Over the last decades, Venice has consolidated its leadership in presenting international contemporary culture, and today the lagoon city seems to have earned a world role as the quintessential venue for contemporary culture.
This evolution is not moving counter to its great and historic artistic tradition, but together with it. The increasing number of visitors confirms the presence of a public seeking the historic, as well as one that favours the contemporary, which tells us that this extraordinary cocktail of art events is the true driving force of Venice’s new image in the world. The large number of contemporary art enthusiasts reveals year after year a very positive growth trend, but this is not (as one might think) only due to the presence of the preeminent art exhibition, namely the Biennale.
Now over a century old, but still at the vanguard of the global debate on contemporary art, it seems that the Biennale itself also benefits from the presence of other eminent Venetian institutions active on the scene, each with outstanding proposals and events. Among those that have been at the forefront in recent years are the Fondazione Pinault, the Fondazione Cini and its Stanze del Vetro, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, the Gallerie dell’Accademia, the Fondazione Querini Stampalia and the regional museums, but also the many “non-institutional” entities that contribute to creating a tight network of events and projects in the contemporary arts, broadening exponentially the horizon of our critical perspective and striving to continually provide fresh initiatives.
The MUVE Contemporaneo project began in 2013 precisely so that the Fondazione Musei Civici could participate at the forefront of this new direction in artistic and creative planning for the city. This is achieved by exploiting the enormous historical and artistic resources available in the public collections and juxtaposing them in dialogue with contemporary experimentation, or, more accurately, by creating a “short circuit” between past, present and future, above all for the inhabitants of this city of water and land, who in the daily consumption of contemporary culture may glimpse the emergence of a new identity.
All this serves to project the city into the future, as it bears with it the great history of its past.
Gabriella Belli
Director Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia
Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace)
Museo Correr
Ca’ Rezzonico – Eighteen Century Venice Museum
Palazzo Mocenigo
Palazzo Fortuny
Murano Glass Museum
Burano Lace Museum
Centro Culturale Candiani in Mestre
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