Alma Allen‘s pavilion for the United States at the 2026 Venice Biennale has become a proxy fight over politics, process, and cultural authority—questions the artist himself has little interest in adjudicating.
“I don’t think my work is political in respect to party politics,” Allen said as he prepared his exhibition, adding that his more immediate concern was practical: “some of the pieces barely fit in the doorway.”
A report by the New York Times has drawn fresh attention to how the US Pavilion came together, after the State Department abandoned its long-standing selection model and handed control to a newly formed nonprofit with virtually no track record of mounting exhibitions.
For decades, the US Pavilion followed a familiar script: museums would submit proposals to a panel of experts formed by the National Endowment of the Arts, with the panel having final say over the which proposal would win. This year, that system was scrapped. The State Department instead turned to the American Arts Conservancy, led by Jenni Parido, a Florida-based founder without museum experience, working with independent curator Jeffrey Uslip.
The change has drawn concern from former organizers and curators. “America will be known as having squandered a major opportunity to show serious work,” Robert Storr, the former dean of the Yale School of Art and a past Venice Biennale curator, told the Times.
Some artists declined to participate altogether, according to the paper, including photographer William Eggleston and sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud, who both cited concerns about the political context and unfamiliar leadership, according to people familiar with the discussions who were interviewed by the Times.
When Allen was announced as the selected artist in November, much of the criticism centered on the process rather than the work itself. In a critical response, ARTnews senior editor Alex Greenberger described the outcome as “a dispiriting selection process … reaching its appropriately dispiriting conclusion.”
Allen, who is based in Mexico and has built a steady career outside the usual institutional spotlight, took on the commission despite not knowing the curatorial team beforehand. “Getting to exhibit at the pavilion and represent America — there is a lot of power to that,” he said. “I have learned that to do things in life, I had to be willing to take risks.”
The pavilion will include more than two dozen sculptures, alongside new works installed both inside and outside the building. Whether the exhibition shifts attention back to the art—and away from the circumstances that produced it—will become clearer when the Biennale opens next month.
