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- Emails between Venice Biennale organizers and the Russian Pavilion commissioner reveal plans to close the latter pavilion to the public after the vernissage.
- Matthew Goudeau has become San Francisco’s first executive director of arts and culture.
- Republicans argue the attack at the press gala on Saturday justifies President Trump’s planned White House ballroom.
The Headlines
RUSSIA ROW. The organizers of Venice Biennale and the Russian Pavilion commissioner discussed plans to open the latter’s exhibition during the Biennale’s vernissage and then close it to the public once the international exhibition debuts on May 9, according to multiple reports in Italian media. The “reduced” participation appears to have been a solution for complying with European sanctions that prohibit financial support or direct collaboration with state-backed Russian entities, according to Italian media Open, which first published emails between the Biennale Foundation president Pietrangelo Buttafucoco, Biennale general director Andrea Del Mercato, and Russian Pavilion commissioner Anastasia Karneeva. Those messages outline a project to have Russian artists perform in the pavilion from May 5–8 and then install multimedia documentation of those performances, to be seen from windows outside the closed pavilion. The messages date back as early as June 2025 and suggest the Biennale organizers worked to help Russian artists obtain visas. In an Il Giornale report yesterday, Biennale organizers insisted they “acted in strict compliance with applicable national and international laws and within the limits of its own powers and responsibilities. No prohibition of European sanctions were circumvented, as stated by journalistic reports…We are therefore astonished that such distorted reports emerged from the review of internal documents.”
GOUDEAU AT THE GOLDEN GATE. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has just hired Matthew Goudeau as the city’s executive director of arts and culture, a job that didn’t exist until now, reports KQED . The newly created, “complex” position will entail serving as the mayor’s “principal advisor” on arts and culture policies and overseeing the city’s three public art agencies: the SF Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, and the Film Commission. Goudeau is the current chief development officer for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The announcement comes amid painful closures of arts institutions and schools around town. “Our arts community has been holding a lot of anxiety because of many uncertainties in the sector, largely centered on the city’s role in the arts ecosystem. This hire was among the top concerns, and now we can cross it off our list,” said Rachelle Axel, executive director of Artists for a Better Bay Area, speaking to reporters yesterday.
The Digest
After the attack at a press gala in Washington D.C. on Saturday, Republican leaders are calling for the swift approval of President Trump’s planned White House ballroom, due to safety reasons. [The New York Times]
North Korea has built a “Memorial Museum of Military Operations Abroad and Combat Successes” in honor of the country’s soldiers who died fighting with Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. [State news agency KCNA]
Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s 25-foot sandstone Buddha sculpture, in homage to statues destroyed in Afghanistan by the Taliban, has opened on New York’s High Line Plinth. [ArtDependence]
Artist and curator Liu Ding and art historian Carol Yinghua Lu will curate the 19th edition of the Istanbul Biennial, running September 18 to November 14, 2027. [Artforum]
Philippe Fouquié, co-founder of a beloved multi-disciplinary art space La Friche la Belle-de-Mai in Marseille, has died at 82. [Le Monde]
The Barjeel Art Foundation has begun construction on a new modern and contemporary art museum in Sharjah, UAE, with plans to open by January, 2028. [ArtAsiaPacific]
The Kicker
BROKEN MIRRORS. Tehran-based sculptor Aref Montazeri’s career was on an upward trajectory until bombs began to fall around him nearly two months ago, reports the Wall Street Journal . The 39-year-old artist was finally gaining recognition abroad for his contorted, geometric sculptures made of thousands of hand-cut mirror shards reaching as high as 27 feet. Now, however, simply getting art supplies is a challenge, as his life and career have been upended by the regional war. A planned exhibition at New York’s Leila Heller gallery has been indefinitely postponed, and his own travel is severely restricted. But the artist says he has not given up. “I always arrive at the studio early in the morning,” he said. “Nothing, not even war, should prevent us from pursuing what we aim for.” He later added: “I may not be able to control everything, but the studio remains a place where I can hold on to hope.”
