From 07 September 2023 to 06 January 2024 *Exhibition extended to 21 April, 2024
Murano, Museo del Vetro
Room Nine (Room Brandolini)

Curated by Matteo Silverio

From 7 September 2023 to 6 January 2024, the Murano Glass Museum (Venice) will be hosting an exhibition that will break new ground by presenting approximately 40 pieces produced by the master glassmakers from the island using recycled industrial glass: a material with which they are not accustomed to working. The glass in question is made from secondary raw materials, in the shape of clear, colourless recycled glass that is totally different from the traditional Murano glass they normally use.

15 master glassmakers from companies licensed to display the Veneto Region’s Vetro Artistico® Murano trademark decided to take on the challenge and put themselves to the test in order to show that even waste glass can be used to make magnificent works of art embellished by the techniques – such as blowing, fusing and lampworking, as well as grinding and beating – that make the exceptional artisan creations from Murano totally unique.

The aim is to raise public awareness about recycling, sustainability and more mindful use of raw materials, with an exhibition design that has recreated a modern loft apartment inside the Brandolini Room.

The exhibition is curated by Matteo Silverio and promoted by Consorzio Promovetro Murano (which manages the Vetro Artistico® Murano trademark), the Veneto Region and the Venice and Rovigo Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with Venice City Council, Fondazione MUVE, CoReVe – Consorzio Recupero Vetro, and Compagnia Energetica Italiana. It has been produced with the support of rehub and Veritas, with technical contributions from Effetre Murano, Favini, Morasco Insurance Brokers and Officina Pinzon.

Murano: Upcycling Glass is one of the initiatives that have been organized for The Venice Glass Week 2023, the international festival that has been taking place in the city since 2017. The exhibition is supporting the Sea the Change project, which seeks to protect the lagoon ecosystem.

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From 19 May 2023 to 6 January 2024 *Exhibition extended to 28 April, 2024
Murano, Glass Museum

Curated by
Cristina Beltrami
Chiara Squarcina

This 2023 exhibition is an occasion for one of Murano’s most flourishing and original companies, NasonMoretti, to celebrate one hundred years of activity.

An opportunity to look back, open the archives, and share with visitors to the Glass Museum a noteworthy history composed of more than ten thousand models.
Founded in 1923, the Nason & Moretti glassworks at once chose a specific direction – the art of tableware – but with a thoroughly modern approach that would also remain faithful to traditional technique of the past, reinterpreting it to suit contemporary formulas.
Equipped with a rich palette and a constant openness to innovation, Nason & Moretti has been a point of reference in design since the 1950s, when in 1955 its Lidia bowls won the prized Compasso d’oro, and it began its regular presence at the Venice Biennale.

The exhibition – and a subsequent celebratory book – will contain an overview of the most successful pieces created by the firm, as well as those resulting from its partnerships with some of the most important names in design and architecture. A no less essential section will be dedicated to current projects, demonstrating the thriving vitality of this historic Murano family business.

Admission to the exhibition with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

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From 28 January to 7 May 2023
Murano, Glass Museum

Curated by
Sandrine Welte
Chiara Squarcina

The exhibition Simon Berger: Shattering Beauty, organised in collaboration with Berengo Studio at the Museo del Vetro, contains a series of new portraits by the artist in glass, presenting his pioneering technique to the Venetian lagoon for the very first time.
In his hyper realistic portraits Berger recreates the lines of the human face by breaking the material. In a mesmerising process he refers to as “morphogenesis,” he re-situates the medium as an animated “canvas,” using sculptural tools such as a hammer to physically work at its surface to “etch” and “draw” haunting human faces. Reinforced safety glass, which holds at its core a crucial layer of plastic, ensures that the material, though broken, stays in place. This highly controlled sculptural technique originates from the artist’s classical training in carpentry, and is a moving example of how many artists are now translating techniques from other mediums into the world of glass.

