One must acknowledge that the Vatican possesses an intelligence rarely found in other institutions of its scale. It understood, before most states and before almost any corporation, that the narrative an institution projects is not altered by press releases or campaigns, but by culture. It grasped that if one wishes to cease being perceived merely as a guardian of the past, one must produce the present. And that contemporary art, with its prestige, its international circuit, and its capacity to generate memorable scenes, is the most effective instrument for that purpose.
The sequence is coherent and has deep roots. In 1973, Paul VI inaugurated a collection of modern art in the Vatican Museums, acknowledging that the Church had distanced itself from the living art of its time and wished to restore that dialogue. Since 2013, the Holy See has held a pavilion at the Venice Biennale; since 2018, it has also participated in the architecture edition. The latest editions demonstrate an increasingly refined touch: in 2025, a restoration transformed into a work of art and care transformed into architecture; in 2026, a pavilion on listening curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, one of the most influential curators in the world. This is not an institution that decorates with art. It is an institution that thinks with art, and that uses it to converse with the present in a language that the sermon can no longer reach.
I state this with gravity because it is the starting point and because it is a fact: culture transforms narrative. It does not accompany or illustrate it; it reprograms it. A millennial institution that takes its seat at the table of contemporary art ceases to be read as a relic and begins to be read as an interlocutor. That power is real, and those who deny it have failed to understand how culture functions.
Yet it is precisely because that power is real that it cannot be viewed with innocence. If art truly transforms the perception of those who employ it, then one must always pose the same question: at whose service does that transformation work, and at whose expense is it produced? And there is a case, within this very Vatican sequence, where that question ceases to be abstract and becomes highly concrete.
En 2024, el pabellón de la Santa Sede en Venecia se instaló dentro de una cárcel de mujeres en activo, la prisión de Giudecca. Se titulaba «Con i miei occhi» («con mis propios ojos»). Para visitarlo había que reservar con antelación, pasar un control de identidad, entregar el teléfono y el pasaporte, y recorrerlo guiado por las propias internas, veinte de las ochenta reclusas que se ofrecieron para ello. Reunía a artistas de primer nivel, desde Maurizio Cattelan hasta Claire Tabouret. Y su tema declarado era la mirada, la humanidad y los últimos.
On paper, it is brilliant, and a portion of the critics received it with emotion: some described the visit as sincere and significant, and the guides, according to some chroniclers, claimed to find something therapeutic in the work. I do not doubt this. But there is a contradiction at the heart of the apparatus that other critics noted immediately, and which cannot be dissolved: a pavilion that preaches visibility while operating in secrecy. One enters with one's mobile phone confiscated, unable to photograph, unable to ask the guides anything personal, unable to document or contradict what one sees. The experience of openness was entirely administered by the institution that offered it.
Y ahí aparece lo que más me interesa. Dos curadores italianos acusaron al proyecto de convertir la prisión en decorado y a las presas en material de una operación de imagen, señalando que algunas contribuciones —poemas, apariciones en un film, las propias visitas guiadas— no habrían sido remuneradas. Los organizadores lo negaron: dijeron que la participación era voluntaria, formativa y orientada a la reinserción. No tengo forma de dirimir ese pleito, y no voy a fingir que la tengo: no hay contratos públicos, ni nóminas, ni una sola voz de las internas que no pase por el filtro de la institución. Lo que sí puedo constatar es la estructura, y la estructura es de una asimetría radical. De un lado, una de las instituciones más poderosas del mundo, artistas consagrados, un banco como patrocinador principal, el circuito del arte global. Del otro, mujeres presas cuya libertad de decir que no está, por definición, condicionada por el lugar donde están. Cuando alguien recluido «se ofrece voluntario», la palabra voluntario carga con todo el peso de esa situación.
I am not suggesting it was exploitation, because I cannot prove it and because there were, surely, inmates for whom the project signified something positive. I am stating something more difficult to contest: that the scene of humanity and openness the pavilion produced for the Biennale public was constructed upon bodies that could not choose with full freedom to be there, and that this is a price the operation does not name. The vulnerability of those women was not the subject of the pavilion. It was its material.
Nada de esto es exclusivo del Vaticano, y sería deshonesto sugerirlo. La Bienal de Venecia lleva un siglo siendo infraestructura de legitimación: el pabellón español sirvió al franquismo para maquillarse ante el mundo, Arabia Saudí y Qatar la usan hoy para lo mismo. Poner al Vaticano en esa serie no es señalarlo como anomalía, sino entenderlo como un jugador especialmente hábil en un juego que existía antes que él. La palabra que a veces se usa para esto, «artwashing», nació para otra cosa, para la especulación inmobiliaria, y aplicarla aquí sin más sería forzarla. Pero el mecanismo de fondo —usar el prestigio del arte para reposicionar una imagen— es reconocible, y no deja de serlo porque quien lo emplee tenga dos mil años de historia.
I return to the beginning. The Vatican has grasped something true and valuable: that culture possesses the power to alter how one is perceived. The issue is that this power is neither neutral nor without cost. It transforms the narrative of those who wield it, certainly, but that transformation is always paid for by someone, and it is not always the one wielding it. The question an artist should pose to any institution that wraps itself in contemporary art—be it the Vatican, a bank, or a State—is not whether it does so well, for it usually does so very well. It is this: when culture enhances your narrative, who has borne the burden to ensure that enhancement?
About the open conversation
This text does not accuse the Vatican of anything that cannot be substantiated: I acknowledge the intelligence of its use of contemporary art, I attribute criticisms to those who authored them and responses to those who provided them, and I do not present as proven that which sources do not prove. I am interested in a more general question, which I have been exploring for some time: when a powerful institution uses art to transform its narrative—and it succeeds—it is prudent to ask at whose expense that transformation is produced. Should anyone wish to intervene from the perspectives of art criticism, the ethics of participatory practices, cultural management, or work with vulnerable populations, this notebook remains open.
Sources
Musei Vaticani and Vatican News: Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art (inaugurated by Paul VI in 1973); participation of the Holy See in the Venice Biennale since 2013.
La Biennale di Venezia, 'Holy See': Con i miei occhi (2024, Giudecca prison), Opera aperta (2025), The Ear is the Eye of the Soul (2026).
Independent critical reception of the 2024 pavilion: Julie Baumgardner (Hyperallergic, 29 April 2024); Emily Watlington (Art in America, 18 April 2024); Jo Lawson-Tancred (Artnet News, 17 June 2024, including the objections of Francesco Urbano Ragazzi and the response from the organisers).
Claire Bishop, 'The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents' (Artforum, 2006), on the ethics of participatory art.
Stephen Pritchard, 'The Artwashing of Gentrification and Social Cleansing' (2020), on the origin and limitations of the term.
Comparables of cultural diplomacy at the Biennale: Agar Ledo Arias on the Spanish pavilion during the Franco regime (Quintana, 2022); Anastasia Shanaah on Saudi Arabia (2026); permanent pavilion of Qatar (ArtReview, 2025).
Associazione Antigone, report on Italian prisons (2024): data on overcrowding.
Corrected on 27 September 2026: a reference to Artlyst that could not be located has been removed.