The U.S. Pavilion at the 2005 Venice Visual Arts Biennale hosts Los Angeles-based artist Ed Ruscha.

Mr. Ruscha's exhibit, inspired by U.S. painter Thomas Cole's cycle of five works painted for the New York Historical Society, is entitled The Course of Empire.

While Mr. Cole used his cycle of paintings to express his concern about the coming age of mechanization, Mr. Ruscha's exhibit revisits five black and white canvases of imaginary Los Angeles industrial sites painted in 1992, and responds to them with a set of five new color paintings. The contrast between the original five paintings, and the ones in which Ruscha documents the changes in the past thirteen years at those earlier sites, leaves judgment about progress to the viewer, but offers clues as to how the U.S. has evolved in the intervening period.

The Biennale opened on June 12, and will remain open to the public until early November.

Attendance at the official launch of this year's U.S. Pavilion.

Mr. Ruscha with U.S. Commissioner for the Venice Biennale, Linda Norden, to his right. In addition to her role coordinating the U.S. official presence at the 2005 Venice Biennale, Ms Norden is Associate Curator for Contemporary Art at Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum.

Native American performance artist James Luna, a member of the Luiseño Tribe of California Mission Indians, is representing the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian in an "a latere" or collateral exhibit at the Venice Biennale.
In the two photos above, Mr. Luna performs "Emendatio", a performance dedicated to a Luiseño leader named Pablo Tac who, in the 1830s, was sent to Rome to learn Western ways and Catholicism, but died before he could return to his people.

U.S. Ambassador to Italy Mel Sembler visits the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
In this photo, Ambassador Sembler speaks with U.S. Commissioner Linda Norden about the exhibit by painter Ed Ruscha.

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