The US Pavilion Wants Your Money
An unusual funding call for Alma Allen’s Venice exhibition, a sculpture at LACMA creates controversy, and join Hyperallergic’s event with Jeremy Frey.
In a twist that sounds straight out of our annual April Fools edition, the American Arts Conservancy — the nascent MAGA-studded nonprofit commissioning this year’s US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale — is fundraising for the exhibition via a “Donate” button on its website. In fact, there’s a lot that’s curious about the financing for Alma Allen’s pavilion. Staff Reporter Isa Farfan has the story.
Personally, I encourage you to skip the pavilion donation and get a Hyperallergic membership instead. For less than 10 bucks, you’ll support our work and get access to exclusive members-only events, like today’s virtual conversation with artist and MacArthur grant winner Jeremy Frey and Hyperallergic Editor-at-Large Hrag Vartanian. There’s still time to sign up here.
It's a news-heavy day. At the newly unveiled LACMA building, a sculpture by Pedro Reyes that recalls his 2021 commission for Mexico City, ultimately rejected after protests from Indigenous and feminist activists, has rekindled questions about agency and representation. Also in LA, the experimental nonprofit The Box shutters after two decades.
Read Eliana Perozo on artist and DACA recipient Arleene Correa Valencia, co-published by Hyperallergic and Next City; Aditya Iyer on Nigerian modernism at the Tate; and more.
The American Arts Conservancy, the nascent nonprofit executing Alma Allen’s 2026 pavilion project, said it received no financial support from institutions. | Isa Farfan
Biographies of Anni Albers and Dorothea Tanning, The Met’s blockbuster “Raphael,” Edward Steichen and his flowers, and more books for art lovers. Shop the annual sale this May.
The first show on the subject in the UK offers an ambitious, if uneven, look at how artists forged a postcolonial identity. | Aditya Iyer
Even a book by a leading expert on the avant-garde artist can’t tell us much about her personal life. | Lauren Moya Ford
Part II: May 6–23. On view at 80WSE Gallery in New York’s Greenwich Village.
Arleene Correa Valencia transforms bark paper and embroidery into a tender reckoning with the reality of being undocumented in the United States. | Eliana Perozo
Gail Weddington on Julie Schneider’s “The Kaleidoscopic World of Amish Women’s Quilts”
In contrast with the institution’s behemoth architecture, its recently unveiled East London branches seem built on a human scale. | Naomi Polonsky
