In the marvelous, empty setting of Palazzo Grassi’s hall in Venice, Bruno Racine, the newly-appointed director of the Pinault Foundation in Venice, Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana, met the press to discuss his future projects, particularly about the highly anticipated re-opening of the exhibition halls.
In 2020, exhibitions will be all about photography. Palazzo Grassi will host “Le Grand Jeu”, a show by Henri Cartier-Bresson featuring 385 pictures that the legendary photographer selected as the most meaningful of his whole work in the early ‘70s.
Palazzo Grassi will also welcome “Once Upon a Dream”, a monographic exhibition on Egyptian artist Youssef Nabil, whose shots portray a mythical, evocative Egypt.
Halls at Punta della Dogana will be dedicated to the many media of contemporary art with “Untitled, 2020. Tre sguardi sull’arte di oggi”, a group exhibition including 60 works by artists from various generations.
In compliance with the new safety rules, a limited number of visitors will be allowed in, and the maximum occupancy will most likely be around 250-300 people at once. Online booking will be encouraged for an improved visitor flow management.
As a director, Racine also intends to close the gap between visitors and contemporary art, which is sometimes looked at more suspiciously, and considered as harder to understand than art from the past.
Today’s art speaks to everyone, not just to connoisseurs
he said.
Contemporary artists actually tackle questions similar to those pondered by their great predecessors; they simply find different answers, influenced by their own times
Hence his will to do more, to turn the tide in order to pave the way to future exhibitions where French magnate Francois Pinault’s private contemporary art collection − a corpus of over three thousand pieces from the 20th and 21st century – will dialogue with artworks from the past, to highlight elements of continuity and division.
