A popularity contest is replacing the Venice Biennale\u2019s Golden Lion awards.<\/p>\n
The event\u2019s top awards, usually given by an expert jury, are typically thought to bestow a place in art history to winners. But this year the winners will be chosen by the public, because the panel of experts resigned last week<\/a> after months of pressure on the Biennale for allowing some countries embroiled in violent conflicts to participate, including Israel and Russia.<\/p>\n The international art event hasn\u2019t always given top awards: A 1968 student protest led to a nearly two-decade pause on the tradition. But winners have included Jasper Johns (1988), Marina Abramovic (1997) and Simone Leigh (2022). In the most recent edition, in 2024, a group of New Zealand artists known as the Mataaho Collective won a Golden Lion, as did the Australia pavilion\u2019s exhibition for the artist Archie Moore.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what to know for this year\u2019s prizes.<\/p>\n How does this year\u2019s voting work?<\/p>\n According to the Venice Biennale Foundation, which administers the awards, visitors are eligible to vote if they have visited both exhibition venues at the Giardini and Arsenale, which house the centerpiece exhibition and the national pavilions. Eligibility will be verified through a ticketing system, and each ticket holder may cast one vote for each of the two awards.<\/p>\n The Biennale said in a statement<\/a> that it would present two Visitors\u2019 Lions because of the jury\u2019s resignation and \u201cthe exceptional nature of the current international geopolitical situation.\u201d<\/p>\n The statement emphasized that all national participants included in this year\u2019s Biennale are eligible for the awards, \u201cfollowing the principle of inclusion and equal treatment among all participants.\u201d<\/p>\n Why did the jury resign?<\/p>\n Last week, the five-member prize jury resigned amid backlash over its decision to exclude artists<\/a> from countries whose leaders were being investigated by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, and after the artist representing Israel said he was considering legal action.<\/p>\n The Biennale often reflects the geopolitical state of the world, and during this year\u2019s previews have already been demonstrations supporting Palestinians and protesting the inclusion of the Russia pavilion<\/a>, which many European countries, including Italy, have criticized because of the continuing war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n What could go wrong?<\/p>\n The voting will use technology that was established for entry into the Venice Biennale, but this is the first time that the art event is administering a public choice award in this format.<\/p>\n There are concerns that it could be susceptible to vote rigging or to government influence, which has been an ongoing concern for the Eurovision Song Contest<\/a>. Last year, Eurovision updated its voting rules<\/a> to \u201cdiscourage disproportionate promotion campaigns,\u201d according to the European Broadcasting Union, which hosts the event, \u201cparticularly when undertaken or supported by third parties, including governments or governmental agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A popularity contest is replacing the Venice Biennale\u2019s Golden Lion awards. The event\u2019s top awards, usually given by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2849,3477,14971,14041,8,9,14042,7,15890],"class_list":{"0":"post-26046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-awards","10":"tag-decorations-and-honors","11":"tag-demonstrations","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-protests-and-riots","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-venice-biennale"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116538232192180825","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}