Alma Allen's Pick as America's Venice Biennale Representative Is Deeply Dispiriting

"A dispiriting selection process for the United States Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale has reached its appropriately dispiriting conclusion: Alma Allen, a sculptor known for his sleek, abstract sculptures, will represent America on the country's 250th anniversary, as previously reported by ARTnews and confirmed today. This is disappointing, not because Allen's work is bad (there are plenty of worse choices), but because the work has nothing to say about the state of our country at the moment ."

"The US State Department runs the proposal process, so no one would expect a pavilion about crackdowns on migrant communities, rampant racism and transphobia, isolationist economics, censorship of the arts and the press, and a President who has been credibly accused of being a fascist. Besides, the US Pavilion has always tended to showcase work that's aesthetically inoffensive (on its surface, anyway). And the newly created nonprofit body responsible for funding the pavilion-the American Arts Conservancy-appears to be stocked with Trump allies."

"But consider some US pavilions of the recent past, and a veiled (and, sometimes, not so veiled) critique of American ideals does often emerge. In 2022, Simone Leigh covered her pavilion's facade in thatch-the same material that adorned the African pavilions at the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition, where objects from the continent were put on show for a bourgeois European audience. She was situating the US within a larger history of colonialism and empire that continues to this day."

A dispiriting selection process concluded with Alma Allen, a sculptor of sleek abstract forms, chosen to represent the United States at the 2026 Venice Biennale during the country's 250th anniversary. Allen's work is criticized for offering no commentary on current national crises. The US State Department manages the proposal process, and the newly created American Arts Conservancy that funds the pavilion appears to include Trump allies. Some recent pavilions raised veiled critiques of American history and policy, as seen in Simone Leigh's thatched facade invoking colonial exhibitions and Martin Puryear's engagement with slavery and monuments.

Read at ARTnews.com