Sous pression, le jury de la Biennale de Venise démissionne et est remplacé par un vote du public
On April 30, just days before the Venice Biennale's public opening on May 9, the entire international jury responsible for awarding the Golden and Silver Lions resigned. The jury—comprising Solange Farkas, Zoe Butt, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Marta Kuzma, and Giovanna Zapperi—had been caught in a escalating controversy after Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco reinstated Russia, which had been excluded since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The European Union threatened to suspend or cancel its €2 million subsidy if Russia remained included. The jury attempted to exclude countries whose leaders face International Criminal Court arrest warrants, effectively targeting Russia and Israel, but ultimately resigned under pressure from both external diplomatic turmoil and internal institutional opposition to any discrimination between pavilions.
This matters because the Venice Biennale is one of the world's most prestigious cultural events, and the crisis exposes deep tensions between art's universalist ideals and geopolitical realities. The organizers responded by postponing the awards ceremony to November 22 and creating an unprecedented public vote to select winners, with Russia and Israel now fully eligible. The controversy raises fundamental questions about whether cultural institutions can maintain neutrality when hosting nations accused of war crimes, and whether 'dialogue' with such nations legitimizes their propaganda. The situation also highlights the European Union's willingness to use financial leverage to enforce political positions in the art world, setting a precedent for future cultural diplomacy conflicts.