Art is failing because the people who run it have lost their nerve.
The recent mass resignation of the Venice Biennale jury, purportedly in protest of the International Criminal Court (ICC) cases involving Russia and Israel, isn’t the "brave stand" the art world's PR machine wants you to believe. It is a dereliction of duty. It is a tactical retreat into a safe space of moral grandstanding while the actual vessel for cultural dialogue—the exhibition itself—is left to rot.
For decades, the Biennale has functioned as the "Olympics of the art world." It is a site of friction. It is where nations, even those in the middle of horrific conflicts, are forced to share a few square acres of Venetian soil. By walking away, this jury didn't "protest" power; they handed it over to the bureaucrats and the loudest voices in the room.
The Myth of the Neutral Platform
The "lazy consensus" suggests that by resigning, these jurors are keeping their hands clean. They argue that an international arts organization cannot function while its member states are under ICC investigation.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Biennale is. It has never been a "clean" space. Since its inception in 1895, it has survived two World Wars, the rise and fall of Fascism, and the Cold War. It has always been a messy, political, and often compromised arena.
When you resign, you don’t stop the politics. You just stop the art from being the lens through which we view those politics. If the jury's logic were applied consistently, the Biennale would have been empty for most of the 20th century. Where was this energy during the various illegal invasions, occupations, and human rights abuses of the last fifty years? The sudden discovery of a moral compass that only functions when the ICC gets involved is a sign of intellectual cowardice, not consistency.
Institutional Fragility as a Fashion Statement
We are witnessing the "NGO-ization" of the arts. Curators and jurors now behave like mid-level diplomats rather than cultural provocateurs. They are more worried about their LinkedIn reputations and future grant eligibility than they are about the sanctity of the exhibition.
I’ve spent years in the trenches of high-stakes cultural production. I’ve seen boards collapse and juries dissolve at the first sign of a Twitter ratio. This isn't expertise; it's a panic attack masquerading as a press release.
By citing the ICC, the jury is outsourcing its ethics to a legal body. They are saying, "We don't know how to navigate the complexity of this moment, so we'll wait for a judge in The Hague to tell us what’s right." This is a surrender of the specific power that art holds—the power to exist in the "gray zone" where legalities and simple binaries fail.
The Cost of the "Clean Hands" Doctrine
Let's look at the actual mechanics of what happens when a jury quits.
- The Vacuum of Power: Nature and bureaucracies both hate a vacuum. When the experts leave, the administrators take over. The decision-making process becomes less about the quality of the work and more about risk mitigation.
- The Erasure of the Artist: While the jurors get a round of applause from their peers for resigning, the artists who spent years preparing their pavilions are left in limbo. Their work is now overshadowed by a procedural drama.
- The Precedent of Erasure: If the bar for participation is "unblemished international legal standing," we are headed toward a very small, very boring Biennale. You’ll be left with a handful of tax havens and countries too small to have a military.
Dismantling the ICC Justification
The ICC is a legal mechanism for states. The Biennale is a cultural mechanism for humanity. Conflating the two is a category error.
The jury’s resignation assumes that a national pavilion is an extension of a government’s war cabinet. This is rarely true. Often, the artists representing these nations are the most vocal critics of their own regimes. By shutting down the process, you aren't silencing the generals; you’re silencing the dissenters.
Imagine a scenario where, during the height of the Vietnam War, every international cultural body just shut its doors to the U.S. instead of allowing the era's searing anti-war art to be seen on the global stage. We would have lost some of the most vital critiques of power in history. The current jury thinks they are punishing the state, but they are actually starving the resistance.
The Cowardice of the "Quiet Exit"
If these jurors truly wanted to make an impact, they wouldn't have resigned. They would have stayed.
They would have used their positions to curate the most uncomfortable, challenging, and confrontational Biennale in history. They would have forced the ICC cases into the very fabric of the event. They would have made it impossible for the visitors to ignore the reality of the world.
Resigning is the easy way out. It’s a "quiet exit" that allows you to maintain your social capital without doing the hard work of mediating a global crisis through culture. It’s the ultimate act of privilege: being able to walk away from the table because the conversation got too difficult.
Stop Asking "Is it Ethical to Participate?"
The question itself is flawed. It’s built on the assumption that participation equals endorsement. It doesn't. Participation is an intervention.
When people ask, "How can we have an art fair during a war?" the answer is: "How can we not?" Art is one of the few remaining places where we can look at the "enemy" and see a human being, or look at a tragedy and see its complexity rather than just its body count.
By pulling the plug, the Venice jury has signaled that they don't actually believe in the power of art to handle the "big stuff." They think art is for the "good times"—a decorative luxury that we set aside when things get real.
The New Censorship is Self-Inflicted
We used to worry about governments censoring art. Now, we have to worry about the art world censoring itself through "ethical" withdrawals. This is a much more dangerous trend because it’s invisible. It doesn't look like a book burning; it looks like a polite resignation letter.
It creates a culture of fear where every juror and curator is constantly looking over their shoulder, wondering if their presence on a committee will be "read" as a political statement. This leads to a flattening of the landscape. It leads to safe, "correct," and ultimately meaningless exhibitions.
The Venice Biennale is supposed to be the "Greatest Show on Earth." Right now, it’s looking more like a suburban homeowners' association meeting that's been derailed by a dispute over the color of the curtains.
The Professionalization of Outrage
The art world has become a feedback loop of performative morality. We have confused "taking a stand" with "doing our jobs."
A juror's job is to judge art. It is to ensure that, despite the chaos of the world, the most vital and necessary work is seen. When you quit, you aren't "protesting" the ICC cases; you are admitting that you are no longer capable of doing your job in a world that isn't perfect.
If you can only operate in a world where every participating nation is a paragon of virtue, you aren't an international art expert—you’re a curator of a fantasy.
The Biennale doesn't need jurors who quit when things get tough. It needs jurors who have the stomach to stay in the room when the world is falling apart. It needs people who understand that art is not a reward for good behavior; it is a necessity for survival.
The jury's resignation isn't a victory for human rights. It’s a white flag.
Don't applaud the people who walked away. Demand more from the ones who stay.
