At the Venice Biennale, the Trump administration bypassed traditional art experts to select the U.S. pavilion, handing control to inexperienced organizers and mandating that artwork promote patriotic values while banning DEI themes. The resulting exhibition by sculptor Alma Allen was widely dismissed by critics as superficial and devoid of substantive artistic vision. This political interference ultimately revealed less about American culture and more about the government's desire to avoid a clear artistic statement.
**THE DAILY CHRONICLE**
*Extra! Extra! Read All About It!*
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### **THE OLYMPICS OF DAUBERS!**
#### **Gondolas, Gallerinas, and Government Grafts: How Uncle Sam’s Art Show in Venice Became the Biggest Ballyhoo of the Decade!**
**VENICE, ITALY**—*By Our Special Traveling Correspondent.*—Great Scott, gentle reader! Every fleeting two years, nigh on a hundred nations dispatch their most wizardly geniuses to the storied canals of Venice for the grandest shindig in all of Christendom: the Biennale, known to the high-falutin’ as the “Olympics of Art.” It is nothing less than high-toned cultural diplomacy wrapped in canvas and stone—a chance for every sovereign power to stand upon the world stage and shout just who in tarnation they take themselves to be.
Now, let it be known right off the bat: this reporter is no high-hat connoisseur. The closest I ever came to curating a gallery was pinning little Junior’s charcoal sketches to the icebox. But finding myself drifting through this floating Italian burg on a family holiday, a burning curiosity took hold. What on earth, I wondered, were the foreign gents and flappers gathering from the four corners of the globe taking away as Uncle Sam’s grand statement?
#### **PET FOOD VENDORS AND WASHINGTON CLIQUE-MEETINGS!**
By now, the tabs have already spilled the beans on how our Yankee maestro was plucked from obscurity. In days of yore, such a choice was left to the eggheads and be-monocled experts of the National Endowment for the Arts. But pshaw! This season, President Coolidge—beg pardon, President Trump’s—State Department seized the reins, shoving the old guard aside!
Who got the keys to the glorious US Pavilion, you ask? Why, a fresh-faced non-profit run by a certain Mrs. Jenni Parido! A dame with not a lick of museum experience to her credit, whose previous high-water mark in the world of commerce was peddling high-priced nosh for lapdogs down in Tampa, Florida!
And that ain't all, folks! Word on the Rialto is that the selection stew was stirred by none other than Erin Scavino, the State Department’s Director of Art in Embassies—a former contestant on Mr. Trump’s famous *Apprentice* picture-box show, and the blushing bride of the President’s White House deputy chief of staff, Mr. Dan Scavino. Talk about your backroom hocus-pocus!
#### **DOWN WITH THE NEW, UP WITH THE DOG BISCUIT VENDOR!**
Lest anyone forget, the powers-that-be in Washington slapped down a brand-new rulebook for the shindig. The decree? Any artwork sent abroad must strictly “reflect and promote American values” and “counter negative stereotypes.” Gone like yesterday’s news was anything smacking of modern-day “DEI” folderol—a sharp turnabout from previous years when championing equity was all the jazz. Why, just look at the last two acts: in 1922—er, 2022—we had Simone Leigh, the first dusky maid to represent the stars and stripes, followed in 1924 by Jeffrey Gibson, our very first solo Indigenous son!
#### **A BUNCH OF ROCKS AND ZERO BALONEY!**
And what did this kitchen-cabinet selection churn out? Behold: Alma Allen’s grand exhibit, dubbed “Call Me the Breeze.” It boasts a couple dozen sculptures of stone, wood, and bronze, most of which bear the dullard's tag of “Not Yet Titled.”
The high-brow critics of the art world took one gander at this marble menagerie and gave a mighty *harrumph!*
The *New York Times* sleuths declared the works displayed “some modest technical facility but no great thought,” adding they looked “fine enough for a South Beach hotel lobby.” A sharp-tongued scribe for *The Atlantic* moaned that the show gave them the sinking sensation of “finished a puzzle that mocked me for solving it.” Meanwhile, over at *Hyperallergic*, a desperate critic swooned over one lone rock simply because it looked like a trapdoor that could “zap me into a better US pavilion in a parallel universe.”
Now, far be it from this humble scribe to give Mr. Allen the leather-strap treatment. He’s just a hard-working sculptor who caught the brass ring, landing the gig of a lifetime on the globe’s most dazzling stage.
Yet, when the curtain fell, the art itself never breathed a peep about what genuine American values are. No, sir! The federal government spilled the beans instead—not through the sculptures, but through the whole circus of red tape they spun to keep from saying a single blessed thing at all.
*Hark! The gondolier calls—more news as it happens!*