US Finally Issues Call for 2026 Venice Biennale Proposals
174May 7, 2025
The US government on April 30 opened theportal for submissions to represent the country at the Sixty-First Venice Biennale, to take place May 9–November 22, 2026. Among the changes submitting artists will notice this year are a shortened timeline for creating the work, and the implementation of parameters encouraging “works of art that reflect and promote American values” and banning participants who “operate any programs promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion that violate any applicable anti-discrimination laws.” As well, the winner can expect the US State Department to “[monitor] site visits” to “gather additional information on the recipient’s ability to properly implement the project.”
The submissions portal is typically opened eighteen months before the Biennale, with the US State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) posting a grant of about $375,000. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) then assembles the Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions, a panel of arts professionals, who make the selection a few months later, with private donors paying for any costs beyond those not covered by the grant.
This year, though the $375,000 grant money is still available thanks to the Biden administration’s January 2024 approval of the ECA’s budget, the portal opened barely a year ahead of the event’s opening. Submissions are being accepted through July 30, and a decision will be announced on September 1. This leaves the selected artist with just eight months to produce the work. Kathleen Ash-Milby, a co-commissioner of the 2024 US Pavilion and the curator of Native American art at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon told Vanity Fair’s Nate Freeman that the timeline was so tight that the US might well “be past the point of no return” in terms of participating in the Biennale.
Further complicating matters is President Donald Trump’s attempted dismantling of the NEA, which only yesterday saw talent drain from its top posts after the organization began pulling back grants in response to the presidential directive. Too, the role of assistant secretary at the ECA is vacant, leaving no one to coordinate Biennale affairs. The United States has participated in every Biennale since the event was launched in 1895 except for the years leading up to World War II, when the democratic nation abstained in protest of rising fascism in Italy, and the years 1942 and 1944, when the exhibition was canceled owing to World War II.