Which exhibitions to see during the Venice Biennale: the 15 most interesting ones

In a few days, Venice is preparing to transform into the beating heart of the world’s contemporary art with the opening of the Biennale. The city, every two years, is transformed into an incredible showcase exhibiting the latest trends and boldest visions of global art, but that’s not all: there are many exhibitions, both contemporary and ancient art, that can be visited in every corner of the city during the months of the Biennale.

How to orient yourself amidst the vastness of artistic proposals that invade calli, campi and palazzi? We accompany you to discover the fifteen most interesting exhibitions not to be missed during the Venice Biennale, to continue to be surprised, inspired and transported, as well as to explore new perspectives and question the very meaning of art in the contemporary context. So here are the exhibitions we have selected for you!

1. Pierre Huyghe at Punta della Dogana

Where and when: Punta della Dogana, March 17 to November 24, 2024

From March 17 to November 24, 2024, Punta della Dogana in Venice is hosting the previously unseen exhibition Pierre Huyghe. Liminal, curated by Anne Stenne. For Punta della Dogana, the French artist will create his largest exhibition ever, transforming the venue into a dynamic medium, a transitory condition where time and space as well as everything that passes through it, visible or invisible, become an integral part of the artworks. A central figure in the search for art’s relations with the nonhuman, Pierre Huyghe (Paris, 1962) adopts, from his earliest works, another perspective than the human-inhuman perspective-to let what lies outside our understanding, outside our possibility of experiencing it, emerge. The artist questions our perception of reality and proposes, through the construction of other possible realities, to become strangers to ourselves.

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2. Marco Polo at the Doge’s Palace

Where and when: Doge’s Palace, April 6 to September 29, 2024

Marco Polo (1254-1324) is certainly the most illustrious medieval traveler, and not only. Venice is dedicating an exhibition to him scheduled from April 6 to September 29, 2024 at the Doge’s Palace, organized in the year that marks the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo’s death. It is a tribute to the man but, above all, a desire to share the suggestions he recounted in his literary work Il Milione: an inexhaustible source of inspiration for scholars, explorers, and travelers of every age.

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3. Jean Cocteau at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Where and when: Peggy Guggenheim Collection, April 13 to September 16, 2024

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection welcomes from April 13 to September 16, 2024 the major retrospective Jean Cocteau. The Juggler’s Revenge dedicated to Jean Cocteau (Maisons-Laffitte, 1889 - Milly-la-Forêt, 1963), curated by Kenneth E. Silver, an expert on the French artist and art historian at New York University. The exhibition aims to focus attention on the versatility-or juggling dexterity-that has always characterized Cocteau’s art and for which the artist was often criticized by his contemporaries. Through more than one hundred and fifty works, from drawings to graphic works, jewelry to tapestries, historical documents, books, magazines, photographs, documentaries and films directed by Cocteau himself, from prestigious international museums such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Nouveau Muséand National de Monaco, the Musée Jean Cocteau, Collection Séverin Wunderman in Menton, as well as important private collections, including the Cartier Collection, the exhibition aims to trace the development of the multifaceted artist’s aesthetic and retrace the main moments of his career.

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4. Willem de Kooning at the Gallerie dell’Accademia

Where and when: Gallerie dell’Accademia, April 17 to September 15, 2024

In conjunction with the 60th Venice International Art Biennale, the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice opens to the public on April 17, 2024 the major exhibition Willem de Kooning and Italy, curated by Gary Garrels and Mario Codognato and open until September 15, 2024. Dedicated to Willem de Kooning (Rotterdam, 1904 - East Hampton, 1997), among the most revolutionary and influential artists of the 20th century, the exhibition aims to analyze for the first time the two periods the artist spent in Italy, in 1959 and 1969, and the strong impact they had on his work, thus delving into the Italian influence on de Kooning’s subsequent paintings, drawings and sculptures in America. The prolonged effect of these two creative periods is evidenced by a selection of works from the 1950s to the 1980s. With some seventy-five works on display, the exhibition aims to be the largest retrospective of the artist ever organized in Italy.

