The selection process for the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale is rarely without friction, but the lead-up to the 61st edition has taken on a particularly somber tone. Barbara Chase-Riboud, the acclaimed American-French sculptor and author, recently confirmed her decision to decline the opportunity to represent the United States at the 2026 event. Her refusal, along with that of renowned photographer William Eggleston, has left the newly formed American Arts Conservancy (AAC) to move forward with Mexico-based sculptor Alma Allen.
In a statement to the Financial Times, Chase-Riboud characterized the decision as a matter of timing rather than a lack of appreciation for the platform. "Participating in the 61st Venice Biennale would have been splendid," she noted, adding that for her, as a "world citizen," this was simply "not the moment." The phrasing is delicate but heavy with the implication that the current geopolitical and domestic climate has made the role of national representative a complicated proposition.
A career between nations
Chase-Riboud's biography makes her an unusually revealing case study for the tensions at play. Born in Philadelphia, she has lived in Paris for decades, building a body of work — monumental bronze and silk sculptures, historical novels, poetry — that moves fluidly across cultural borders. Her art has long explored the intersections of history, power, and the material properties of bronze, occupying a space where the personal and the political are inseparable. A recent multi-museum retrospective across Paris brought renewed institutional attention to a practice that had, for stretches, been under-recognized relative to its ambition and influence.
For an artist whose entire career has been shaped by the experience of voluntary expatriation — and by the particular vantage point that distance from one's country of origin can provide — the question of what it means to "represent" a nation at Venice is not abstract. The Biennale's national pavilion structure, a relic of early twentieth-century internationalism, asks artists to stand in for a state. In stable periods, the arrangement can feel like a formality. In unstable ones, it becomes a statement in itself.
Eggleston's parallel refusal is notable for different reasons. The photographer, now in his nineties, is among the most celebrated figures in American visual culture, known for pioneering color photography as a fine-art medium. His decision to step aside received less public elaboration, but the combined weight of two high-profile withdrawals has shaped the narrative around the pavilion well before its doors open.
The pavilion as political stage
The Venice Biennale has a long history of artists and nations using the pavilion system as a site of political expression — or political refusal. Countries have occasionally left pavilions empty or staged interventions that questioned the legitimacy of the format itself. What distinguishes the current episode is that the friction is not between an artist and the Biennale's curatorial framework, but between artists and the idea of national representation at a specific political juncture.
The AAC, which has assumed the organizational role for the U.S. pavilion after the State Department stepped back from direct involvement, now faces the task of presenting Alma Allen's work in a context already defined by the artists who chose not to participate. Allen, a sculptor known for organic, biomorphic forms carved from stone and bronze, brings a distinct sensibility — one less overtly engaged with the political dimensions that have colored the pavilion's selection process. Whether that contrast reads as relief or as avoidance will depend on the viewer.
The broader pattern is difficult to ignore. Cultural institutions and individual practitioners across the arts have, in recent years, faced mounting pressure to articulate where they stand in relation to state power — and mounting consequences regardless of which direction they choose. Chase-Riboud's careful language — declining not the honor but the moment — suggests an awareness that silence and participation alike carry meaning.
What remains unresolved is whether the pavilion structure itself can absorb this kind of tension without losing coherence. The Biennale's national model presumes that an artist can represent a country without endorsing its government, a distinction that holds in theory but frays under political stress. Chase-Riboud and Eggleston have, by stepping aside, made the fraying visible. The question now is whether visibility changes anything — or whether the pavilion simply moves on, as it always has, with whoever agrees to fill the room.
With reporting from Hyperallergic.
Source · Hyperallergic
