The smoke had barely cleared.
On the morning of May 6, Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova led a march of around 200 women activists through the rain-soaked streets of Venice while pink smoke flares still stained the air outside the Russian pavilion in the Giardini. A day later, thousands more gathered near the Arsenale, waving Palestinian flags and chanting slogans that bounced off the old brick walls of the rope-making factory that has housed avant-garde ambition for decades. By the time the 61st Venice Biennale opened formally to the public on May 9, it had already become something other than an art exhibition. It had become a referendum on what art institutions are actually for.
The resignations and the introduction of visitor-led awards mark a significant departure from long-standing Venice Biennale traditions, adding further uncertainty to an edition already shaped by political tension and institutional upheaval. That upheaval runs deeper than the protests alone. This is the story of a Biennale that lost its curator before she could see a single brushstroke hung, and then lost its jury before a single vote was cast.
The Curator Who Is Still Present
Koyo Kouoh, the Cameroonian-Swiss curator and director of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, was appointed to lead the exhibition in late 2024 as the first African woman to direct it. Born in Cameroon in 1967 and raised in Zurich, Kouoh had built an influential international career, from founding the Raw Material Company in Dakar to shaping the programme of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair. She died unexpectedly in May 2025, but her exhibition proceeded as planned, realized by the curatorial team she brought together.
The 61st Venice Biennale is titled In Minor Keys and was originally conceived by the late Cameroonian-Swiss curator. The title she had been preparing to make public was announced on May 21, 2025, eleven days after her death. The phrase was hers; the conception was hers; the participating artist list of 110 was set before she died. The project culminated in a significant meeting held in Dakar at RAW Material Company, the cultural center Kouoh herself founded, and led by her just weeks before her death. That experience remains emblematic of the way she conceived curatorial practice: grounded in relationships and open to the unexpected.
The exhibition Kouoh designed is not a confrontation. It is almost its opposite. It proposes a radical reconnection with the natural role of art in society: the emotional, the visual, the sensory, the affective, the subjective. Faced with accumulating crises, Kouoh offered neither a commentary on current world events nor an escape, but a return to the sources of the artistic experience. The show is structured around a set of loose, overlapping motifs: Shrines, Procession, Schools, Rest, and Performances. The jury, in their own statement, aligned themselves with Kouoh's vision: "In refusing the spectacle of horror, the time has come to listen to the minor keys, to tune in sotto voce to the whispers, to the lower frequencies; to find the oases, the islands, where the dignity of all living beings is safeguarded."
The irony is not subtle. An exhibition designed to lower the temperature arrived in the middle of the art world's highest fever.
No Jury. No Consensus.
The international jury of the 61st Venice Biennale resigned on April 30, just nine days before the world's oldest contemporary art fair was due to open, amid an escalating political storm over the participation of Israel and Russia. The five-person jury, presided over by Brazilian curator Solange Farkas and comprising curators Zoe Butt, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Marta Kuzma, and Giovanna Zapperi, stepped down without detailed explanation from the Biennale's organisers.
The resignation followed a statement the jury had published on April 23 announcing that it would not consider countries whose leaders face outstanding arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. Though no nations were named directly, the declaration was widely understood to apply to Russia and Israel.
The Biennale Foundation and the Italian government joined the pushback on principled grounds, arguing that the jury's decision injected politics and censorship into an institution that is meant to remain neutral. Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco held his position throughout. "Venice is meant to be a place of encounter, not separation," he said. "The pavilions should be judged by the works on display in them, not by the passports of the artists."
The European Union moved to withdraw a 2 million euro grant to the Biennale over Russia's participation, and Italy's culture minister Alessandro Giuli sent ministry inspectors to the Biennale's Venice headquarters to gather information about the Russian pavilion's reopening. Russia's ambassador to Italy attacked the European criticism as "brutal dictatorship" and claimed that Europe was building "a new Iron Curtain" against Russian culture.
In the absence of a jury, the institution improvised. The Biennale announced that two Golden Lion prizes, for best artist and best national pavilion, will instead be awarded by popular vote among ticketholders who visit both the Giardini and the Arsenale venues. The prize ceremony, originally scheduled for opening day, has been moved to the exhibition's closing day on November 22. The Biennale stressed that all officially listed national pavilions will remain eligible for the new awards, citing "the principle of inclusion and equal treatment among all participants."
Art critics were swift to note the complications embedded in that phrase. Moving the Golden Lion to a public vote is either radical democratization or institutional abdication, depending on who you ask. One prominent arts writer, reflecting on the change in a widely circulated online essay, described it as "handing the keys to Eurovision," a sentiment that echoed a remark made near the Israeli pavilion during preview week. "If the prize is given by the public, it's as if the Biennale came to Eurovision. It's not a professional institution after that," said Sergei Malykh, a Russian artist showing at this year's event, according to the Times of Israel.
The Streets, the Pavilions, the Strikes
Violent scuffles broke out between riot police and protesters at the 61st Venice Biennale following a culture workers' strike that closed 27 pavilions. More than 1,000 protesters moved through Venice towards the Arsenale, waving Palestinian flags and chanting "no art-washing" and "artists, united, will never be defeated."
