Martin Puryear Chosen for U.S. Pavillion at Venice Biennale

Like athletes who make the team at the Olympics, the selection of an artist to represent the United States at the 58th Venice Biennale next spring is a big deal in the art world. Now, at a time when museums nationwide are trying to diversify their collections and exhibitions, comes the announcement, for the second time in a row, of an African-American artist: the 77-year-old sculptor Martin Puryear.

During a 40-year career, Mr. Puryear has been acclaimed for large scale works in wood, stone and metals that display strong craft traditions and explore issues of ethnicity, culture and history. Mr. Puryear’s “Shackled” (2014), for example, is a black iron sculpture with a metal hoop at the top, reminiscent of the cuffs once used aboard slave ships.

“Martin is one of the most important artists working today,” said Brooke Kamin Rapaport, the deputy director and senior curator of the Madison Square Park Conservancy, which commissioned and will curate the United States Pavilion at the Biennale. “His work confronts contemporary issues and he has by now influenced generations of artists in our country and internationally.”

Mr. Puryear will create new, site-specific pieces for the pavilion, a Palladian-style 1930 structure, including sculpture for its galleries and an outdoor installation in the forecourt. A spokeswoman said the artist was traveling on Tuesday and unavailable for interviews (which he typically avoids). The Biennale will run May 11 through Nov. 24, 2019.

In 2017, the United States chose the Los Angeles abstract painter Mark Bradford to represent the country.

With the involvement of the Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that programs Madison Square Park in New York, this is said to mark the first time that the United States Pavilion will be organized by an institution focused exclusively on public art. In 2016 the Conservancy and Mr. Puryear collaborated on his monumental sculpture “Big Bling” for that park, a 40-foot high construction of plywood and chain-link fencing with a gold-leaf shackle.

“People notice great contradiction in that sculpture,” Ms. Rapaport said. “It was stately and overwhelming and it was rough-hewed and it was refined and, for an artist who created work out of chain-link fence, it was significant because he chose to use a conventional urban material.”

Mr. Puryear’s selection was first reported by ArtNews and Jerry Saltz of New York magazine before it was officially confirmed by The New York Times on Wednesday.

The State Department is contributing a $250,000 grant toward the pavilion, as it has in previous years. The artist is selected by the nonpartisan Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions, a panel of scholars, professors, and artists convened by the National Endowment for the Arts.

In conjunction with the pavilion, the Conservancy and Mr. Puryear will work with underserved youth through Studio in a School in New York and Istituto Santa Maria Della Pietàin Venice.

Darby English, an art history professor at the University of Chicago, will serve as the project’s exhibition scholar; Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects will serve as exhibition designers. 

Read the rest at the link here.