{"id":1823055,"date":"2026-03-12T16:51:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T13:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1823055"},"modified":"2026-03-12T16:51:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T13:51:19","slug":"the-venice-biennale-claims-its-neutral-but-no-art-exhibition-ever-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1823055","title":{"rendered":"The Venice Biennale Claims It\u2019s Neutral\u2014But No Art Exhibition Ever Is"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tThe 1974 Venice Biennale has gone down in history less for what went on view than what didn\u2019t: the show itself. The explanations for why the exhibition didn\u2019t happen are diverse. Some accounts attribute the show\u2019s cancelation to an embarrassing disagreement among warring Italian factions. Others follow the narrative laid out by then-Biennale president Carlo Ripa di Meana, a socialist who said he shuttered the show as a means of political engagement.<\/p>\n

\n\tCertainly, the project that he did mount looked more like a protest than a traditional art exhibition\u2014which may be why the Biennale did not consider the show an official edition at all. (Biennale history places the 36th show in 1972 and the 37th in 1976.) Termed the \u201cNew Biennale\u201d by Ripa di Meana, the initiative was explicitly labeled \u201cantifascist\u201d and planned as a demonstration against the repressive policies of Augusto Pinochet, a dictator who rose to power in Chile after a military coup the year before. Rather than trotting out fresh paintings and big sculptures, the Biennale put on view posters denouncing fascism worldwide in public settings. The show was officially titled \u201cLibert\u00e0 al Cile,\u201d or \u201cFreedom in Chile,\u201d and its political character could not be missed. Ripa di Meana himself called this Biennale \u201can act of dutiful solidarity and democratic faith.\u201d Fast-forward 52 years, and that kind of gesture is now unimaginable.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor much of this month, the Biennale has been trying to position itself as a nonpartisan arbiter in an increasingly unsettled world. This week, the 2026 Biennale continued to face the wrath of international politicians after the show confirmed that its 99 national pavilions would include one by Russia, which has not shown at the Biennale since the country invaded Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Wednesday, 22 high-ranking politicians representing European nations from France to Poland signed an open letter to the Biennale initiated by Latvia. The letter called Russia\u2019s presence \u201cdeeply troubling\u201d and said the pavilion \u201craises serious questions about the risk of state-directed cultural diplomacy being presented under the guise of artistic exchange.\u201d Ukraine and Lithuania had already issued their denouncements, with the former writing that the Biennale could soon become \u201ca stage for whitewashing the war crimes that Russia commits daily,\u201d and the EU has threatened to stop funding the show. Thousands of artists and curators signed another open letter calling for the Biennale to kick Russia out altogether. \u201cThe claim that \u2018culture is above politics\u2019 is never neutral,\u201d that letter reads.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis was an allusion to the Biennale\u2019s own statement on the matter from earlier this month, which said that the show accepts pavilion applications from any nation recognized in Italy. To do otherwise, the Biennale suggested, was tantamount to cultural suppression. \u201cIn response to the communications and requests for participation from Countries, La Biennale di Venezia rejects any form of exclusion or censorship of culture and art,\u201d the exhibition wrote in its statement.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the statement was new, it was an echo of an old one issued in 2024, when groups such as the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA) protested the presence of Israel, which began its brutal military bombardment of Gaza the year before, following the October 7 Hamas attack. (Palestine has never had an official Biennale pavilion because it is not recognized as a nation in Italy.) Iran\u2019s pavilion was also scrutinized that year: a mass protest movement against the nation\u2019s oppressive regime led some to call for the ejection of that pavilion as well. In response, the Biennale told the Art Newspaper<\/em> that it \u201cmay not take into consideration any petition or call to exclude the participation of Israel or Iran,\u201d since those countries had applied on their own. (Artist Ruth Patir ended up shuttering her Israeli Pavilion and calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Hamas\u2019s hostages; the Iranian Pavilion went on view.)<\/p>\n

