American pavilion

The American pavilion is a national pavilion of the Venice Biennale. It houses the United States' official representation during the Biennale.

Background

The Venice Biennale is an international art biennial exhibition held in Venice, Italy. Often described as "the Olympics of the art world", the Biennale is a prestigious event for contemporary artists known for propelling career visibility. The festival has become a constellation of shows: a central exhibition curated by that year's artistic director, national pavilions hosted by individual nations, and independent exhibitions throughout Venice. The Biennale parent organization also hosts regular festivals in other arts: architecture, dance, film, music, and theater.

Outside of the central, international exhibition, individual nations produce their own shows, known as pavilions, as their national representation. Nations that own their pavilion buildings, such as the 30 housed on the Giardini, are responsible for their own upkeep and construction costs as well. Nations without dedicated buildings create pavilions in venues throughout the city.

Organization and building

The American pavilion was the ninth to be built on the Giardini, but unlike other pavilions, which are built by governments, the American pavilion was privately owned. The three-room Palladian building was constructed in 1930, for the New York Grand Central Art Galleries. Ownership transferred to the Museum of Modern Art in 1954 and to the Guggenheim Foundation in 1986.

For the United States' national representation, a committee of experts select from proposals written by institutions. The Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions is assembled by the National Endowment for the Arts and Department of State. The months-long process involves an application nearly 100 pages in length and a final embargo before announcement.

History

The United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennale was constructed in 1930 by the Grand Central Art Galleries, a nonprofit artists' cooperative established in 1922 by Walter Leighton Clark together with John Singer Sargent, Edmund Greacen, and others. As stated in the Galleries' 1934 catalog, the organization's goal was to "give a broader field to American art; to exhibit in a larger way to a more numerous audience, not in New York alone but throughout the country, thus displaying to the world the inherent value which our art undoubtedly possesses."

In 1930, Walter Leighton Clark and the Grand Central Art Galleries spearheaded the creation of the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The pavilion's architects were William Adams Delano, who also designed the Grand Central Art Galleries, and Chester Holmes Aldrich. The purchase of the land, design, and construction was paid for by the galleries and personally supervised by Clark. As he wrote in the 1934 catalog:

"Pursuing our purpose of putting American art prominently before the world, the directors a few years ago appropriated the sum of $25,000 for the erection of an exhibition building in Venice on the grounds of the International Biennial. Messrs. Delano and Aldrich generously donated the plans for this building which is constructed of Istrian marble and pink brick and more than holds its own with the twenty-five other buildings in the Park owned by the various European governments."

The pavilion, owned and operated by the galleries, opened on May 4, 1930. Approximately 90 paintings and 12 sculptures were selected by Clark for the opening exhibition. Artists featured included Max Boehm, Hector Caser, Lillian Westcott Hale, Edward Hopper, Abraham Poole, Julius Rolshoven, Joseph Pollet, Eugene Savage, Elmer Shofeld, Ofelia Keelan, and African-American artist Henry Tanner. U.S. Ambassador John W. Garrett opened the show together with the Duke of Bergamo.

The Grand Central Art Galleries operated the U.S. Pavilion until 1954, when it was sold to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s shows were organized by MOMA, Art Institute of Chicago, and Baltimore Museum of Art. The Modern withdrew from the Biennale in 1964, and the United States Information Agency ran the Pavilion until it was sold to the Guggenheim Foundation courtesy of funds provided by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Financial support by Philip Morris and private money raised by the Committee for the 1986 American Pavilion at the 1986 Venice Biennale made the exhibition at the United States pavilion possible. Since 1986 the Peggy Guggenheim Collection has worked with the United States Information Agency, the US Department of State and the Fund for Artists at International Festivals and Exhibitions in the organization of the visual arts exhibitions at the US Pavilion, while the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has organized the comparable shows at the Architecture Biennales. Every two years museum curators from across the U.S. detail their visions for the American pavilion in proposals that are reviewed by the NEA Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions (FACIE), a group comprising curators, museum directors and artists who then submit their recommendations to the public-private Fund for United States Artists at International Festivals and Exhibitions. Traditionally the endowment's selection committee has chosen a proposal submitted by a museum or curator, but in 2004 it simply chose an artist who in turn has nominated a curator, later approved by the State Department.

According to estimates provided by the New York Times, the cost of the pavilion's exhibitions has risen substantially over the years, from about $72,400 in 1964 for Robert Rauschenberg’s exhibition (about $720,000 in 2023 dollars) to nearly $2.5 million (roughly $4.4 million today) for Robert Gober (2001), $3.8 million for Martin Puryear (2019) and $7 million for Simone Leigh (2022).

Exhibitions

Rauschenberg's selection for the 1964 Golden Lion marked the United States' ascendancy over European artistic dominance, and the entrance of pop art into canon.

