Discover the exhibitions to visit in Venice during the opening of the 2025 Architecture Biennale: from contemporary art galleries to cultural spaces, here is the guide to the exhibitions to mark in your calendar
During the opening of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice presents itself as a great laboratory of contemporary art and thought. Alongside the official Biennale calendar, galleries, foundations, and new exhibition spaces propose a cultural itinerary that traverses contemporary art, architecture, craftsmanship, and design.
The Major Exhibitions
While at Fondazione Prada Diagrams takes the stage, an investigation curated by AMO/OMA on diagrams as tools of communication and construction of thought, at Palazzo Diedo the Berggruen Foundation presents The Next Earth. Computation, Crisis, Cosmology, curated by Benjamin Bratton, Nicholas de Monchaux, and Ana Miljacki, proposing a critical and interdisciplinary vision of the future, and at Palazzo Grassi Tatiana Trouvé’s solo exhibition The Strange Life of Things is accompanied by a series of encounters and screenings dedicated to the relationship between contemporary art and cinema. Discover the major exhibitions in Venice
The Galleries and Independent Spaces
The performative research of Romina De Novellis at Galleria Alberta Pane and Paul Onditi’s reflection on the digital era at Akka Project counterpoint the visual narrative of Venice in the Lunardelli atelier with Jacopo Ascari and the dialogues between architectural memory and contemporary creation at Galerie Negropontes. The Fondation Valmont project explores identity and the duality of father and son, the SMAC San Marco Art Centre organizes an international forum on major themes of contemporary architecture, SPARC* proposes new residential scenarios, culminating in the tribute to Carlo Scarpa at the Museo Correr.
- Encoded Consciousness: Art in the Age of Tech
Akka Project – Contemporary African Art Gallery
Ca’ Del Duca 3052, Corte del Duca Sforza
Dates: until May 31
At the Venice location of Akka Project, Kenyan artist Paul Onditi presents a new solo exhibition dedicated to the transformation of human thought in the digital era.
The exhibition title refers to consciousness as an encoded system. The QR code becomes the structural element of the image, marking a reflection on language and its mutation in a time governed by technology. In line with the themes proposed by the Architecture Biennale, Onditi explores the relationship between mind, environment, and digital systems.
- Architetture Terrone
Galleria Alberta Pane – Dorsoduro, Calle dei Guardiani 2403/h
Dates: from May 9 to September 10
Opening: Friday, May 9, from 5 PM to 8 PM. Free admission without invitation
Romina De Novellis brings together fifteen years of performative research in an exhibition that questions space, the body, and the identity of the South as a geographical and symbolic place. Architetture Terrone articulates installations, photographs, and videos around fragile and temporary structures that function as visual and political devices. Without the body that activated them, the works maintain the memory of the gesture, highlighting the physical imprint of performance as an act of resistance.
Among the exhibited works, Del maiale non si butta via niente addresses the relationship between the female body and productivity; Eurydice reinterprets the myth through an eco-feminist lens; La Gabbia and La Veglia explore dynamics of confinement and the need for escape. The journey concludes with Voulez-vous danser avec moi? Merci, je ne préfère pas, inspired by the Salento bandstand, reinterpreted as a public structure that breaks traditional ceremony and restores space to distance, independence, and the refusal of forced participation.
- Storie d’acqua. Guida sentimentale di Venezia written on briccole
An exhibition by Jacopo Ascari with Lunardelli Venezia
Dates: from May 6 to June 30, 2025
Opening: Tuesday, May 6, 6 PM, by invitation
From carpentry workshop to artisan laboratory and scenographic exhibition space dedicated to design and cultural dialogue, Lunardelli Venezia is one of the Venetian venues where emerging designers and contemporary artists can be discovered alongside masters of tradition, particularly during the most vibrant moments of city life, when the atelier becomes a lively place open to dialogue between artisan knowledge and contemporary languages.
On the occasion of the opening of the 2025 Architecture Biennale, Lunardelli presents the exhibition Storie d’Acqua by illustrator and architect Jacopo Ascari, which together with the Architettura and Laguna collections by Lunardelli and the new Giacometa collection by designer Carla Plessi completes an exhibition journey that narrates Venice and its transposition into forms, materials, and signs.
Thirty works created on briccola wood, a material symbolic of the city, become the support for a visual narrative that interweaves art, architecture, and craftsmanship, a Sentimental Guide to Venice written on briccole. The exhibition, curated by Venezia da Vivere, is a tribute to the Venetian places where Lunardelli has brought its design and artisan contribution.
During the days of the Biennale opening, the gallery will be open to welcome artists, designers, and the public, with meeting moments dedicated to the themes of design, architecture, and the narration of the city.
- Architectural Landscapes
Galerie Negropontes – Dorsoduro 3900
Until November 22. Free admission by reservation: venezia@negropontes-galerie.com
Galerie Negropontes reopens the Palazzina Masieri, a masterpiece by Carlo Scarpa, with an exhibition in collaboration with Heritage Asset Management that explores the boundary between form, memory, and landscape, with works by Gianluca Pacchioni, the Pinton manufactory, and the duo Perrin & Perrin.
The exhibition reflects on the relationship between contemporary creation and architectural heritage, through a succession of environments: on the ground floor, Pacchioni’s bronze sculptures evoke an imaginary garden inspired by the unrealized project of the Giardino Masieri, theorized by Duilio Torres in 1954. Completing the scene, a tapestry by Pinton, with a landscape inspired by Roger Mühl.
