Barbara Chase-Riboud on Why She Declined to Represent the US in Venice
As questions continue to swirl around Alma Allen‘s US Pavilion for this year’s Venice Biennale, sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud revealed that she was also offered the opportunity to represent the country—and that she had declined it. News of Chase-Riboud’s decision to say no was first reported by the New York Times yesterday, in an extensive feature by Zachary Small on the rocky run-up to Allen’s choice, which came after the Trump administration removed language about diversity from the application materials. But the article did not quote Chase-Riboud on the matter until a feature on the pavilion that ran in the Financial Times today. Related Articles “Participating in the 61st Venice Biennale would have been splendid,” Chase-Riboud told journalist Julia Halperin. “Art is the only thing that proves that anything has ever happened in the world. For me, as a world citizen, this was not the moment.” Both papers, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, also reported that another 86-year-old artist, the photographer William Eggleston, had been offered the pavilion and that he, too, declined. Eggleston …