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5. Robert Indiana at the Procuratie Vecchie

Where and when: Procuratie Vecchie, April 17 to November 24, 2024

One of the great names in Pop Art, Robert Indiana (Robert Clark; New Castle, 1928 - Vinalhaven, 2018), is featured in an exhibition running April 17 through Nov. 24 at the Procuratie Vecchie in Venice. The exhibition is presented by the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and titled Robert Indiana: The Sweet Mystery: it is an official collateral event of the 60th Venice Biennale. This exhibition finds its home in the Procuratie Vecchie complex, a place steeped in history, recently restored by renowned architect David Chipperfield, recipient of the prestigious Pritzker Prize. The exhibition aims to be an opportunity to immerse oneself in Robert Indiana’s artistic universe through a perspective that highlights the essential themes of his research, namely spirituality, identity and the human condition.

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6. William Kentridge at the Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation

Where and when: Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation, April 17 to November 24, 2024

For his new exhibition at the Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation in Venice, April 17 through Nov. 24, 2024, South African artist William Kentridge, celebrated for his animated shorts, sculptures, and plays, in collaboration with curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is premiering his new nine-episode video series entitled Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot. Structured in short thirty-minute episodes and originally intended to be made available to the public as an online series, the show is an experiment in physical embodiment and phenomenological experience of the real in the digital age, as well as a reflection on what might be happening in an artist’s brain and studio today.

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7. Eva Jospin at the Fortuny Museum

Where and when: Fortuny Museum, April 10 to November 24, 2024

The Fortuny Museum in Venice hosts the exhibition Selva by Eva Jospin (Paris, 1975), curated by Chiara Squarcina and Pier Paolo Pancotto, in collaboration with Galleria Continua. Eva Jospin’s works, imagined for the occasion, dialogue not only with the historical and environmental context that hosts them, Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, but especially with Mariano Fortuny’s artistic production. A continuous comparison and cross-reference between Jospin and Fortuny on nature, creative and experimental processes. The artist always draws inspiration from nature. Through the use of materials such as cardboard, vegetable elements and fibers, metal parts, fabric, he is able to give life to plastic compositions, even of great volume and with a strong scenographic impact. These are works with a fairy-tale tone, at times mysterious, that evoke or recreate a world that is at the center of his interests: landscapes, trees, plants, branches, leaves, geological formations, pieces of vegetation, architectural structures that invite reflection on various themes, such as creativity, operational and intellectual processes.

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8. Francesco Vezzoli at the Correr Museum

Where and when: Museo Correr, April 17 to November 24, 2024

Francesco Vezzoli arrives in Venice as the Biennale 2024 opens with his exhibition Museums of Tears, the result of a collaboration between the Fondazione Civici Musei di Venezia and the Venice International Foundation. It is a site-specific conceived project by Francesco Vezzoli (Brescia, 1971), hosted in the rooms of the Museo Correr in Venice from April 17 to November 24, 2024. Curated by Donatien Grau, this exhibition is based on Francesco Vezzoli’s long and continuous artistic research, characterized by a dialogue with ancient heritage.

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9. Chiara Dynys at Ca’ Pesaro

Where and when: Ca’ Pesaro - International Gallery of Modern Art, April 20 to September 15, 2024

At the same time as the 60th Venice Art Biennale, the Dom Pérignon Rooms of Ca’ Pesaro - International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice are hosting from April 20 to September 15, 2024 Chiara Dynys’ solo exhibition entitled Lo Stile, curated by Chiara Squarcina, Alessandro Castiglioni, and Elisabetta Barisoni. In the site-related exhibition project conceived specifically for Ca’ Pesaro and promoted by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Chiara Dynys, among the most important contemporary Italian artists, reinterprets the linguistic synthesis of Neoplasticism founded by Piet Mondrian (the De Stijl movement), through a series of new immersive environments, where light and matter redesign the narrative of reality.

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10. Tintoretto at Palazzo Grimani

Where and when: Museum of Palazzo Grimani, April 17 to September 8, 2024

In Venice, the Museum of Palazzo Grimani is hosting the dossier exhibition Tintoretto and Giovanni Grimani portraits in comparison dedicated to the portraiture of Giovanni Grimani, patriarch of Aquileia, curated by Toto Bergamo Rossi, Daniele Ferrara and Valeria Finocchi, and organized together with Venetian Heritage and the Colnaghi antiquarian gallery. The exhibition, scheduled to run from April 17 to September 8, 2024, is part of the journey to enhance and promote the history and collections of the palace undertaken starting in 2019 with the refurbishment of the Tribuna Grimani and the Sala del Doge thanks to the collaboration between the Veneto Regional Museums Directorate and Venetian Heritage. On the occasion of this special exhibition, the Portrait of Giovanni Grimani attributed to Domenico Tintoretto, already in the museum’s collections thanks to the acquisition and donation of the same by Venetian Heritage, is confronted with two other paintings by the hand of his father Jacopo Tintoretto, testifying to the iconographic development of the effigy of the Venetian prelate in a succession spanning several decades between the second half of the 16th century and the early 17th.

