#GlobalCitizen: Dispatches from the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennial
“Dimensions of Citizenship,” the official U.S. entry for the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, was co-commissioned by the University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on behalf of the U.S. Department of State. I wrote this article for the Fall 2018 issue of the UChicago Arts Magazine.
UChicago Arts in Venice
This past spring, UChicago traveled to Venice with the US Pavilion exhibition, Dimensions of Citizenship. This is an account of that busy and exhilarating weekend. (Read the full text below, or view the magazine spread. View the project website here >>)
During May 2018, faculty and staff from UChicago Arts flew to Venice, Italy for the Biennale Architettura 2018, or the 16th International Architecture Exhibition. Accompanied by our colleagues from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), with whom we commissioned the US Pavilion exhibition, we had the pleasure of representing the United States and the City of Chicago on the world-stage during the Vernissage (preview period) and the public opening of this prestigious biennial.
This year’s exhibition brought together 63 countries and hundreds of architects and artists to consider the year’s theme, FREESPACE, a word which describes a generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the core of architecture’s agenda. The 2018 US Pavilion exhibition, Dimensions of Citizenship, both reflected on this theme by envisioning what it means to be a citizen today, and challenged it by asking about excluded or marginalized populations for whom there is no “free space.”
Dimensions of Citizenship invited visitors to consider what it means to belong, who should be included and how, and in what ways inclusion—and exclusion—is shaped by or reinforced by the places and spaces of our world. Through the lens of architecture, urban design, and built environments, the curators sought to explore and better understand why citizenship is more than a legal status, ultimately evoking the many different ways that people come together—or are kept apart—over similarities in geography, economy, or identity.
As the curators explain in their essay “On Dimensions of Citizenship,” (available at dimensionsofcitizenship.org) it’s crucial to consider the concept of citizenship beyond the confines of spaces and borders, and that movement and transition are integral to a contemporary worldview, citing as examples the ever-changing US immigration policy and the current level of mass migrations and expulsions around the world.
The exhibition was led by curators Niall Atkinson, Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and the College, UChicago; Ann Lui, Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects at SAIC, and co-founder of Future Firm; and Mimi Zeiger, Los Angeles-based critic, editor, and curator, and faculty member in the Media Design Practices MFA program at ArtCenter College of Design. They were joined by Associate Curator Iker Gil, Lecturer in the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects at SAIC, director of MAS Studio, and founder of MAS Context.
As one visitor to the US Pavilion commented, “Citizenship is very complicated.” It expands well beyond one’s passport or national identity, and is simultaneously larger and smaller than the borders of a country. When we peer into a doorway but hesitate to step inside, what we’re truly doing is wondering if we’d be welcomed as a citizen in that space—Will I belong? The US Pavilion exhibition went a step further: Will I belong, and how will I know?
Through commissioned projects from seven different architecture practices, film and video artworks, and Form N-X00—a series of images and responsive texts from an international group of artists, designers, and scholars on how inclusion and exclusion are spatially constructed—Dimensions of Citizenship exhibited the ways that architects, landscape architects, designers, artists, and writers explore the changing form of citizenship: the different dimensions it can assume (legal, social, emotional) and the different dimensions (both actual and virtual) in which citizenship takes place. The works on display were wide-ranging and sometimes elusive in their interpretations, which is what today’s conditions seem to demand. More often than not, the spaces of citizenship under investigation in the exhibition were marked by histories of inequality and the violence imposed on people, non-human actors, and ecologies.
As the exhibition detailed, citizenship and the built environment are intrinsically linked. This inseparable relationship calls for architects and designers to intentionally and thoughtfully consider how their work supports—or even creates—forms of belonging.
“Our exhibition features spaces and individuals that aim to manifest the democratic ideals of inclusion against the grain of broader systems: new forms of “sharing economy” platforms, the legacies of the Underground Railroad, tenuous cross-national alliances at the border region, or the seemingly Sisyphean task of buttressing coastline topologies against the rising tides,” the curators say.
Each practice’s commissioned work explored a different spatial scale: Citizen, Civitas, Region, Nation, Globe, Network, and Cosmos. These scales, from body to city to heavens, positioned citizenship as a critical global topic, paying homage to Charles and Ray Eames’ Powers of Ten film and the telescopic way that they represented and showed the affinity of the smallest and the largest points of our existence.
