 artists from the international exhibition plus 22 national pavilion teams. By May 11, that had risen to 81 artists, with well-known names including Walid Raad, Alice Maher, Alfredo Jaar, Laurie Anderson, and Zoe Leonard attached to the withdrawal effort. That scale matters because it is no longer a symbolic handful — it is a large bloc of the exhibition. (e-flux.com) ### Why are Israel and Russia at the center? Because the whole dispute is really about whether a global art exhibition can pretend geopolitics stops at the pavilion door. The resigned jury had tried to bar prizes for countries whose leaders are under ICC scrutiny, which would have excluded Israel and Russia from awards. When the Biennale shifted to public voting, it made clear that all national pavilions were again eligible. (hyperallergic.com) For critics, that looked less like neutrality and more like reversing the only concrete sanction that had been imposed. ### Why not just boycott the Biennale entirely? Some people have pushed for that, but many participating artists chose a narrower move. They stayed in the exhibition while refusing the prize apparatus around it. Basically, they are trying to avoid punishing curator Koyo Kouoh’s exhibition and fellow artists while still refusing to endorse the revised award system. That distinction helps explain why the protest has spread inside the show rather than outside it. (hyperallergic.com) ### Is this only about awards? Not really. The awards fight is the visible pressure point, but the atmosphere around this Biennale has been tense from the start — protests at pavilions, a strike that shut parts of the event, and arguments over whether cultural institutions are hiding behind procedural neutrality. Once the jury resigned, every later decision started looking political too. Even a public vote became a statement. (e-flux.com) ### What does this do to the Biennale now? It leaves the exhibition open, but with its legitimacy dented. The Visitors’ Lions still exist on paper, and voting is underway, but a prize loses prestige when many of the people eligible to win it say they do not want it. That is the real damage here — not just embarrassment, but a sense that the institution could not contain the politics it was trying to manage. (hyperallergic.com) ### Bottom line The Venice Biennale did not just lose a jury. It lost the basic fiction that its prize system could sit above politics. Once organizers replaced the Golden Lions with a public vote that restored Israel and Russia to contention, artists turned the workaround into a second protest target. Now the awards are still there — but the consent that makes awards mean anything is not. (labiennale.org 1) (labiennale.org 2)