Venice, 9 – 16 September 2018
The international festival dedicated to the art of glass returns with more than 180 different events including exhibitions, guided tours, conferences, workshops, performances and educational activities.
Comune di Venezia, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Fondazione Cini/LE STANZE DEL VETRO, Istituto Veneto and Consorzio Promovetro Murano present the second edition of the festival that from 9th to 16th September will involve all the main institutions in the city, with several new additions.
From 9 to 16 September 2018, more than 150 participants, with a total of over 180 events across Venice, Mestre and Murano, will take part in the second edition of The Venice Glass Week, the major international festival dedicated to the art of glass, conceived to celebrate the artistic and economic resource for which Venice is famous around the world.
The event is promoted by the Town Council of Venice and conceived by three of Venice’s principal cultural institutions with considerable experience and expertise in the field of glass – Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti – along with the most important trade association, the Consorzio Promovetro Murano, which also manages the Vetro Artistico® Murano trademark of the Veneto Region. This year’s edition has again attracted a large number of participants, with a 20% increase over the first year’s festival.
Hundreds of applications were originally submitted for review and selection by the curatorial committee that was introduced this year, chaired by the Venetian glass historian Rosa Barovier Mentasti, and including critics and curators Chiara Bertola and Jean Blanchaert, journalist and editor of the German magazine Neues Glas Uta Klotz, and chemist, university teacher and expert in the composition of glass materials Marco Verità. The high volume of applications, from foundations, art galleries, museums – among which we note the participation for the first time of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Palazzo Fortuny and Museo di Storia Naturale -, cultural institutions, universities and advanced education institutes, as well as glass furnaces, companies, artists and private Italian and foreign collectors, confirms the dynamism and vitality of Venice’s cultural scene, and provides a strong indication of the local and international interest in the field of glass.
The rich and expansive programme for The Venice Glass Week festival will involve varied and widespread events across the district, which this year also extends to the mainland, with Mestre now one of its main centres, along with Venice and Murano. The events, most with free entrance, will all have artistic glass as their main theme and be aimed at audiences of all ages: exhibitions, guided tours, conferences, seminars, prize-giving ceremonies, film screenings, educational activities, parties, drinks receptions, open studios and a non-competitive night-time race around the candle-lit streets, canals and glass-furnaces of Murano.
CA’ PESARO – GALLERIA INTERNAZIONALE D’ARTE MODERNA’S PROGRAMME
Installation
Giberto Arrivabene – Sleeping Putto, a glass sculpture
From 9 to 16 September 2018, 10am-6pm, closed on Mondays.
In its role as a decorative centrepiece, a tenderly posed marble putto with a particularly sweet expression has always kept watch over the Arrivabene family table. Inherited from the Papadopoli family, who were famous collectors, it is probably from the circle of Bartolomeo Ferrari (1780-1844). The little figure has now been replicated in Murano glass thanks to a complex lost-wax casting process previously tried and tested by Giberto Arrivabene with other sculptural masterpieces. The new version will be exhibited during The Venice Glass Week 2018 at Ca’ Pesaro in an intriguing dialogue with the museum’s collection.
Lecture
Classic Timeless sculpture, the eternity of glass
Ca’ Pesaro – Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna
13th September 2018, 5pm
Gabriella Belli, overall Director of the Venice Municipal Museums network, will talk in conversation with Adam Lowe, founder of FACTUM ARTE, a sector leader in the sphere of digital reproduction and facsimile creation, along with Giberto Arrivabene, glass designer, who has adapted the age-old techniques of lost-wax casting to create glass replicas of the masterpieces of the past. The question of historic and modern copying was also explored in a special project – A World of Fragile Parts – curated by the Victoria & Albert Museum, at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Discover Musei Civici di Venezia’s complete programme >
For information and for discover general programme:
