{"id":176902,"date":"2025-12-05T17:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T17:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/176902\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T17:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T17:13:10","slug":"the-diplomatic-significance-of-alma-allen-at-the-venice-biennale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/176902\/","title":{"rendered":"The diplomatic significance of Alma Allen at the Venice Biennale"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alma Allen is the United States\u2019 official emissary to the Venice Biennale next year. If your first question is \u201cWho?,\u201d that\u2019s fair. Allen, a Mexico-based American sculptor of esoteric semi-organic forms, isn\u2019t exactly the kind of A-list art star the United States typically enlists for what\u2019s widely seen as the most important contemporary art event in the world. <\/p>\n

But it matters well beyond that: As a showcase for dozens of countries and how they present themselves to the world, it\u2019s a key element of what diplomats call \u201csoft power\u201d: How nations craft positive perception on the international stage through nonpolitical means. And so there are other questions worth asking, too. <\/p>\n

For starters, \u201cWhen?\u201d Allen was confirmed just last week; the Biennale opens in May<\/a>. Entrants are usually picked more than a year in advance, to prepare for what\u2019s typically the most important event of their lives. Which brings us to \u201cWhat?\u201d All that time is used \u2014 and needed \u2014 to conceive and make a new body of work for an occasion that demands freshness, and at grand scale. Each of Allen\u2019s half-dozen or so predecessors transformed the very pavilion where US artists are displayed in Venice, in addition to filling it with new and bold work. Allen, with about 16 weeks to work with \u2014 shipping takes a while \u2014 will almost surely have to repurpose existing work into a (hopefully) novel frame. <\/p>\n

\"AlmaAlma Allen, “Not Yet Titled,” 2025, one of several sculptures installed on Park Avenue in New York in the summer of 2025. Charlie Rubin<\/p>\n

Suffice to say that by any recent standard, Allen\u2019s entry is aiming low, through no fault of his own. As time crept forward all year with no word from the State Department, which administers the Venice entry, many wondered if the United States would simply take a pass on the Biennale, leaving its pavilion standing dark and empty for the first time since the Biennale\u2019s inaugural 1895 installation. It might even have been fitting, given the administration\u2019s general antipathy to global approval-seeking, a giant middle finger to the international cultural elite. <\/p>\n

Which prompts the last and maybe most important question: \u201cWhy?\u201d Allen, it needs to be said, is not a bold pick. His immediate predecessors as US representatives to the biennale, Jeffrey Gibson<\/a> in 2024 and Simone Leigh<\/a> in 2022<\/a>, used their Venice platforms, respectively, to champion contemporary Native American culture (Gibson is Choctaw-Cherokee), and to explore and ultimately honor the unseen labor, suffering, and determination of Black women throughout American history. <\/p>\n

Allen\u2019s work, by contrast, is an array of capably-made abstract-organic forms mostly in bronze and stone, and sits comfortably within the realm of anodyne ambiguity. Several of his sculptures were installed outdoors on Park Avenue<\/a> in New York last summer, but his work hasn\u2019t appeared at an American museum in years. His selection can\u2019t help but feel like something of an intentional dodge by the State Department of the typically-issues driven contemporary art shown at events like the Biennale.<\/p>\n

\"PiecesPieces by the artist Alma Allen in Mexico City, Nov. 17, 2025. Allen, 55, will exhibit nearly 30 sculptures at the US pavilion of the 2026 Venice Biennale starting in May, organized by the curator Jeffrey Uslip. Allen lives and works in Mexico.Jake Naughton\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s no small thing that Allen \u2014 someone real, and legitimate \u2014 will be in Venice, holding space in the global cultural community. It means that, amid all the carnage of an administration hostile both to art and international standing, this gesture matters. <\/p>\n

In the soft power toolbox, visual art will never have quite the reach of popular music or movies \u2014 both of which have been far more important to any of the country\u2019s positive global presence than political diplomacy could hope for. But an event like this, at a time like this, really does matter. Allen, even with no grand statement about the state of the nation, is mostly a placeholder. But that space has always been important to fill. <\/p>\n

\"AA painting by Mark Rothko at the “Warhol\/Pollock” exhibition at Madrid’s Thyssen Bornemisza National Museum in late November.Murray Whyte\/Globe Staff<\/p>\n

Consider: At the height of the Cold War the CIA<\/a> covertly built a robust international exhibition schedule of Abstract Expressionist<\/a> painters like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, among many others, putting on public view a vision of American liberty in its most unrestrained creative glory. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a great \u2014 and very strange \u2014 story, but it\u2019s not a one-off. Those kinds of efforts, though none quite so covert, continue to bear fruit in every corner of the globe, holding up an essential view of Americanness as audacious, innovative, and furiously creative. I was in Madrid earlier this month, where I saw an exhibition that paired Andy Warhol<\/a> and Jackson Pollock<\/a>, two American giants, in the Thyssen Bornemisza National Museum, a sprawling contemporary and Modern art museum all but overflowing with Picassos. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe entrance of the “Warhol\/Pollock” exhibition at Madrid’s Thyssen Bornemisza National Museum in late November.Murray Whyte\/Globe Staff<\/p>\n

Warhol and Pollock were at the top of the marquee \u2014 not to be taken for granted, especially here, right across the street from the Prado, Spain\u2019s Louvre, bursting as it does with almost too many Velazquezs and Rubenses to count. But it was all I could do to dodge the tour groups being hustled through Warhol-Pollock, jamming the low-lit galleries where the title duo were joined by a who\u2019s who of American art superstardom: Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning, to name a few. <\/p>\n

The crowds were there not because of the current chaos that dominates any news of American politics, which is inescapable in Europe or anywhere else, but in spite of it. And, I like to think, because American culture is more durable and foundational than any one administration\u2019s ability to undermine and unravel it. <\/p>\n

\"WorksWorks from Andy Warhol’s “Shadows” series from the late 1970s, at the “Warhol\/Pollock” exhibition at Madrid’s Thyssen Bornemisza National Museum in late November.Murray Whyte\/Globe Staff<\/p>\n

It\u2019s part of the canon \u2014 like Picasso, or Monet, or any other name you\u2019d care to mention. That\u2019s not by accident. It\u2019s the product of generations of the free exchange of ideas among international peers of the best any of us have to offer, and it\u2019s never been more important to the American reputation than it is right now. Amid the fury, American culture remains a bedrock export, a beacon of enlightenment; it\u2019s our best ambassador in fraught times, and a powerful reminder that a nation\u2019s identity isn\u2019t defined by an election cycle. <\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean reputations can\u2019t be broken, and good work undone. The current administration is certainly trying. But in Venice next year, America can at least be marked \u201cpresent,\u201d holding steady until the wheel turns again. <\/p>\n

Murray Whyte can be reached at murray.whyte@globe.com<\/a>. Follow him @TheMurrayWhyte<\/a>.<\/p>\n