FOUR EXHIBITIONS IN VENICE
Robert Veel
29 August 2023
Travelling to Venice in the next few months? Here’s a brief review of four shows you may not have heard about.
Apart from its historical monuments and unique setting, Venice is well known for its major cultural events, including the Biennale and the Film Festival. But the city also hosts a constantly changing roster of less well-publicized exhibitions, many of them of the highest calibre. Limelight Art’s Travel’s Robert Veel recently visited four brand-new shows. Three of them are taking place in Venice’s surprisingly innovative network of city museums, the Fondazione Musei Civici Venezia (MUVE).
Tony Cragg’s “rational beings” sculptures in the baroque surrounds of Venice’s Ca’ Pesaro museum, a municipal modern art gallery.
Ca’ Pesaro, The Gemma de Angelis Testa Donation
★★★★★
The Ca’ Pesaro, a vast baroque palazzo on the Grand Canal, is home to Venice’s impressive public collection of modern and contemporary art. Collector Gemma de Angelis Testa recently bequeathed 105 outstanding works of mainly late twentieth-century art to the Ca’ Pesaro, which have been judiciously complemented with works by artist Armando Testa, Gemma’s late husband. It’s a who’s-who of contemporary art, with fine pieces by Anselm Kiefer, Anish Kapoor, Marina Abramović, Candida Höfer, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly and many others.
You’ll have to be quick, as the show closes on September 17, but no doubt many of the works will find their way to the ongoing display of the permanent collection in the Ca’ Pesaro. You can find out more here.
An intriguing work by Ai Wei Wei on the theme of justice, at Venice’s Museo Correr.
Museo Correr, Imago Iustitiae (“Images of justice”)
★★★★☆
From fourteenth-century illuminated manuscripts to a stirring work by Chinese contemporary artist Ai Wei Wei, this is a refreshing small show. Venice’s museum of civic history, the Museo Correr, is a quirky mix of art, artefacts and archaeological finds, housed in the former administrative offices of the Venetian Republic above St Mark’s Square. For decades it was a dim and dusty place, but recent efforts have seen a string of captivating small exhibitions, such as this one dedicated to visual representations of the idea of justice over the centuries.
Venice was rightly proud of the way it ensured the rule of law (no matter how unfair some of the laws), and so the city archives are full of beautifully crafted documents and artefacts which celebrate the idea of justice, a selection of which are on public display for the first time.
These have been augmented with thought-provoking contemporary pieces – oligarchical Venice and one-party China make for an interesting comparison! Imago Iustitiae is slated to end on 3 September, but temporary exhibitions at the Correr have a habit of staying around for months, or even years, until the next one is ready to launch. Find out more.
A labelled procession of the doge’s musicians, in Venice’s Palazzo Ducale.
Doge’s Palace, Vita da Doge (Life as a doge)
★★★★☆
The Doge of Venice, elected from among the city’s patrician families, was an elected monarch for life. This curious mix of Byzantine ideas of a semi-divine monarch, and the checks and balances of an elected republican leader, proved a winning combination: the Venetian Republic lasted more than 1,000 years, which is longer than most political systems.
Unless you have a good knowledge of Venice’s political history, trailing through the gilded halls of Venice’s Doge’s Palace can be a confusing and overwhelming experience. This wonderful exhibition, which opened in July this year, is in the former private apartments of the Doge on the first floor of the palace. It provides a richly illustrated and informative account of ‘a Doge’s life’ and will do much to clarify the meaning of the vast monumental spaces on the upper floor.
Among imposing official portraits by Tintoretto and other important artists are illustrations of important state events over which the Doge presided, and all manner of artefacts associated with the operation of the Venetian republic, from voting urns to secret denunciation boxes. I suggest you visit this exhibition on arrival, then take a break in the museum’s café to contemplate before tackling the monumental rooms.
The exhibition is well signed in Italian and English, but information on the Doge’s Palace website is in Italian only at this point. There’s no end date to this exhibition, and one hopes it’s ongoing.
Skating on the lagoon: a charming genre scene from the early eighteenth century, on display in the Fondazione Prada exhibition, “Everybody talks about the weather”.
Fondazione Prada, Everybody talks about the weather
★☆☆☆☆
In a noble gesture, several years back the Prada fashion house took over the decaying Ca’ Corner della Regina on the Grand Canal and converted it to a large exhibition space. In line with Prada’s cutting-edge brand, the exhibitions in the Ca’ Corner are often artistically challenging.
Timed to coincide with the 2023 Architecture Biennale, Everybody talks about the weather picks up on the strong climate change and sustainability themes of this year’s biennale. Its premise is that art has long been concerned with documenting and commenting on the environment.
It juxtaposes a small number of historical landscapes and urban scenes – none of them distinguished – with a hodgepodge of contemporary artists. The curators try in vain to make links between the works, but in the end it’s an incoherent parade of unconnected and underwhelming works, certainly not worth the €14 admission fee.
Worse still, it risks giving visitors the impression that by attending the exhibition and empathising with the fine sentiments expressed in the overlong wall panels, they may actually be doing something about climate change. Click here to find out more, if you must. Runs until 26 November 2023.
Robert Veel leads Venice in Depth, Limelight’s small group, low-season residential tour to Venice in November 2023. He has been teaching and writing about Venice for more than 20 years, and is lucky enough to spend part of each year in his apartment there.