Throughout the Vernissage (May 24 & 25), the themes of the exhibition were explored through a variety of programming, conversations, tours, and performances. This is a personal reflection on what it was like to be on the ground—to be a citizen, for a short time, of a global village in the heart of Venice.
—Ronia Holmes
Associate Director of Communications for UChicago Arts and the Logan Center
Arrival - Wed May 23
After an uneventful flight from Chicago to Venice, the UChicago team spent the better part of two hours winding our way through customs at Venice Airport Marco Polo. Though something of an ordeal on top of jetlag, it gave us the opportunity to meet with fellow commissioners and exhibitors from other countries’ pavilions, as well as tourists who were excited to visit the Biennale for the first, third, or—in one case—the tenth time. I had the pleasure of chatting with three generations of a single family who were visiting not only Venice for the first time, but their first-ever biennial exhibition. By the time the conversation ended, the family was planning another first—a trip to Chicago.
Finally, with our passports stamped, we took a water taxi to our hotel, situated on one of Venice’s picturesque canals. With the dulcet tones of the gondoliers serenading their passengers filling our rooms, we bid one another buona notte–good night—and settled in for a night of much needed rest and rejuvenation.
Day 1 - Thu, May 24
The 24th began hot and humid, but that in no way diminished my excitement after more than a year of work to see the US Pavilion open. Every Vernissage kicks off with press conferences, in which journalists from all over the world hustle between pavilions—notepads, cameras, and voice recorders in hand—to tour the exhibitions and speak with curators. And I do mean hustle: the Giardini, the biennale’s central space, hosts 29 permanent national pavilions. That’s 29 separate exhibitions, to say nothing of the projects and presentations in the Biennale’s sister space, the Arsenale, and autonomous related events taking place throughout all six sestieri—or neighborhoods—in Venice.
For those who are mathematically or architecturally inclined, that’s 182,986 sq. ft. of exhibition space between the Giardini and Arsenale alone (nearly 3.2 American football fields). And no matter how much or how little of that square footage you are able to cover, navigating the Biennale takes stamina, both physical and mental. The ambitious UChicago and SAIC teams learned that firsthand as the weekend went on.
Nestled in the Giardini, the US Pavilion was built in 1930 and designed by William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich, as a Palladian-style structure—a form of architecture derived from the designs of Venetian architect Andrea Palladio. The U-shaped building was inspired by Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, with a towering rotunda and a brick façade fronted by imposing columns. The influence is even more obvious when standing in the courtyard and looking up at the structure. The building is owned and maintained, on behalf of the United States, by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. There are four interconnected galleries inside the building, arranged around the central rotunda. From the US Pavilion courtyard, we could wave to our neighbors Israel, Denmark, and Sweden/Norway/Finland, who share a pavilion.
While the Giardini can, initially, be confusing to navigate, the US Pavilion was hard to miss—its dome was wrapped in screaming neon green.
We set-up our courtyard with comfy chairs, but our press conference ended up being standing room only. You could feel the excitement building as the appointed time—11am—approached. No one was deterred by the hot, bright sun beating down; attendees who couldn’t find a spot under the canopies of trees simply fanned themselves or shaded their eyes with programs as US Pavilion representatives took the stage.
Speakers included Karole Vail, Director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection; Kelly Degnan, Deputy Chief of Mission, US Embassy in Rome; Elissa Tenny, President, SAIC; Robert Zimmer, President, UChicago; US Pavilion Curators Niall Atkinson, Ann Lui, and Mimi Zeiger; and other participating authorities. The remarks spoke to the powerful partnership between UChicago and SAIC, the talent of our curators and artists, the position of the City of Chicago as an architectural icon and its rich culture, and, most importantly, how the US exhibition sought to examine a fundamental question of life: where, and how, do I belong?
President Zimmer, in particular, spoke to that point. To paraphrase his speech: “The built environment is not simply a collection of objects—through its nature, it helps define belonging and citizenship.” This ideal is evident in UChicago’s focus on urban architecture and design, and how these disciplines contribute to public policy, politics, and culture.
