LE STAGIONI

In Venice, glass is never simply glass. It is light, colour and sound – and, above all, a body of knowledge passed from one pair of hands to another. To mark The Venice Glass Week, Londra Palace Venezia presents Breaths of Wonder, an exhibition of works created by young artists supported by scholarships from The Place of Wonders Foundation.

The pieces are accompanied by Vetro-fonie, a sound installation conceived by Enrico Coniglio specifically for the hotel. Step closer, look and listen: these works remind us that Murano glass does not belong only to Venice’s glorious past. Its future is already in the hands of a new generation.

The fourth edition of this biannual homage to the unceasing vitality of contemporary craftsmanship is curated by British artist and designer Es Devlin. Hosted in the former monastic buildings and courtyards of the Giorgio Cini Foundation on the island of San Giorgio, a short boat-hop from Londra Palace Venezia, the 2026 edition is titled ‘An Island of Light’. An experienced stage designer, Devlin is creating 15 immersive installations that showcase the work of more than 400 global artisans while exploring the relationship between light, materials and manual creativity. In concurrence with the San Giorgio show, with its programme of demonstrations and hands-on workshops, a number of Venetian artisanal bottegas will throw open their doors to visitors.

Among a raft of tasty looking exhibitions opening to coincide with the Art Biennale is this show dedicated to the formative art-collecting years of the woman who did so much to associate her adopted home of Venice with the art of the present. Peggy’s London gallery Guggenheim Jeune may have existed for only 18 months in 1938 and 1939, but its influence was wide-ranging. She had unerring taste and an instinct for the next big thing – as works on display here by Duchamp, Kandinsky, Dalí and some of the other artists she made space for in London amply demonstrate.

Every two years, the Venice Art Biennale turns the entire city into a sprawling urban gallery that aims take the pulse of the contemporary art scene. Titled ‘In Minor Keys’, the 61st edition pairs a curated central exhibition with national pavilions and collateral events scattered across the city. The Londra Palace Venezia is a short stroll from the Biennale’s two main venues, the former naval boatyards of the Arsenale and the Giardini park, where many of the most important national pavilions are clustered. Allow at least four days to take in the full range of offerings, and consider a fall visit, when the shows are generally less crowded.

It’s always a joy to visit the palazzo that was the home and atelier of great Venetian artist, designer and cultural icon Mariano Fortuny. An ably curated exhibition programme is the icing on the cake. The latest show to be hosted by this absorbing house-museum is a retrospective dedicated to Austrian artist Erwin Wurm, whose ironic, provocative sculptures use absurdity to highlight all that is extraordinary about our ‘ordinary’ world.

Photo Markus Gradwohl

If you associate Venetian architecture and interiors exclusively with the distant past, you need to visit the Olivetti Store in Piazza San Marco. Commissioned at the end of the 1950s by enlightened entrepreneur Adriano Olivetti, local architectural genius Carlo Scarpa proved that it was possible to create an authentically Venetian style of Modernism. Now managed by Italian heritage association FAI, the space plays host during the 2026 Art Biennale to an exhibition of around twenty works by Argentinian artist Leandro Elrich that blur the distinctions between man, nature and the cosmos, creating new hybrid forms that question fixed identities.

Photo Duccio Benvenuti