On the first floor, Perrin & Perrin work with glass as a material of construction and urban memory. Their sculptures dialogue with Scarpa’s architectural geometries, projecting forms and fragments into a dimension suspended between transparency and opacity.
The second floor of the Palazzina will host several exhibitions until November. The first will be dedicated to the photographs of Garo Minassian, which explore the concept of the imaginary garden. From May to July, the exhibition Scarpa-Zanon, Dialoghi will be presented, created in collaboration with IUAV University of Venice and dedicated to the relationship between Scarpa and the artisans of the Zanon workshop. In September, an exhibition will be inaugurated on the occasion of the Design Biennale and Venice Glass Week, presenting a selection of design objects and artist jewelry.
Galerie Negropontes of Paris, which combines design, craftsmanship, contemporary art, and jewelry, has opened its Venice location to be a platform dedicated to the exchange and transmission of art and knowledge, in perfect harmony with the spirit of the Fondazione Masieri.
- TELEMACHUS. The Quest for Self
Fondation Valmont – Palazzo Bonvicini, Calle de l’Agnella 2161/a
Dates: from May 3 to November 22. Free admission
Fondation Valmont presents the second chapter of a trilogy inspired by the Odyssey: Telemachus. The Quest for Self. The exhibition explores the relationship between Telemachus and Ulysses, staging an intimate dialogue between generations, the tensions and complicities between fathers and sons, in a dynamic that alternates distance and continuity.
The exhibition brings together four artists linked by personal and artistic bonds: Jakub Flejšar and Pavel Roučka, Maxence Guillon and Didier Guillon.
The works play with scale and matter, moving from expressive pictorial gesture to sculpture as physical and affective presence. Sculptures, paintings, and site-specific installations entirely occupy the space of Palazzo Bonvicini, bringing to the surface the knots between identity, heritage, origins, and construction of the self.
In the final room, In the Room of Dreams, curated by Didier Guillon, small groups of visitors are invited each week to meditative practices: a way to slow down, dedicate time to art, and become part of the broader project of the art of longevity.
- Migrating Modernism
SMAC – San Marco Art Centre
Procuratie Vecchie Venice, Piazza San Marco 105
Dates: from May 8 and 9 to July 13
SMAC, the new contemporary visual arts center directed by Anna Bursaux, David Gramazio, and David Hrankovic, opens its doors at the Procuratie Vecchie in Piazza San Marco with two exhibitions dedicated to key figures of 20th and 21st century architecture and an international forum, events that traverse geographies, eras, and languages:
Migrating Modernism narrates the work of architect Harry Seidler, a central figure of the Modern Movement in Australia, through drawings, models, letters, and archival materials that highlight an articulated professional and personal trajectory, traversed by geographical and cultural turning points. From fleeing Nazi Vienna to arriving in Sydney in 1948, Seidler’s journey embodies a form of migrating modernism, rooted in a European heritage and developed in the southern hemisphere.
For All That Breathes On Earth. Jung Youngsun and Collaborators explores the work of Korean landscape architect Jung Youngsun. From the Seoul Olympics to Incheon International Airport, the exhibition investigates the capacity of landscape design to activate processes of care, resilience, and ecological imagination.
The World Around On Site: Venice is a meeting between architects, curators, artists, and the public organized by The World Around, an international curatorial platform, in collaboration with SMAC and The Human Safety Net, at The Human Safety Net Auditorium. An exchange of ideas on themes of contemporary architecture, climate change, and social justice, with space for direct dialogue with the public. The event, free and also accessible via streaming, will begin with coffee and breakfast and conclude with a visit to the exhibitions.
- Potential Architecture by Lucy + Jorge Orta
SPARC* – Spazio Arte Contemporanea
Campo Santo Stefano, San Marco 2828A
Until May 16. Free admission
Lucy + Jorge Orta articulate their research around the concept of dwelling as a political, ecological, and cultural act. Three decades of work on the relationship between identity, environment, and migration, proposing alternative visions of cohabitation between humans and non-humans.
Drawings, collages, architectural models in steel and blown glass, as well as a central installation from the Antarctica project: a residential tent covered with clothes, gloves, and screen-printed flags, a symbol of reflection on human rights and environmental urgency.
The duo’s visual language is built on the transversality of media and the transformation of architecture into a space of possibility. Dwelling understood as a form of relationship with the landscape, with the other, with boundaries. A design exercise that imagines future scenarios, without yielding to the rhetoric of emergency.
- The Correr by Carlo Scarpa 1953–1960
Museo Correr, second floor
Quadreria, Sala delle Quattro Porte, Piazza San Marco, 52
May 1 – October 19, 2025. Admission with museum ticket
Dialoguing with history, space, light, and materials: The Correr by Carlo Scarpa 1953-1960, at the Museo Correr in Piazza San Marco from May 1 to October 19, 2025, is an opportunity to rediscover a pioneering museographic intervention by Carlo Scarpa, the master of twentieth-century architecture who was able to unite craftsmanship and experimentation, leaving a unique mark on international architectural culture.
Article by Lucia Pecoraro and Laura Scarpa.
Photos (cover) Conditions ph. Rossana Viola and from the respective art centers and by Settimo Cannatella.
