Organizers said that last year’s exhibition there by Simone Leigh cost about $7 million. But curators say financial support from the State Department has not kept pace with the increases. “We consider private-sector support a strength in our approach to this program, as it creates broad engagement with a wide variety of stakeholders,” a spokesman for the State Department said. “I think there is an understanding even before a selection is made that if you apply, then you have the ability to fundraise,” said Brooke Kamin Rapaport, artistic director and chief curator at Madison Square Park Conservancy and the commissioner of the $3.8 million Venice exhibition by the sculptor Martin Puryear in 2019. Robert Storr, who directed the 2007 Venice Biennale and is a former dean of the Yale School of Art, said the rising costs of shipping and other logistics make the system unsustainable.

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Persons: William Adams Delano, Chester Holmes Aldrich, Robert Rauschenberg’s, Robert Gober’s, Simone Leigh, “, ”, Brooke Kamin Rapaport, Martin Puryear, Robert Storr Organizations: State Department, Venice Biennale, Park Conservancy, “, Yale School of Art Locations: United States, Venice, Italy, Madison