The UChicago and SAIC teams moved through the crowd as the remarks were given, taking photos and videos on our phones to share on our social media channels. Venice is seven hours ahead of Chicago; while our university colleagues and fellow Chicagoans slept, we joined in a thundering standing ovation to mark the opening of the US Pavilion. We hoped our candid pics and short vids would show our strong city and complicated but beautiful country that we were representing them well.
A toast to celebrate the US Pavilion exhibition opening took place immediately after the press conference, with a crowd of supporters and stakeholders, Pavilion staff, commissioners, advisory group members, curators, and others. As a team, we lifted our glasses of prosecco to join in a cheer. Curators’ tours filled the afternoon, led by Atkinson, Lui, and Zeiger.
The US Pavilion was absolutely packed the rest of the day, with crowds inside the building sometimes so thick that we had to meter the entrance to ensure every visitor would have enough room to walk through, around, and, in the case of Studio Gang’s “Stone Stories: Civic Memory and Public Space in Memphis, TN”—helmed by Chicago architect Jeanne Gang—on the exhibition. Inside of the rotunda, the Transit Screening Lounge showed a collection of film and video works. The Dimensions of Citizenship globe arched up above, following the internal contours of the dome.
Outside of the building, visitors could contribute to a collaborative installation by Chicagoans Amanda Williams, Andres L. Hernandez, and Shani Crowe. At one point, Crowe—whose hair-braiding work can best be described as coiffure sculptures—braided a portion of the installation, called “Thrival Geographies (In My Mind I See a Line).” Eventually, one visitor also braided a small part, and then another visitor, and then another. There were no signs or instructions at this installation; visitors watched and learned from others who went before them.
It was no small undertaking to bring Dimensions of Citizenship to life. From concept to opening, this was an exhibition over a year in the making. As the UChicago and SAIC teams walked through the exhibition, greeting visitors and taking pictures, I couldn’t help but pause on occasion to smile at my colleagues. I was proud to be there representing the US, and proud to be part of the Biennale and the international community that made it happen.
Later in the evening, from 5-7pm, at Università Ca’Foscari in Venice’s Cultural Flow Zone, an opening for the exhibition “Designer Artist Citizen Site: Exploring Belonging” was held. The show, organized by SAIC faculty Iker Gil and Ann Lui and coordinated by Heidi Metcalf, responded to, expanded, and challenged the themes and pieces in Dimensions of Citizenship. It included work from 20 SAIC graduate and undergraduate students, from across the school’s disciplines and degrees, capturing a range of interdisciplinary media and methodologies. The exhibition examined the topic of citizenship through the lens of emerging student art practices—critical and from the front lines, both fierce and fragile. Themes explored issues including immigration, ecology and the agency of plants, nationalism and national identity, queer spaces and violence toward queer people, and forms of belonging produced by architecture and urbanism.
Over a planning breakfast one morning, prior to the Biennale, my SAIC communications colleagues explained their school’s concept of “Citizen Artist,” as reflected on their website: “Citizen artists recognize that their work in the studio and the classroom is not separate from the culture we live in, the politics we negotiate, and the society we build together.” This student-led exhibition really drove home that concept, and it was a fantastic opportunity to see young artists display their works at the Biennale.
This long and hot, yet thrilling day culminated in a very cool preview party, hosted by the Guggenheim Museum, from 7-9pm. Preview parties are a staple of the Biennale, and the majority of the international pavilions host some type of private celebration to mark the first day.
The party was held in the garden of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection art museum on Venice’s Grand Canal. Once the home of American mining heiress Peggy Guggenheim, the eighteenth-century palace now houses modern art ranging from Cubism to Abstract Expressionism, the Nasher Sculpture Garden, and a dangerously bewitching gift shop (I bought many souvenirs).
The grounds are also the final resting place of Peggy Guggenheim and her fourteen beloved dogs. It’s something of a tradition for visitors to the museum to photograph the plaques above the pebbled space under which their ashes are interred. Though I didn’t take any pictures, I did take in the setting from nearby benches and a gazebo; as I waited for the evening’s program to begin, I relaxed in the gardens with a book about communicating modern art (purchased from the gift shop).