Representation by year

Art

#	Year	Artist(s)	Curator(s)	Show notes	Ref
60th	2024	Jeffrey Gibson	Kathleen Ash-Milby, Abigail Winograd	the space in which to place me, forthcoming, announced July 2023. Commissioned by Portland Art Museum and SITE Santa Fe.
59th	2022	Simone Leigh	Jill Medvedow, Eva Respini	Sovereignty, Leigh was the first Black woman to represent the United States with a solo show.
58th	2019	Martin Puryear	Brooke Kamin Rapaport	Liberty/Libertà
57th	2017	Mark Bradford	Christopher Bedford, Katy Siegel	Tomorrow Is Another Day
56th	2015	Joan Jonas	Paul C. Ha, Ute Meta Bauer	They Come to Us without a Word
55th	2013	Sarah Sze	Holly Block, Carey Lovelace	Triple Point
54th	2011	Allora & Calzadilla	Lisa Freiman	Gloria
53rd	2009	Bruce Nauman	Carlos Basualdo, Michael R. Taylor	Topological Gardens; won Golden Lion for best national pavilion
52nd	2007	Félix González-Torres	Nancy Spector	America
51st	2005	Ed Ruscha	Linda Norden, Donna De Salvo	Course of Empire
50th	2003	Fred Wilson	Kathleen Goncharov	Speak of Me as I Am
49th	2001	Robert Gober	Olga Viso, James Rondeau
48th	1999	Ann Hamilton	Katy Kline, Helaine Posner	myein
47th	1997	Robert Colescott	Mimi Roberts	Colescott was the first Black man to represent the United States with a solo exhibition
46th	1995	Bill Viola	Marilyn A. Zeitlin
45th	1993	Louise Bourgeois	Charlotta Kotik
44th	1990	Jenny Holzer	Michael Auping
43rd	1988	Jasper Johns	Mark Rosenthal
42nd	1986	Isamu Noguchi	Henry Geldzahler
41st	1984	Eric Fischl, Charles Garabedian, Melissa Miller, and others	Marcia Tucker, Lynn Gumpert, Ned Rifkin
40th	1982	Jess, Robert Smithson, Richard Pousette-Dart	Thomas W. Leavitt, Robert Hobbs
39th	1980	Vito Acconci, Christo, Laurie Anderson, and others	Janet Kardon
38th	1978	Harry Callahan, Richard Diebenkorn	Robert T. Buck, Jr., Peter Bunnell, Linda Cathcart
37th	1976	Richard Artschwager, Charles Garabedian, Robert Irwin, Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Robert Motherwell, Ed Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Joel Shapiro, Richard Tuttle, Andy Warhol, H. C. Westermann	Thomas M. Messer, Hugh M. Davies, Sam Hunter, Rosalind Krauss, Marcia Tucker
36th	1972	Diane Arbus, Ronald Davis, Richard Estes, Sam Gilliam, Jim Nutt, Keith Sonnier	Walter Hopps	Arbus, posthumously, became the first photographer to be shown at the Biennale, and Gilliam became the first African-American to represent the United States at the Biennale.
35th	1970	Jasper Johns, Josef Albers, Alexander Liberman, Sam Francis, Ed Ruscha	Lois A. Bingham, Henry T. Hopkins	Over half of the 47 invited artists boycotted the exhibition in protest of the Vietnam War. The boycott hurt the show's credibility. The Smithsonian retreated from international art shows following this threatened boycott.
34th	1968	Leonard Baskin, Edwin Dickinson, Richard Diebenkorn, Red Grooms, James McGarrell, Reuben Nakian, Fairfield Porter, Byron Burford	—
33rd	1966	Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Jules Olitski	—
32nd	1964	John Chamberlain, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella	Alan Solomon	Rauschenberg won the top award for his silkscreen paintings. The award was symbolic of art world power transfer from France to the United States.
31st	1962	Jan Müller, Louise Nevelson
30th	1960	Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Theodore Roszak	—
29th	1958	?	—
28th	1956	35 artists, including Lyonel Feininger, John Marin, Charles Sheeler, Edward Hopper, George Tooker, Jacob Lawrence, Joseph Stella, Georgia O'Keeffe, Mark Tobey, Hedda Sterne, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning	Katharine Kuh	American Artists Paint the City
27th	1954	Willem de Kooning, Ben Shahn	—
26th	1952	Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi	—
25th	1950	John Marin, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Hyman Bloom, Lee Gatch, Rico Lebrun	Alfred Barr, Alfred Frankfurter	Half of the show was dedicated to Marin, a modernist. The curators split the remaining half.
24th	1948	79 artists including George Bellows, Thomas Hart Benton, Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, William Baziotes, Arshile Gorky, Jacob Lawrence, Mark Rothko, Theodoros Stamos, Mark Tobey	?

Architecture

#	Year	Artist(s)	Curator(s)	Show notes	Ref