After news broke earlier this month that the sculptor Robert Lazzarini had been dropped as the unannounced selection to represent the United States at next year’s Venice Biennale, outlets including the Baer Faxt newsletter and Vanity Fair reported that the Utah-born, Mexico-based artist Alma Allen has been tapped to take over the US Pavilion in 2026 instead.
The pavilion’s commissioning curator, Jeffrey Uslip, has stated that no official announcement could be made until the US government shutdown ended. As of this writing, two days after the government reopened, no US Pavilion announcement has been made.
Under Donald Trump’s second administration, preparation and selection for US participation in the 2026 Venice Biennale—whose opening is now less than six months away—has proven unusually fraught. This is due in part to the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the agency that typically co-ordinates with the US State Department to form a selection committee to pick the US Pavilion exhibition. The White House has directed federal arts funding agencies to prioritise projects related to the country’s upcoming semiquincentennial, or 250th anniversary. The State Department had directly selected Lazzarini without the NEA’s involvement, according to the Washington Post, and contributed $250,000 to the reported $5m budget for his project.
Despite the funding obstacles, Lazzarini, whose sculptures use spatial distortion as a means of complicating audience expectations, was reportedly chosen in September. His winning proposal focused on renderings of US national symbols, such as George Washington, eagles and the American flag rendered in his signature wobbly, anamorphic style. According to the Post, Lazzarini believes the collapse of his pavilion project was due to bureaucratic problems, not political interference. (Another US Pavilion proposal that now seems unlikely to ever see the light of day was pitched by Andres Serrano, who wanted to create a mausoleum to president Trump based on his own collection of Trump-branded merchandise.)
While Allen is not as established as other artists who have recently represented the US at the Biennale—like Jeffrey Gibson, Simone Leigh and Mark Bradford—he is by no means an unknown quantity. He has been based in Tepoztlán, Mexico since 2017, and was represented by the New York gallery Kasmin until its recent closure. His large-scale sculptures are often made of stone, wood and bronze, embracing both traditional craftsmanship and new fabrication technologies in his practice. According to Artnews, Allen is now in talks to be represented by Perrotin.
Prior to taking the lead on the US Pavilion, Uslip curated the Malta Pavilion in Venice in 2022. He has operated independently since his resignation from the Contemporary Art Museum St Louis over a controversial Kelley Walker show in 2016.
Countries have until the 19 January 2026 to submit their official pavilion picks. Many have already made their choices public, like Lubaina Himid for Great Britain, Yto Barrada for France, and Henrike Naumann and Sung Tieu for Germany. The 2026 Venice Biennale runs from 9 May 2026 until 22 November 2026.
