From November 10 to 16, 2025 Vicenza will be the protagonist of ARTis - Festival dell’Arte, an event in its first edition dedicated to promoting dialogue between artists, the public and cultural institutions. Conceived and produced by the Be You Association and Codice Edizioni, under the patronage of the Veneto Region and with the support of the Ministry of Culture, AGSM AIM, Assicurazioni Generali, Fondazione CariVerona, Miles Manifattura and Treccani Arte, the festival aims to bring the public closer to the creative process, bridging the gap between the artist and the art user, often distant according to ISTAT statistics. Media partners of the event will be Giornale dell’Arte, Sky Arte and Publiadige.
The event was presented today at the Ministry of Culture in the presence of Director General of the Cabinet of the Minister Caterina Bova, Mayor of Vicenza Giacomo Possamai, Councillor for Culture Ilaria Fantin, Artistic Director Marina Wallace, creator Vittorio Bo and artist Matilde Sambo. The festival, which will take place in iconic city venues such as the Teatro Olimpico, Palazzo Chiericati, the Bertoliana Library and the Basilica Palladiana, aims to make contemporary art accessible through meetings, performances, workshops and educational activities.
“ARTis more than a festival,” says Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli, "it is a laboratory of ideas and experiences that restores to art its central role in public life, in the formation of consciences and in the construction of a conscious citizenship. The chosen guiding phrase, There is no art without an artist, invites us to delve into the creative, social and human universe of those who make art. Vicenza, with its Palladian palaces and UNESCO heritage, is an ideal city to host an initiative that combines territorial roots and international scope. The Ministry of Culture is proud to support this vision, which makes culture accessible, alive and everyday."
In Italy, direct contact with art still remains limited: according to ISTAT data, in 2023 one in two people did not visit museums, exhibitions or archaeological sites. Added to this is the distance that often separates the public from the artists, a distance that, if overcome, could encourage more conscious and widespread participation. ARTis created precisely with the intention of reducing this gap, offering concrete opportunities to meet those who create, dialogue with critics and scholars, and understand ideas, choices and processes that precede the creation of a work. The event offers a week of meetings, performances, workshops and laboratories designed to return to the public the most authentic dimension of art, the one that takes shape in the confrontation, research and everyday life of those who produce it.
The theme of the first edition, There is no art without an artist, focuses attention on the living and working conditions of the artist, the choices that determine the birth of a work and the dialogue between artistic practice and society. The event aims to address the question of the role of art today, which does not merely represent reality but questions it, addressing political, social, environmental and cultural issues. Understanding art means, according to the organizers, understanding those who create it and the context in which it takes shape.
The week’s program features artists of international and Italian relevance, including Shirin Neshat, Iranian filmmaker and photographer; Ackroyd & Harvey, British artists known for environmental art; Katharine Dowson; and Semir Zeki, world-renowned neurobiologist and founder of Neuroaesthetics. Other names on the calendar include Arcangelo Sassolino, Ugo Nespolo, Renata Boero, Marzia Migliora, Sabrina Mezzaqui, Nicola Samorì, Gian Maria Tosatti, Emilio Isgrò, Elena Ketra, Lucia Veronesi, and Dunhill and O’Brien. Rounding out the picture are experts and critics such as Martin Kemp, Bill Sherman, Martin Gayford, Demetrio Paparoni, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Flavio Caroli, Cristiana Collu, Chiara Bertola, Jacopo Veneziani, Vincenzo Trione, Vittorio Urbani and Laura Pugno.
Among the main events, Martin Kemp will present recent reflections on Leonardo da Vinci’s journey, highlighting the transition between visual certainty and experimentation. Martin Gayford, with the talk How to Paint (and Why Painting Matters), will offer observations on the dialogue between artist and work through experiences with David Hockney and other contemporary painters. Katharine Dowson and Semir Zeki will speak in the meeting Art with the Brain in Mind, exploring the connections between art, neuroscience and visual perception. Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey, with the event Art, Politics and the Environment, will illustrate art projects that intersect different disciplines and environmental activism. Bill Sherman will analyze the legacy of Ernst Gombrich’s book The Story of Art, examining the role of art popularization in the digital age and the gaps in art history’s genre.
