Open Call Issued for Applications for U.S. Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale

The United States Department of State’s Cultural Programs Division in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has posted an open call for applications for the U.S. presentation at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, which will be held from May 24 through November 23, 2025.

As announced in December, Italian designer and educator Carlo Ratti, founding partner of architecture and innovation studio CRA – Carlo Ratti Associati, will serve as curator of the forthcoming exhibition. The theme of the biennale will be unveiled by Ratti and the exhibition organizers in the coming months.

Specifically, the State Department’s call is seeking a curatorial team for the U.S. Pavilion, a role that comes with a grant-based award of $375,000 (with $125,000 set aside for pavilion management, including staffing, maintenance, and operations). Eligible applicants include not-for-profit architecture, art, and cultural organizations with 501 (c)(3) status as well as educational institutions. Designed by William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich, the U.S. Pavilion—also referred to as the American Pavilion—is a three-room, Palladian-style structure completed in 1930 as the ninth pavilion erected on the Venice Giardini. Differing from most other government-owned national pavilions, the venue has been privately owned since its inception (the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has maintained ownership since 1986 when the building, which is operated by the Venice-based Peggy Guggenheim Collection, was acquired from longtime owner, the Museum of Modern Art).

Past applicants to be selected to helm the U.S. Pavilion for the architecture biennale include Cleveland-based gallery SPACES (“Everlasting Plastics,” 2023), Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner of the University of Illinois, Chicago (“American Framing,” 2021), and a curatorial team assembled by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago (“Dimensions of Citizenship,” 2018).

Applications are due April 1.