Berger’s unique technique of deliberate “shattering,” contradicts years of teaching, whereby broken glass has been seen as wasted or ruined. On the contrary, he instead turns the material’s so-called weakness into its most vital asset. Its ability to break becomes reframed as its ability to change, to be altered, and to be recast as something new.

To watch the artist create these works is to witness a vivid “performance,” not dissimilar to that of the glass maestros in the furnace. In a way, Berger’s craft provides an enticing extension of tradition, continuing the animated life of glass, into what had previously been viewed as its death. The exquisite shattering of Berger’s work becomes representative of how powerful revitalising and reanimating our own relationship to the material can be. Each artwork becomes a reminder of the process of breaking down barriers, a physical urge encouraging audiences to view glass – and the world within which it exists – in a different way. The trauma and pain typically associated with broken glass are inverted. The shattering of the material is not an end point for Berger: it is just the beginning.

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From 4 September 2021 to 6 January 2022
Murano, Glass Museum

Curated by
Matteo Silverio

Organized by
Consorzio Promovetro
With the support of
Regione del Veneto and Camera di Commercio di Venezia Rovigo

The Murano Glass Toys exhibition will be open to the public from 4 September 2021 to 6 January 2022 at the Glass Museum in Murano, an initiative, part of The Venice Glass Week, conceived with the aim of promoting the regional brand Vetro Artistico® Murano.

This is an ambitious project, characterized by an innovative setting: no longer a glass exhibition to “look at but not touch”, but a real interactive and multimedia installation, a room where the visitor can play and be amazed.
The project involves fourteen Murano glass masters from as many concessionary companies of the Vetro Artistico® Murano brand who have put themselves to the test for the occasion, addressing a theme far from their usual production.
In Murano Glass Toys, glass lives, moves and interacts with the viewer: in this magical atmosphere, visitors can experience or relive the emotions related to their childhood and youth.

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MATTHIAS SCHALLER
Leiermann

7 May 2019 – 22 January 2020
Murano, Glass Museum

Curated by
Chiara Squarcina and Matthias Schaller

In the series Leiermann, artist Matthias Schaller develops two themes: the mirror – a source and medium for intellectual, ideal and rational reflections – and Venice – a symbolic, historical and cultural city connected to the present-day. The itinerary Schaller suggests to us therefore proposes a wide-ranging interpretation. His photos refer to ancient mirrors located in Venetian palaces and museums, and these lead the observer to imagine, and consequently to contemplate, the number and identity of the people who have been captured in these reflecting surfaces, which in their turn create a fleeting imitation of reality.

To develop this interpretative line of approach, Schaller has turned to Franz Schubert’s composition Der Leiermann, in which a poem by Wilhelm Müller is interpreted/imitated. Thus the sound re-evokes the image, which, in turn, is proposed not as an original but as an imitation in order to focus on aspects and particular thematic developments of the subject. In this way, Schaller chooses to share this interpretation so that we ponder on how the mirrors of the past convey today’s image of Venice and what they convey. For Schaller, Venice is unable to reflect anything, because year after year its inhabitants leave the city.

This personal vision leads the observer to critically examine the contexts of the mirror and the city as reformulated by Schaller, who sees them united in a latent passivity. His photos therefore focus critically on how a wonderful and fascinating context, a source of admiration, can be obscured by “absence”. The poet Müller describes the death of a man who leaves the city while Schubert’s song underlines this thought, inspiring Schaller, who in portraying the “absence” conveys the observer through a metaphorical atmosphere that generates an aura of sadness about how time transforms Venice.

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In collaboration with Sonnabend Gallery, New York

Immagine: Matthias Schaller, Francesco G, detail, 2018 © Matthias Schaller/VG Bildkunst 2019

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TAPIO WIRKKALA

7 May – 29 September 2019
Murano, Glass Museum

Curated by
Harri Koskinen, Marco Romanelli and Chiara Squarcina

In collaboration with 
Tapio Wirkkala Rut Bryk Foundation and EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art

Tapio Wirkkala (1915-1985) was one of the great names of the golden era of design in Finland. He was a master of many materials and mediums as a sculptor and as an industrial and graphic designer. The scale of his work varies from stamps to monuments and from jewellery to furniture. He used a wealth of materials from silver to plastic, plywood to porcelain. His talent for transforming natural elements as well as his conceptual vision for design masterpieces made his work known worldwide.

