Organisers of the US pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale have run into financial difficulties. They are about a million dollars short of what they need to dismantle the sculptures by American artist Alma Allen and ship them back to the United States.
This was reported by The New York Times.
The pavilion’s commissioner, Jenny Parido, wrote to potential donors, stressing the urgent need for funding to dismantle the works and return them safely. Before the Biennale opened, organisers described the exhibition as the cheapest in the history of the US pavilion, with a budget expected to come in at under $2.5 million. However, the non-profit American Arts Conservancy raised only $1.4 million.
According to Parido, the project’s final stage has created difficulties she is trying to resolve. A US State Department spokesperson said the department had not been involved in fundraising and declined further comment.
Typically, the US pavilion at the Biennale was selected by an independent panel of experts based on proposals from leading museums. However, Donald Trump’s administration abandoned that practice.
Last autumn, the State Department appointed Jenny Parido as commissioner on the recommendation of Erin Scavino, a close presidential aide who runs the Art in Embassies programme.
Parido had no professional background in the arts. Previously, she and her husband owned a pet boutique in Florida. The two women are friends and recently co-curated an exhibition in Washington that one conservative outlet criticised, calling it “trash”.
American sculptor Alma Allen, who lives in Mexico, agreed to take part in the exhibition. He said that curator Jeffrey Uslip and the commissioner exercised almost no oversight of the show and never once visited his studio. Before the earlier presentations ended, the artist and the curator stopped speaking.
Allen also said he knew nothing about the organisers’ financial problems. He was reimbursed only for travel costs and cheap accommodation. American Arts Conservancy did not answer journalists’ questions about what would happen to the works if the necessary funds cannot be raised.
By comparison, the US pavilion’s budget in 2024 was about $5 million, and in 2022 nearly $7 million. The State Department provides a grant of $375,000, with commissioners expected to raise the rest through private donations.
American Arts Conservancy sought funding, including at events such as a party at Art Basel in Miami and a dinner at the Mar-a-Lago resort. Donors included designer Tommy Hilfiger and businessman John Phelan, whom Trump dismissed as Secretary of the Navy in April.
Art historian Katy Siegel, who curated the US pavilion in 2017, suggested that the current organisers had failed to maintain proper oversight of the budget.
“Normally, budgeting is done very carefully. This is madness,” Siegel stressed.
She explained that storage options in Venice are limited: the pavilion has no warehouses of its own, and the Guggenheim Foundation does not have a space where Allen’s large-scale sculptures could be housed.