Robert Lazzarini will bring newly produced works originally conceived for the United States Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale to Boston this fall, giving American audiences a chance to encounter part of an ambitious national presentation that collapsed before it could be publicly announced. The solo exhibition opens Sept. 30 at the MassArt Art Museum and will remain on view through Feb. 28, 2027.

The museum says the exhibition will reimagine familiar symbols of American identity through Lazzarini’s signature use of mathematical distortion. Installed in the Sandra & David Bakalar Gallery, the show will be free and open to the public. MassArt has not yet released a full checklist of works, but it has confirmed that the presentation includes new pieces developed for the Venice project.

That connection gives the Boston exhibition unusual institutional and political weight. Lazzarini and independent curator John B. Ravenal had prepared a proposal titled “History Maker” for the U.S. Pavilion, a high-profile platform for American contemporary art and cultural diplomacy. The State Department selected their project in 2025, according to reporting by The Washington Post and The Associated Press, but the arrangement unraveled before the selection was formally announced.

The breakdown centered on the project’s institutional sponsorship and financial exposure. The University of South Florida had agreed to serve as the partner institution, a role that typically includes administrative responsibility and fundraising support. Contract negotiations later collapsed amid concerns about the multimillion-dollar obligations attached to the pavilion. The proposal was withdrawn, and sculptor Alma Allen was eventually chosen for the 2026 U.S. presentation in Venice.

Lazzarini’s Boston show does not recreate the U.S. Pavilion as an architectural installation, and the museum has not said that every object proposed for Venice will be produced. Still, the exhibition provides a public afterlife for a body of work developed around the highly charged question of how the United States represents itself through historic objects, civic imagery and national myths.

The original “History Maker” proposal envisioned a broad sweep of American material culture, drawing on objects from the 16th century to the present. The plan included distorted versions of an eagle flag finial, an early American lectern, a monumental statue of George Washington, military funeral flags, a Civil War-era cannon and the 1507 Waldseemüller map, often described as the first known map to use the name “America” for the Western Hemisphere. Other proposed elements included a bear trap and an alligator image associated with early narratives of wilderness and settlement.

Those objects were chosen not merely as illustrations of history but as containers for authority, sacrifice, conquest, religion and state power. In Lazzarini’s practice, recognizable forms are subjected to complex geometric transformations that make them appear stretched, twisted or spatially unstable. The resulting sculptures can look familiar from one angle and impossible from another, forcing viewers to move around them and reconsider what they think they recognize.

The artist’s proposal describes a process that combines digital modeling with traditional fabrication. Source objects are scanned or reconstructed, altered through three-dimensional software and then remade using materials associated with the originals. A flag remains fabric; a historic statue would remain bronze; a musical instrument would retain the woods and fittings of its conventional counterpart. Surface wear and patina are also preserved or simulated, strengthening the tension between historical authenticity and visual disorientation.

That method is central to the Boston exhibition’s focus on governance, nationalism and representation. Rather than replacing American symbols with entirely new imagery, Lazzarini changes their underlying geometry. The distortion becomes a way to question whether symbols that appear stable are, in fact, fixed—and whether their meanings remain consistent as political conditions change.

One work already associated with the exhibition is “American flag ii,” a 2022 piece shown in the museum’s promotional materials. Its stars and stripes bend into an irregular, undulating field, preserving the flag’s colors and recognizable components while disrupting its familiar rectangular order. MassArt says the objects in the show collectively address the construction of national mythologies and the histories embedded in public symbols.

The timing is especially pointed. The exhibition arrives during the United States’ 250th anniversary year, when museums, government agencies and cultural organizations are reassessing how the nation’s history should be presented. The failed Venice commission also remains part of a broader debate about the administration of the U.S. Pavilion, including the role of the State Department, changes to selection language and the reduced involvement of the National Endowment for the Arts in the 2026 process.

Allen’s official Venice presentation, “Call Me the Breeze,” opened in May after a compressed production schedule. His appointment followed the collapse of Lazzarini’s plan and drew scrutiny over the selection process. The Boston exhibition will not displace or compete with that official pavilion, but it will allow viewers to compare two very different ideas about national representation: one realized in Venice and another redirected into a U.S. museum.

MassArt is presenting Lazzarini’s exhibition alongside a separate solo show by Banu Cennetoğlu. The pairing reflects the museum’s fall focus on systems and symbols often treated as fixed, including national iconography, human rights and governing institutions. Lazzarini’s contribution is the more directly American of the two, using the visual language of monuments, flags, maps and civic objects to examine how collective identity is built and maintained.

For Boston, the exhibition also turns an international cultural-policy controversy into a local museum event with broad public access. The MassArt Art Museum, located at 621 Huntington Avenue, identifies itself as the city’s only free contemporary art museum. By placing the Venice-related works in a teaching museum rather than a national pavilion, the presentation may encourage a more open-ended encounter—less a declaration of what America is than an invitation to examine how its symbols acquire power.