Wirkkala is considered a design icon in the Nordic region but he is also well known in Italy. This year, the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia – Museo del Vetro presents an exhibition focusing on the material that was central to Tapio Wirkkala’s career from the beginning: glass. The exhibition also covers some of his iconic designs that use other materials.
The exhibition is curated by Finnish designer Harri Koskinen and Italian architect Marco Romanelli. They have created a dialogue that exchanges perspectives between Finland and Italy.

Tapio Wirkkala collaborated with Iittala glassworks over four decades. His work with Iittala ranged from straightforward and geometrical yet refined everyday glass sets to unique art glass made with diverse artisanal techniques. He also designed a wide array of industrial glass objects, such as light bulbs and glass containers. Many of his creations are still manufactured and available today.

In Murano, Wirkkala collaborated with Venini from the 1960s onwards. The traditional techniques and strong colours typical to Murano inspired him to create another series of absolute masterpieces that are still well known. Tapio Wirkkala’s designs have been exhibited many times both in Finland and internationally. He received a multitude of awards during his career, including several Grand Prix in Milan Triennale. Tapio Wirkkala´s designs are found in the collections of several major international design museums.

Image: Tapio Wirkkala, Bolle, Tapio Wirkkala Rut Bryk Foundation Collection / EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art. Photo Matti Silvennoinen / Tapio Wirkkala Rut Bryk Foundation Archive 

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As part of The Venice Glass Week, and in addition to the presence of its exceptional permanent exhibition, the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia is presenting an exploration of innovative forms of artistic expression in glass through the work of the famous architect and designer Mario Bellini.

Born in Milan in 1935, Mario Bellini has influenced the history of architecture and international design through his extensive work in the field of industrial design, which has led him to create some of the most innovative products in the automobile industry

(Renault), electronics (as former chief design consultant for Olivetti), and the communication field (La Rinascente). Recently the architect of Deutsche Bank headquarters in Frankfurt (2011) and of the new wing of the Louvre dedicated to Islamic art (2012), Bellini has also complemented his professional activity with experimentations in many materials and widely varied techniques, among them glass, which he has designed on the island of Murano for the furnaces of Seguso and Venini.

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15 October 2019–30 September 2021
Murano, Glass Museum

Curated by
Chiara Squarcina

Scientific direction
Gabriella Belli

The year 2018 will end at the Glass Museum with a major tribute to Livio Seguso, the brilliant Murano master of contemporary glass, whose works are recognisable for their extreme creative quality, in which glass dialogues with other materials in an innovatory way.

An internationally renowned artist, Seguso has been a pioneer in the use of glass as an expressive medium for art since the 1970s and continues his work today with constantly original proposals. Born in 1930 in Murano, where he still lives and works, Seguso’s relationship with glass began very young, out of his fascination with the inexhaustible enchantment of this marvellous material.

In 1972 he took part in the 36th Venice Biennale, but his art reached its peak towards the end of that decade when he completely abandoned Murano’s traditional heritage to focus solely on pure, iridescent and ambiguous crystal in all its transparency. His works assumed forms of absolute purity, becoming “images of light” that seem to adapt themselves to thought before disappearing into a series of dreamlike forms. Later, his experiments went beyond glass to involve other materials, such as steel, stone, marble, granite, and finally wood.