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Israel\u2019s Venice Biennale pavilion was shuttered to the public on opening day by artist Ruth Patir.<\/span>Photo Luc Castel\/Getty Images<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tIn that statement, the Biennale said it had not made the call in 2022 to shutter the Russian Pavilion. This is true: the decision came from the artists and curator representing Russia that year, who called the war in Ukraine \u201cunbearable.\u201d But the Biennale also failed to note that the show had<\/em> weighed in on the conflict that year through the creation of the Piazza Ucraina, an ad-hoc exhibition in support of Ukraine that was staged outdoors. A release announcing that show stated that the Piazza Ucraina was mounted \u201cin solidarity with the people of Ukraine in the aftermath of the brutal invasion by the Russian government, and to create a space for debate, conversation and support to Ukrainian culture.\u201d The gesture recalled 1974\u2019s \u201cLibert\u00e0 al Cile,\u201d albeit on a smaller scale.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn fact, \u201cLibert\u00e0 al Cile\u201d was even surveyed in 2020, in a Biennale-organized show about \u201cmoments when historical events have burst into the most important art exhibition in the world,\u201d as Roberto Cicutto, then the Biennale\u2019s president, put it. He noted in 2022 that these moments were \u201cnot unique,\u201d and that Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine was yet one more of them.<\/p>\n

\n\tHas the Biennale since stopped recognizing those moments? It certainly appears that way. The exhibition never issued a release about the Israeli and Iranian Pavilions in 2024, and it has so far not responded specifically to the controversy over the Russian Pavilion in 2026, since the statement on \u201cexclusion\u201d preceded the wave of open letters. How the Biennale can maintain its stance of neutrality amid all this is tough to imagine, especially because other institutions of its stature do not maintain similar positions. The Biennale is often called the Olympics of the art world, for example. But even the Olympics has banned Russia since 2022 because, as the International Olympics Committee said the following year, the nation had violated the Olympic charter by trying to include athletes from regions it invaded. (If the Biennale has any similar charter, it has not been released to the public. A Biennale spokesperson did not respond to ARTnews<\/em>\u2019s request for comment.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThis suggests that it might be time for the Biennale to do some thinking, not just about what goes on view, but about its role in the world more broadly. As art historian Vittoria Martini pointed out in a 2024 essay, Italian newspapers referred to the Biennale as the \u201cUN of the arts\u201d during the postwar years, implying that the show functioned as an international congress. Perhaps the show ought to start working like one, too. The UN, for one, has an ethics committee that facilitates disputes among the assembly\u2019s members. Maybe it is time, then, for the Biennale to convene a similar panel.<\/p>\n

\n\tCertainly, something along those lines is necessary this year, not least because the Biennale can expect more pushback to come. ANGA wrote in a Hyperallergic<\/em> op-ed this February that it planned to renew its calls for a protest against the pavilion mounted by Israel, whom the group accused of \u201cbarbaric crimes against humanity, committed in full view of the world.\u201d The dissident Russian collective Pussy Riot has promised a protest against Russia at the Biennale, and the US pavilion may garner no small amount of scrutiny in light of the country\u2019s repeated military actions in Iran and Lebanon, staged with the partnership of Israel. (And that\u2019s not even mentioning the US\u2019s January strike on Caracas and the seizure of Venezuelan president Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, an action that has been condemned by numerous governments in Latin America and Europe.)<\/p>\n

\n\tAll of this suggests that the Biennale cannot exist apart from all that happens around it\u2014something that president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco even suggested himself when he stated that the 2026 edition, curated by Koyo Kouoh, is about \u201cthe joy of authentic art, that which so faithfully resembles real life.\u201d If art really does so closely resemble real life, the Biennale needs to recognize that global unrest does not end at its doors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-1240102251.jpg?w=1024″] The 1974 Venice Biennale has gone down in history less for what went on view than what didn\u2019t: the show itself. The explanations for why the exhibition didn\u2019t happen are diverse. Some accounts attribute the show\u2019s cancelation to an embarrassing disagreement among warring Italian factions. Others follow the narrative laid out by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1823055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1823055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1823055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1823055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1823055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1823055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1823055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}