According to the Art Not Genocide Alliance, a total of 27 pavilions took part in full or partial closures, described as "an unprecedented level of participation in the history of the biennale." In the Giardini, the Dutch and Belgian pavilions were closed all day, as was the highly popular Austrian pavilion presenting Florentina Holzinger's Seaworld Venice. The British pavilion briefly shuttered before midday, and in the Arsenale, the Latvian pavilion closed for several hours. The pavilions of Austria, Catalonia, Ecuador, France, Egypt, Iceland, Korea, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, and Switzerland all closed at various times during the Biennale's final preview day.
The art collective Pussy Riot protested Russia's return by storming the country's pavilion in bright pink balaclava hats, set off smoke flares, and chanted the slogan "No Putin in Venice." The Russian pavilion drew particular attention after returning to the Biennale for the first time since 2022, despite widespread criticism over Moscow's war in Ukraine. Ukraine responded with its own presence: Ukrainian artists stood by a truck that had brought a statue of an origami deer from the war-ravaged eastern front to the Biennale's storied Giardini.
The work at the center of the Israeli controversy deserves attention in its own right. The Israeli pavilion, guarded by armed police at various points throughout preview week, presented the exhibition Rose of Nothingness by sculptor Belu-Simion Fainaru. Fainaru is a Romanian-born sculptor who moved to Israel in the 1970s. His legal team filed formal warnings to the Biennale and to Rome. Fainaru's lawyers reportedly wrote to the Biennale, Italy's culture ministry, and the office of prime minister Giorgia Meloni, claiming discrimination and threatening to take the matter to the European Court of Human Rights.
Fainaru told the Judische Allgemeine newspaper he was "pleased" to hear that the jury had resigned. "The fact that, according to the jury's decision, I shouldn't participate in the competition because I'm a Jewish artist from Israel, struck me as discriminatory and also racist. I know the experience of discrimination and antisemitism from Romania, where I was born."
His own position on the broader debate remained consistent. Fainaru told Artnews in January: "Dialogue is the best way to express ourselves." His installation, he said, offered "a vision of hope and human feeling, the total opposite of boycott and exclusion, giving space to everybody."
Among those who chose the opposite approach were many of the most recognised names in the exhibition. Dozens of artists announced their withdrawal from awards consideration. Laurie Anderson, Alfredo Jaar, and Zoe Leonard were among the high-profile signatories who backed the statement of withdrawal, along with such national pavilions as France, Ecuador, and the United Arab Emirates. Indian photographer Sohrab Hura, whose film The Coast was showing in the Arsenale, articulated the sentiment with brevity. "The jury acted like any conscionable people would have done. I'd rather support them than hope for some award," Hura told The Art Newspaper.
Nika Grabar of the Nonument Group, the artist and research collective representing Slovenia in the Arsenale, put it plainly: "What this strike reflects is a deep structural crisis for the Biennale. We're not trying to demolish the Biennale, but to save it."
Divisions Within the Protest
Not everyone within the art world found the strike clarifying. The strike exposed divisions among participants, with some artists and pavilion teams weighing solidarity with the protest movement against the rare opportunity the Biennale offers to platform their own political and cultural messages on an international stage. Several artists who signed neither the ANGA letter nor the withdrawal statement nevertheless expressed discomfort with both sides of the argument in conversations with journalists. The gallerist Jessica Kreps, who had attended the Biennale intermittently for two decades, framed it this way: "The Biennale should be a place for respectful dialogue. In many ways, that freedom of expression and critique is inherently democratic and very much part of what being American is about."
Prominent British artist Anish Kapoor described the atmosphere as "a politics of hatred and war," a phrase that resonated widely across the coverage of the opening week.
This kind of discord is not without precedent at the Giardini. In 1974, following the military coup in Chile, the Biennale's socialist then-director Carlo Ripa di Meana made the unprecedented decision to cancel the national pavilions for that year. He opted instead to focus the event on democracy and social change rather than national representation. The national pavilions made a comeback in 1976. In 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, the curators and artists of the Russian Pavilion resigned, stating there was "no place for art when civilians are dying." The Russian Pavilion remained padlocked and guarded by Italian police for the duration of that fair.
What distinguishes 2026 is the simultaneity of crises. Russia's return and Israel's contested presence arrived together, inside a Biennale already in institutional mourning, already navigating the absence of its appointed curator. This year's Biennale is being delivered without its appointed curator, Koyo Kouoh, who died in May 2025. Her curatorial team has continued her plans, with works across the exhibition referencing her influence and legacy.
La Biennale has confirmed that the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement will not be awarded for the 2026 edition, as Kouoh was unable to finalise the selection before her death. It is a small but telling absence. The Biennale usually uses the Lifetime Achievement prize to plant a flag to say: this is what enduring practice looks like. In 2026, no flag was planted.
What remains, six weeks later, is a public vote still accumulating anonymous preferences in the inboxes of ticketholders across the Giardini and Arsenale. Voting remains open for the duration of the event, until November 22, 2026, with the final results to be announced at the close of the exhibition. What also remains is the art itself: Kouoh's carefully assembled vision of connection and repair, 111 artists reaching toward something quieter than the headlines that engulfed them. Whether the audience will be able to hear those minor keys above the noise of everything surrounding them is the question that will sit with this edition long after the crowds have gone home.
The lagoon, at least, holds no opinion. It just keeps rising.
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