Seguso’s work has been exhibited more than 150 times in Italy and around the world, including the 42nd Venice Art Biennale in 1986 and in 1995 Arte Laguna, with the patronage of the Venice Biennale. Among the most important exhibitions: Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art in 1980, Palazzo Ducale in Mantua in 1981, Castello Sforzesco in Milan in 1982, National Gallery in Prague in 1984, Casa dei Carraresi, Treviso in 2007, National Museum of History, Taipei, Taiwan in 2008, culminating in the major 2014 exhibition at the Ukai Museum in Hakone, Tokyo, where he showed unpublished sculptures, paintings and drawings. In 2015 Livio Seguso received the “Glass in Venice” Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and the Veneto Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts.

With the support of Assicurazioni Gestione Enti srl. Bologna

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Curated by Chiara Squarcina

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Coming from the passion of a great art enthusiast, namely the renowned New York collector Barry Friedman, this extraordinary collection of twentieth-century Murano glass works was donated in 2017 to The Venetian Heritage, to become a permanent part of the Murano Glass Museum, the perfect location for its maximum appreciation.

The 177 works that comprise the collection include glass designed by Bianconi, Buzzi, Nason, Poli, Scarpa and Zecchin, made in the most important and historic Murano’s factories, among them Seguso, Barovier and Toso, Cenedese, Salviati and Venini. This donation greatly expands the Murano Museum’s twentieth-century collection, which in addition to presenting its historical collections, aims to present and appraise current directions taken by local glassworks.

In this sense, the twentieth century appears to be the fundamental key to understanding contemporary times. The superb quality of the artefacts that constitute the extraordinary Friedman collection provides the opportunity to present to the public particular themes of great interest.

The focus for this first year will be to thoroughly review the roots of glass production by examining in depth the formal and stylistic evolution of twentieth-century creativity

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In collaboration with The Venetian Heritage

Scientific coordination Gabriella Belli

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An extraordinary concentration of technique and inventiveness, the Venetian glass beads, small and precious artefacts of many types and of a rare beauty and boasting many types, have long been a part of Venetian glass-making history and still today represent a lively and important production.

The complex work of cataloguing and studying the bead collections in the Museo del Vetro di Murano, undertaken for the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia by Augusto Panini, one of the leading experts on the subject, led to the publication of the first detailed catalogue of these artistic objects a few months ago and is now the basis for the dazzling exhibition in the spaces of the former conterie in the lagoon museum, open from 8 December 2017 to 15 April 2018.

The world of glass beads is unique: they are decorative objects but were also valuable trading goods exported in large quantities in the nineteenth century to the colonies of West Africa, India and the Americas; sought after and coveted as jewels, in exchange for these glass beads the natives of America agreed to cede the territory we know today as Manhattan.

Venice began producing them around the fourteenth century; one of the first techniques used was speo: using a small amount of molten glass and an iron needle (the speo or spit) turned in the fire of a lamp, the glassmaker would produce a pierced bead. But the technique that became prevalent in the following centuries was the manufacture of beads from perforated or solid glass rod or canes. In the second half of the fifteenth century, the grinding of beads from a multi-layered perforated rod with a star cross-section (rosetta bead) was perfected, and only around the sixteenth century was the technique of lampwork beads rediscovered, which foresaw the use of solid rods.

The Museo del Vetro di Murano’s collection consists of 85 sample cases containing 14,182 beads, three cloth panels from 1863, a gift from the Società delle Fabbriche Unite containing 2015 beads and 266 mazzi di conterie, with 91 bunches of lampwork beads, some of which incomplete, 8957 intact beads and 274 fragments and 492 mazzi di conterie.

The inventory drawn up by Abbot Zanetti has been lost since 1912, and only now has it been possible to attribute many of these beads, clusters and panels to the glassworks in Venice and Murano between 1820 and 1890 and therefore to the master glassmakers, giants of the art and enlightened entrepreneurs such as Giovanni Battista Franchini, Domenico Bussolin, Benedetto Giorgio Barbaria, Antonio Salviati, Pietro Bigaglia and Giovanni Giacomuzzi, who with generosity and a civic sense of duty had donated the best of their new production to the city museum.