The Guggenheim Party is the crowning event of the US Pavilion during Vernissage. It is an opportunity for the several dozen people who make it possible for the US to participate in the Biennale to let loose their hair and party down. While there are, of course, speeches and toasts and glasses of prosecco, the real purpose of the night is to mingle, thank our many supporters, congratulate and recognize the entire team, and enjoy refreshments while taking in the expansive collection housed by the museum.
Though the weather during Vernissage was often blistering and heavy, that night gave us balmy air and a sky clear enough to see stars, with a light breeze blowing from the Grand Canal. The evening was wonderful, from the smartly dressed guests and the finger foods to the dancing, laughter, and joy—it perfectly captured how meaningful this all is to and for the teams that represent the United States.
I found it particularly striking to walk through the galleries and corridors of the Collection and see other guests taking in the artworks. The UChicago team was composed largely of faculty and staff members from UChicago Arts, and to see how people from all over the world engaged with the art in this Collection—from excitement to confusion, with audible gasps or quiet contemplation—was a heartening and poignant reminder that yes, the arts are truly universal and can deeply impact lives.
Day 2 - Fri, May 25
I woke to another sticky morning in this breathtaking city, but even on just my second day, I was acclimated. Getting around Venice requires a lot of walking, walking, and more walking, interspersed by the occasional treat of a vaporetto—or water bus—ride, where, if you’re fast enough, you can snag a spot along the ship’s rails to enjoy both the breeze from the water and the magnificent views of the city passing by.
The UChicago and SAIC teams had the morning free to explore Venice before heading to the US Pavilion for the 2pm inaugural performance. I took the opportunity to visit Murano, the Glass Island of Venice. Murano is actually a series of islands connected by bridges, and it’s famous for its Venetian glass. I took a tour of the Museo del Vetro—the Murano Glass Museum—and took in a demonstration of glassblowing at one of the local glassworks. I spoke to local artisans in various shops about their craft, and learned a little about the economic importance of the Biennale to the artists and tradespeople on Murano. At a studio where I bought a lovely glass sculpture depicting an aquatic scene, one of the studio owners told me that he liked the Bienniale tourists because, in addition to appreciating the aesthetics of glass art, “they appreciate the discipline [of making glass art] too.”
The second day of Vernissage is nowhere near as demanding or packed as the first, which can be best characterized as “press and parties day.” On Friday, the pavilions began a series of programs with events intended to augment the exhibitions and give Vernissage guests opportunities for deeper engagement.
The US Pavilion’s inaugural program, “We Lost Half the Forest and the Rest Will Burn This Summer,” featured a ceremonial performance by interdisciplinary arts collective Postcommodity. The Native American collective is comprised of Raven Chacon (Navajo), Cristóbal Martínez (Cherokee), and Kade L. Twist (Cherokee). The ceremony, rooted in both Indigenous and contemporary ritual, was a one-hour experience of the collective’s artistry.
Postcommodity’s work blends Southwestern rasquache electronic music with Western classical instruments into an experimental soundscape that renders, in clear auditory beats, the destabilization of natural environments and the destruction of communities due to global markets and colonization. Dressed in tribal and Southwestern regalia, Postcommodity’s performance took audiences through cyclical desert drought from the view of its flora and fauna.
For me, experiencing this soundscape was jolting, alarming, and discombobulating—but weirdly soothing. Deserts, like all environments, have a life rhythm, which often include periods of drought. Postcommodity’s performance demonstrated that these cycles are becoming increasingly arrhythmic due to climate change. The cadence in their soundscape did not speak to whether climate change was human-caused or not—rather, it demonstrated that desert ecologies are disrupted, and that disruption has significant and often negative consequences for plant and animal life. What I found most intriguing about the soundscape was that, no matter the point in the cycle, there was always pattern. Even in the anxious cycles of destruction—of loss and decay—there were measurable moments. To my mind, the fact that a pattern is discernable means that it is interruptible—the cycle can be broken, and it can be repaired. All is not lost.
The Postcommodity performance drew me in with the comfort of rhythm—patterned, predictable—while simultaneously jarring me out of complacence. In many ways, it was the audible companion to SCAPE’s “Ecological Citizens,” an installation inside the US Pavilion that examined the delicate relationship of interspecies interdependence and Earth’s regional landscapes.