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11. Wael Shawky at Palazzo Grimani

Where and when: Museum of Palazzo Grimani, April 17 to June 30, 2024

A solo exhibition of Egyptian artist Wael Shawky (Alexandria, Egypt, 1971) entitled I Am Hymns of the New Temples curated by Massimo Osanna (Director General Museums of the Ministry of Culture), Andrea Viliani (Co-curator of the Pompeii Commitment program. Archaeological Matters) and Gabriel Zuchtriegel (Director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii) is scheduled from April 17 to June 30, 2024, at the Museum of Palazzo Grimani in Venice. The exhibition is organized in collaboration between the Museum of Palazzo Grimani and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, and accompanies the artist’s participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, where Shawky will represent the Arab Republic of Egypt at the Egypt Pavilion. The exhibition brings together the film work I Am Hymns of the New Temples made by the artist in 2023, following its premiere at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, and a selection of multi-material works and drawings made by the artist between 2022 and 2024. The exhibition is designed as a conceptual dialogue between different spaces and eras, in which modern works mingle with archaeological relics from Pompeii and the historic rooms of Palazzo Grimani

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12. Works from Berlin’s Berggruen Museum at the Casa dei Tre Oci and the Gallerie dell’Accademia

Where and when: Casa dei Tre Oci and Gallerie dell’Accademia, March 24 to June 23, 2024

From March 24 to June 23, 2024, it will be possible to visit at the Gallerie dell’Accademia and at the Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice new home of the Berggruen Institute Europe, reopened for the first time to the public after restoration, the exhibition that brings together a selection of paintings and drawings from the Berggruen Museum in Berlin. The exhibition, titled Elective Affinities, features more than 40 works by Picasso, Matisse, Klee, Giacometti and Cézanne that will dialogue with Giorgione, Sebastiano Ricci, Pietro Longhi, Giambattista Tiepolo and Canova, masterpieces from the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. The exhibition is curated by Giulio Manieri Elia and Michele Tavola, director and curator of the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, and Gabriel Montua and Veronika Rudorfer director and curator of Museum Berggruen in Berlin. In 2000, the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage) succeeded in acquiring Heinz Berggruen’s collection for the Nationalgalerie with funding from the German government and the state of Berlin

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13. The history of Murano glass from 1912 to 1930 at the Glass Rooms

Where and when: Stanze del Vetro, April 14 to November 24, 2024

In Murano, the new chapter of the Le Stanze del Vetro project explores the presence of Murano glass in the editions of the Venice Biennale between 1912 and 1930. The exhibition entitled 1912-1930 Murano Glass and the Venice Biennale, curated by Marino Barovier and hosted at Le Stanze del Vetro on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, will be open to the public from April 14 to November 24, 2024. The exhibition presents a selection of 135 works, many of them of great rarity from important museum institutions and private collections. The period 1912-1930 was chosen because it marks a crucial phase for Murano glass within the Biennale, during which the material began to gain prominence within the event.

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14. Helmut Newton at the Rooms of Photography

Where and when: Rooms of Photography, March 28 to November 24, 2024

Helmut Newton lands in Venice with the most comprehensive exhibition of works spanning his entire human and working life. The retrospective Helmut Newton. Legacy, March 28 through Nov. 24, 2024 at Le Stanze della Fotografia, is curated by Matthias Harder, director of the Helmut Newton Foundation, and Denis Curti, artistic director of Le Stanze della Fotografia.

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The Rooms of Photography

15. Christoph Büchel at the Fondazione Prada

Where and when: Ca’ Corner della Regina, April 20 to November 24, 2024

Swiss artist Christoph Büchel (Basel, 1966) will be the star of the exhibition at the Venice branch of the Fondazione Prada during the months of the Biennale. The Monte di Pietà project, conceived by Büchel and hosted, from April 20 to Nov. 24, 2024, in the palace of Ca’ Corner della Regina in Venice, aims to represent an immersion in the rich and layered history of this iconic place. Originally built as the residence of Venetian merchants Corner di San Cassiano in the 18th century, the palace has traversed several eras of history, taking on different functions over the centuries and becoming a prominent venue for various institutions.

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Which exhibitions to see during the Venice Biennale: the 15 most interesting ones

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