Other festival highlights include: Art, Color and Mind, with Giuliano Dal Molin and Anya Hurlbert; Perfect Unknowns. Artists whom history has preferred to keep silent by Jacopo Veneziani; Incorruptible Embroidery with Sabrina Mezzaqui and Elena Volpato; I Know This. That the Earth is a celestial body with Renata Boero and Cristiana Collu; Artist Families, featuring Ackroyd & Harvey, Dunhill and O’Brien and the Sambo family; Redesigning Nature: The relationship between creativity, nature, human action and ecological transformation, meeting with Marzia Migliora; The future of memory (if memory has a future) with Francesco Vezzoli and Vincenzo Trione; An unstable balance with Santa Nastro, Elena Dal Molin and Lucia Veronesi; Green in art, science in landscape with Renato Bruni; The erased word with Emilio Isgrò and Laura Pugno; The forgotten wall with Franco Guerzoni and Gianfranco Maraniello; But is the artist an investment? with Cesare Biasini Selvaggi and Elena Ketra; and finally Palladio, unsurpassed classic, curated by Stefano Zuffi.
The festival does not involve the sale of works or market exhibitions, but takes the form of a piazza open to the public, enhancing the city of Vicenza and its cultural heritage. The venues involved include Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Teatro Olimpico, Civic Museum of Palazzo Chiericati, Gallerie d’Italia-Vicenza, Zoé Foundation, Diocesan Museum, Museo Naturalistico Archeologico, Basilica Palladiana, Palladio Museum, Porto Burci, Astertre and Palazzo Valmarana Braga, where Matilde Sambo will develop a site-specific project.
Parallel to the meetings with artists, ARTis offers an extensive educational program for schools and families. From November 10 to 14, museums and cultural spaces will offer free workshops and activities by reservation. Among the itineraries dedicated to students are That Starry Night and My Totem at Scatola Cultura, What a Mess! and Tying Yourself to the Treeatthe Palladio Museum, Reflections and Reflections at the Gallerie d’Italia, Magic Africa, Re-Genesis and It Looks Like a Photo! at the Museo Diocesano, In the Sign of Art and Artists at the Castello di Rivoli, Lettering Among Skyscrapers with MART in Rovereto and Geographies of the Imagination at MAXXI in Rome. Arte Sella will propose Geographies of Beautiful Places, while the Museo Tattile Statale Omero will organize the workshop Stories to Touch, with the creation of accessible tactile books.
The museums will also offer numerous family-oriented activities designed to engage adults and children in shared experiences. Among them, Photographers of the Planet, curated by Gallerie d’Italia-Vicenza, will offer a journey through the images of Cristina Mittermeier to learn how to observe the world with a more conscious gaze. MAXXI’s Education Office will present Forme danzanti, a workshop dedicated to Carla Accardi that traces the history and art of the Sicilian artist starting from the illustrated album in the Piccoli MAXXI series. At the Palladio Museum, on the other hand, the protagonist will be Scratch the Sky, an activity in which participants will build together a collective skyscraper, the tallest ever created inside the museum, a building that defies gravity and reflects, floor by floor, the personalities of those who designed it.
The Education Department of the Castello di Rivoli will propose Nel segno dell’arte e degli artisti (In the Sign of Art and Artists), while the MART of Trento and Rovereto will present Un viaggio fortunato (A Lucky Journey), a workshop dedicated to Fortunato Depero that invites participants to trace the traces of his movements in reproductions of his works in order to reconstruct and reinvent their routes. The work will conclude with the creation of a book-object with a pop-up effect, as dynamic as futurist art. Alexander Calder’s Mobiles Paintings, curated by Scatola Cultura, will invite children and young people to explore the universe of the artist’s famous mobile works, where shapes and colors move freely in space. Also curated by Scatola Cultura will be Detective of Minerals, a step-by-step path that will turn children and adults into explorers discovering minerals.
Finally, the Omero State Tactile Museum will offer Stories to Touch, a workshop that will include the reading of some of the collection’s tactile books, created to stimulate imagination and inclusion through multisensory experiences. Children and parents will also be involved in the creation of a family tactile book, the result of joint work and shared discovery.
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| Vicenza becomes stage for contemporary art with new ARTis Festival |
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