Between the Lines

The Biennale 2026 is in a storm of geopolitics, resignations, and uncomfortable questions about where culture ends and complicity begins.

The 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale — In Minor Keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh — runs from Saturday, May 9 to Sunday, November 22, 2026, with a preview on May 6, 7, and 8, across the Giardini, the Arsenale, and various venues throughout the city. It opens, this year, under a cloud that has nothing to do with art.

Koyo Kouoh died on May 10, 2025. She never saw her vision realized. The Biennale has decided to press on with her project exactly as she conceived it — a tribute, and an act of institutional courage. That decision deserves to be acknowledged before anything else.

How It Unravelled

The controversy began with a decision by Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco to effectively facilitate Russia’s return to the exhibition. The Russian pavilion has been closed since 2022, following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. When Buttafuoco moved to reopen the door, the European Union threatened to cut funding to the Biennale, and Italy’s own Minister of Culture, Alessandro Giuli, publicly opposed the move. A rare moment of cross-institutional clarity.

Then came the question that was always going to follow: if Russia — whose leadership faces international condemnation for crimes against a sovereign nation — is welcome back, what about Israel? Its senior officials are also under investigation by the International Criminal Court, this time in connection with the conduct of the war in Gaza, which has now claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives, many of them children. The charge of double standards was not unreasonable.

On April 22, the jury — five women, chaired by Brazilian curator Solange Farkas — responded by excluding both countries from the awards. It was a principled decision, and a politically explosive one.

The Ministry Steps In

On April 29, four inspectors from Italy’s Ministry of Culture arrived at the Biennale to gather information about the jury’s decision. Within hours, the entire jury resigned. They explained, with quiet dignity, that resigning was the only way to remain consistent with their own position. They would not be intimidated into reversing it. So they left instead.

It is worth pausing on that. An arts jury, appointed to assess aesthetic and cultural merit, found itself subject to a government inspection. In a democracy. In 2026.

The Human Weight of These Decisions

The Russian pavilion is not an abstraction. The figures associated with it over the years include individuals with deep ties to the Kremlin — people close to Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s longtime Foreign Minister and one of the architects of its diplomatic cover for the war. Welcoming them back into the family of international culture, even tacitly, is not a neutral act. It offers a veneer of normalcy to a leadership that has ordered the killing of civilians, the destruction of cities, and the deportation of Ukrainian children.

The same logic applies, differently but no less seriously, to Gaza. Whatever one’s view of the conflict’s origins or conduct, the scale of civilian suffering is documented and undeniable. When an institution like the Biennale navigates around that reality for reasons of political convenience, the result is not neutrality — it is a choice with a human cost attached to it.

What the Biennale Can — and Cannot — Do

It helps to understand the structure of the institution before rushing to judgment. The Biennale organizes the central exhibition, selects the curator, manages the main pavilions at the Giardini and Arsenale, and awards prizes. That is where its direct authority lies.

The national pavilions are a different matter. Many countries own their pavilions outright — Germany, France, the United States, Japan, Russia. The Biennale cannot legally evict a country from its own building. In 2022, Russia’s withdrawal was voluntary: its own curators refused to participate because the moral pressure was too great. No one threw them out.

So what could Buttafuoco have done differently? He could not have prohibited Russia from opening its pavilion. But he could have chosen not to legitimize the return — not to signal institutional welcome, not to ease the pressure that had made voluntary withdrawal possible in the first place. Institutional silence, in such cases, is itself a form of policy. He chose a different kind of signal. And given that he is a writer openly identified with the Italian right, appointed in the context of the Meloni government, that signal was never going to be read as neutral.

How It Was Resolved — For Now

With the jury gone, the prizes have been restructured. Two “Lions of the Visitors” will be awarded — one for the best participant, one for the best national participation. All countries present are eligible, Russia and Israel included, on the stated principle of inclusion and equal treatment. The public votes, not a jury.

The awards ceremony, originally scheduled for May 9, has been moved to November 22 — the last day of the exhibition.

The Political Theatre

The reactions were, predictably, self-serving all around. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar took to X to declare that there is no place for politics, boycotts, or antisemitism in the world of culture — a formulation that neatly sidesteps what the jury actually decided and why. Italy’s centre-left PD spoke of an unprecedented institutional crisis. Prime Minister Meloni noted, with careful distance, that the Biennale is an autonomous body.

Geopolitics, governmental pressure, and cultural militancy have collided here in ways that are genuinely toxic — and the Biennale opens on May 9 in anything but a serene atmosphere.

What remains, amid all of this, is Koyo Kouoh’s exhibition. In Minor Keys. Built by someone who is no longer here to see it. It seems right that it should go forward — and that we should try, as we walk through it, to remember what art is actually for.