[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-2274802765.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThe head of the Venice Biennale has a simple defense for one of the most contentious decisions of this year\u2019s exhibition:\u00a0it\u2019s not a courtroom.<\/p>\n
\n\tPietrangelo Buttafuoco, the Biennale\u2019s president, made the remark on Wednesday this week as backlash mounted over the return of Russia to the Giardini. The country is reopening its pavilion for the first time since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a move that has drawn criticism from European officials and triggered threats to pull roughly $2.3 million in EU funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe Biennale is not a court; it is a garden of peace,\u201d Buttafuoco said, arguing that the exhibition should remain a place for dialogue rather than exclusion.\u00a0\u201cThis whole world born of\u00a0\u200bthe French Revolution, the Enlightenment and secularism has flipped into its exact opposite: a laboratory\u00a0\u2060of\u00a0\u2060intolerance, and demands for censorship,\u00a0\u2060closure and\u00a0\u200bexclusion,\u201d he said in a press conference.<\/p>\n
\n\tThat\u2019s the theory. On the ground, the opening days have looked more like a rolling protest.<\/p>\n
\n\tOn Wednesday morning, just outside the Russian Pavilion, members of Pussy Riot and FEMEN staged\u00a0a loud, theatrical demonstration\u00a0that quickly drew a crowd. Protesters in pink balaclavas set off smoke flares in the colors of the Ukrainian flag and chanted slogans like \u201cRussia kills! Biennale exhibits!\u201d while blasting punk and hip-hop from portable speakers. For about 20 minutes, the Giardini felt less like a sculpture park than a mosh pit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe anger isn\u2019t limited to Russia. Across the lagoon, a separate wave of protests has focused on Israel\u2019s participation. In the days leading up to the public opening, around 60 artists staged a performance titled\u00a0Solidarity Drone Chorus<\/em>, gathering at the Giardini entrance to hum a piece by a Gazan composer in what organizers described as an attempt to \u201csonically occupy space.\u201d The action then moved in procession toward the Central Pavilion, with participants framing it as a way to bring the reality of war into the exhibition itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThat effort has since escalated. The Art Not Genocide Alliance, a coalition of artists and cultural workers, has called for\u00a0a 24-hour strike\u00a0on the day before the Biennale opens to the general public, along with rallies and demonstrations across Venice. The group has already drawn hundreds of supporters to protests outside the Israeli Pavilion, part of a broader campaign that has gathered signatures from more than 200 artists and curators.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tMeanwhile, the Russian Pavilion itself is operating under restrictions tied to EU sanctions. It will be open only during the press preview days, with the presentation shifting to video projections visible from outside for the rest of Biennale\u2019s six-month run.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tButtafuoco\u2019s argument is that none of this\u2014war, sanctions, protests\u2014should determine who gets to participate in the show. Critics see the opposite: that the Biennale\u2019s\u00a0claim to neutrality\u00a0is precisely what\u2019s at stake.<\/p>\n \n\tEither way, the idea of the Biennale as a quiet \u201cgarden of peace\u201d is already hard to square with the reality of protests and attempted censorship on the ground.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/venice-biennale-president-not-a-court-protests-1234784321\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-2274802765.jpg?w=1024″] The head of the Venice Biennale has a simple defense for one of the most contentious decisions of this year\u2019s exhibition:\u00a0it\u2019s not a courtroom. Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, the Biennale\u2019s president, made the remark on Wednesday this week as backlash mounted over the return of Russia to the Giardini. The country is reopening its […]<\/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-1922891","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\/1922891","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=1922891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1922891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1922891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1922891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}