In a sweeping move that’s sending shockwaves through the contemporary art world, President Trump has withdrawn the United States from the Venice Biennale, calling the prestigious exhibition spotlighting the artists of more than 80 countries from around the world “too diverse.”
Issued today, April 1, the executive order titled “Restoring Blandness to American Art and Protecting Our Nation From the Radical Influence of Pavilions” calls for “a return to showcasing the great art of this country in a context-free void” and “definitely not in a liberal European swamp, surrounded by all the other, much shittier countries.”
“Once widely respected as a propaganda machine for such luminaries as Hitler and Mussolini, the Venice Biennale has in recent years become a dumping ground for woke ideology,” Trump’s executive order says, citing an article by an obscure conservative art critic named Dan Kissass.
Trump added that Venice has “WAY too much water, probably more water than anywhere else, ever.”
The US Pavilion was built in 1930 at the height of the Colonial Revival style, a time Trump lauded as “the golden age of American architecture.” According to the new mandate, the neoclassical structure will be disassembled and rebuilt on the White House lawn as a steakhouse called Well Done, funded by the former salaries of 24,000 federal workers cut by DOGE.
Amid rising tensions between Europe and Washington, Italy’s far-right prime minister cheered Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Venice Biennale and said she would soon follow suit, telling the newspaper Il Facho that her government would relocate “not just the pavilion but the whole country out of Europe if JD Vance — merda, I mean God — wills it.”
Senior White House officials confidentially told Hyperallergic that Trump would reverse course on the mandate if the US Pavilion was granted the entirety of 450,000-square-foot Giardini, which the president said he would consider sharing with Israel.