At 5:30 that evening, UChicago and SAIC threw a shindig to celebrate their commissioning partnership. The reception was held at the site of a US Pavilion partner exhibition, “The Architecture of Memory” by Paula Crown, commissioned and curated by Dallas Contemporary Director Peter Doroshenko. This sculptural exhibition included SOLO TOGETHER (2016), which used numerous plaster cast Solo cups—those red plastic cups that are a staple of barbecues and picnics all over America—to “address ideas of displacement, collective memory, and political conscious.” Other works on display included CHALICE (2018) and Venetian Blinds (2018).
Guests enjoyed flutes of prosecco as they toured the exhibition in Studio Cannaregio, followed by a series of brief remarks by Paula and the representatives of the two schools.
I stood in the crowd with my SAIC communications colleagues to listen to the speeches. When one of the team members whispered “Look up there!” we all tilted our heads to see a Venetian resident hanging out the window of his apartment above the gallery, observing the goings-on in the gallery’s courtyard below. This was not an unusual site in Venice—the nature of Venetian architecture, and the way the city is built, almost always ensured that citizens of the city could be part of our events.
The gentleman in the window saw us looking and waved at us. We raised our glasses in greeting.
“Citizenship at the regional level can be about relationships, in which human societies understand their relationship to ecological systems not as source extraction and consumption, but of mutually constitutive relationships.”
After Vernissage: The Public Opening (May 26-28)
Saturday, May 26th marked the public opening of the Biennale Architettura 2018. The day’s events at the US Pavilion included the symposium Civitas at Large: A Public Conversation, and Performing Citizenship, a participant roundtable. Both events took place in the US Pavilion courtyard.
The morning began with Civitas at Large. Co-hosted by the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation at UChicago, and SAIC, the symposium’s moderators and project co-directors, Bill Brown and Jonathan Solomon, asked its panelists of curators and artists, as well as attendees, to consider what role cities and regions have played in the making of modern citizens, and highlighted the work of UChicago and SAIC scholars, artists, and architects.
Later that afternoon, Performing Citizenship brought US Pavilion exhibitors together for an open discussion about the nature of citizenship. Moderated by Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman, the roundtable examined how, among a surge of anti-immigrant sentiment, citizenship can be redefined from a purely legal concept to a practical one.
Performing Citizenship was the first event of Citizen Lab, a forum for workshops, performances, and discussions focused on themes of identity and belonging and the role architecture plays. The crux of this mini-symposium, as I saw it, seemed to be that both in theory and practice, democratic citizenship goes beyond the rights, duties, and privileges bestowed by a government. Rather, to be citizen of a space is about how we perform our obligations—legal, economic, and cultural—both with and in relation to those who are not part of our group yet with whom we share a space. Further, the conversation asserted that architects and designers have a responsibility to engage political subjects, and should be mindful of how the spaces they create can either support or undermine cooperative citizenship among diverse and disparate groups.
The latter point really struck a chord with me. Having traveled all of my life, I’m particularly sensitive to the architecture of places. While my appreciation has generally been aesthetic—I love Gothic architecture, Chinese siheyuan houses are my favorite type of home, and I think we all deserve a decorative fountain—I have been more cognizant in the last few years of how the design of a space both welcomes and repels, includes and divides. Performing Citizenship got me thinking that, perhaps, UChicago Arts could commission a series of essays on how the intentional and organic aspects of the architecture of Chicago (the Loop, the Dan Ryan, the shoreline) have defined belonging in the city.
The big event of the late afternoon was the opening of the CitizenSHIP program, a traveling event series that took place across select sites in Venice and highlighted the city’s history and the current realities of being a Venetian citizen.
The first event in the series, Ecological Citizenship, ferried guests to La Certosa Island for a walking tour of the island’s wetlands. Hosted by curator Niall Atkinson, landscape architecture firm SCAPE’s Kate Orff, CitizenSHIP program director Jerome Chou, and local scientists, Ecological Citizenship brought individuals up close to the impact of climate change on Venice’s lagoon, the threats faced by the city of rapid sea level rise and coastal erosion, and how Venetians are working to combat those forces and strengthen the endangered landscapes on which their city is dependent for survival. Atkinson explains:
“The fragile balance between fresh water coming from the rivers that empty into the lagoon, mixing alluvial material with the salt water of the sea, is part of what makes these wetlands unique and a support for the diverse flora and fauna that have developed in the lagoon. Venice has managed this balance to its advantage for a thousand years, however, modern industry and technology, shipping and mass tourism, has disrupted this balance.”
