As questions continue to swirl around Alma Allen‘s US Pavilion for this year’s Venice Biennale, sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud revealed that she was also offered the opportunity to represent the country—and that she had declined it.

News of Chase-Riboud’s decision to say no was first reported by the New York Times yesterday, in an extensive feature by Zachary Small on the rocky run-up to Allen’s choice, which came after the Trump administration removed language about diversity from the application materials. But the article did not quote Chase-Riboud on the matter until a feature on the pavilion that ran in the Financial Times today.