The day was hot and sunny, and the island had little shade. Some guests already discovered that the umbrella is an excellent companion in Venice and held them overhead as they ambled about the island, listening intently to Atkinson, Orff, and the scientists. Walking along Certosa means walking on shells, mud, rocks, broken pottery, bits of concrete and other materials that have crumbled from walls and man-made structures on the island that separate people from the natural landscape. While some parts of the island were lush and green, it was easy to see where high nitrogen rates, boat waves from tourism-driven water traffic, pollution, and other issues had impacted the island.
Our attention was particularly drawn to the salt marsh. Once, marshes encompassed an expanse of over 2700 sq. miles; now, marshes encompass a mere 38.
SCAPE’s installation in the US Pavilion not only speaks directly to eco-citizenry but will actually contribute to efforts to stabilize and replenish salt marshes. At the end of the biennale, the elements of their installation, “Ecological Citizenship,” will be deployed on Certosa. Part of a collaborative project with the Università di Bologna and the Italian Institute of Marine Sciences, the ecosystem architecture erected by SCAPE in the US Pavilion will help regenerate marshlands.
The event concluded with a commission—a reimagined musical performance of a traditional song from the Italian Marriage to the Sea ceremony, performed by local musicians Moulaye Niang, Peace Diouf, Matteo Toso, Alvisse Seggi, and Adriano Lurissevich. The crowd gazed out over the marsh as the musicians played. The hosts invited guests to contemplate the first time they fell in love with the sea. After the performance, guests then walked to a small garden for a discussion and reception accompanied, of course, by refreshing glasses of prosecco.
The following day, Sunday, May 27, Shani Crow activated “Thrival Geographies” with a live soundscape performance. BLACKWOMANSPACE: A Performative Primer. As part of the performance, which took guests on an abstract journey through the complex history of African-descended Americans, Crow braided thick tufts of red, green, and black material (the colors of the Pan-African flag). The performance not only spoke of the importance of Black spaces in which Black people are both space-owners and space-participants, but gave context to why spacial sovereignty matters to groups still struggling with socioeconomic inequities.
Crow’s performance was followed immediately by a dialogue with her co-collaborators Amanda Williams and Andres Hernandez. In conversation with guest moderator Stephanie Cristello, Director of Programming at EXPO CHICAGO, the dialogue analyzed how citizenship, gender, and race intersected with art and architecture, and how Black women have been both molders and navigators of spaces during the historical and modern struggles experienced by Black Americans.
There were two more US Pavilion events that afternoon, but I elected to spend my final afternoon in Venice exploring as many as possible of the Pavilions I hadn’t yet seen—and revisiting a few that had stuck with me.
The Israel Pavilion’s exhibition, “In Statu Quo: Structures of Negotation,” was riveting. The exhibition illuminated the geopolitical context of the Holy Land, and through five case studies and truly awe-inspiring displays, led visitors through how groups involved in centuries of conflict maintain a fragile peace on a shared pilgrimage site. Though settlement divisions and strict schedules of use have been largely successful in preventing clashes, what was most affecting for me was viewing a color-coded model of the city that showed the population divides based on religious affiliation. Though the model demonstrated how certain areas of the city were the “property” of distinct religious groups—Jews here, Muslims there, Christians over that way—the architecture of the city itself was a labyrinth of stairs and alleys bleeding into one another, through the entirety of the city. At the end of the exhibition’s carefully laid out trail of ancient history and modern politics is a video. The video, taken in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, shows Muslims and Jews dressing and undressing the space with the religious artifacts during the twenty days each year when the shrine changes hands.
It seemed only natural that the Israel Pavilion should be right next to the US Pavilion. In many ways, the US Pavilion was an exploration of a concept of broader citizenship, one that went beyond governments, sociopolitical affiliations, and geographic boundaries and, instead, embraced a citizenship that was founded on the notion of being better, together. The Israel Pavilion was, in some ways, that concept in action—however tenuous, however fraught, there in the Holy Land, people of different worlds have managed to build a place where they are all citizens together.