Among the articles of the Museum that are now identified are two large panels generically called “Lampworks” that include beads produced by the Franchini family from 1820 to 1860 and in which stand out the inventions of the “brilliant” Giovanni Battista Franchini: from the Perle a Coste di Mellone (Beads with melon ribbing) to the Perle in cristallo animate (Animated crystal beads), Madre perla rosea (Pink mother-of-bead) and Canne lavorate (Handworked rods).

The Venetian civic collections also conserve what seem to be the first millefiori beads (‘millefleurs’) produced in modern times, presumably between 1843 and 1845. In no earlier samples in other European or American museums are there any millefiori beads, which were invented in the Alexandrian and Roman era, and which after the fall of the Roman Empire of the West continued to be made until the fifteenth century in the Middle and Near East.

While the sample panels at Palazzo Giustiniani – comparable to modern glassware samples – do not contain (or very few) rosetta beads ground at the wheel, it is significant that there are a considerable quantity in the collection, and of every size (even very large) and type: beads that are unique in their kind: rosetta beads with layers of aventurine, with inserts of perforated rods, up to ten layers and of wholly unusual colours, the sign of a lively experimentation and technical virtuosity linked to the rebirth of an ancient tradition that had been completely forgotten.

The inventor of the rosetta bead in 1482 or a little earlier was Marina Barovier, who was also involved in the first exports of beads to the New World and Africa between the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. But after that date there is no evidence of a production of large ground rosetta beads. The revival of this form in modern times seems therefore to date only from between 1882 and 1888, the year of a major order mentioned in the chronicles of the time (251,000 rosetta beads measuring between 13×14 mm and 38×52 mm) and the subsequent lively controversy between the glassworks  about the “paternity” of what seemed to be a new production, but which actually renewed the splendor of a bead invented five hundred years earlier.

However, the kaleidoscopic world of beads was yet to be discovered as Abbot Vincenzo Zanetti well knew: it was he who presented this material in the most prestigious Universal Expositions in the form of mosaic beads, blown beads, lampwork beads, “submerged” beads, Europe and Africa beads, beads with eyes, in spiral, flag, monochrome, feathered forms, with murrine inserts, with eyes, dotted, sinusoidal, comb, wrapped or figural.

It takes little to be seduced by these magical and ancient artefacts whose tradition still survives and is renewed even today.

In addition to the historical collections, the museum in Murano wished to display beads made today by the glassworks on the island, which are the result of a history that has not been lost and represent the evidence of a desire to preserve the mastery and technical skills of this art-form while injecting new stimuli.

A special section thus displays today’s product with works by Mario Cavagnis, Luisa Conventi-GIOIA, Laura Mantoan, S.U.V.-Venetian Beats, Igor Balbi, Renata Ferrari-La Perla Veneziana, Ivan Campagnol, Cristina Sfriso, Lucia Santini, Alessia Fuga, Giacomo De Carlo, Ercole Moretti, Elena Rosso, Manuela Zanvettori, Giorgio Vaccari, ESSE 2, Vittorio Costantini, Alessandro Moretti-Costantini Glassbeads, Matteo Alvise Fusaro-Lav Rossetto Susanna, Amy West, Andrea Canal, Muriel Balensi, Maria Rossana Zanetti, Mauro Vianello, Marina e Susanna Sent, Davide Penso, Antonio Vaccari, Marianna Bottaro, Corte Studiovetro-Corte Alberto & Paola, Francesco Fabris, Yukina Fiorese-Yuki Ebukuro, Le perle di Mauro-Cesarina Mantoan, Perle Maison Lisette Murano, L’Antica perla di Liviana Molin, Urano Vianello and Paolo Darin.

The realisation of an interesting introductory didactic section is the result of a collaboration with “Ercole Moretti” and “Effetre Murano”.

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Curated by Chiara Squarcina and Augusto Panini

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In the course of his long career, architect, sculptor and designer Gaetano Pesce has experimented to extraordinary effect with the manifold possibilities of working in any material. His particular passion for glassmaking has even led him to invent a technique of his own which can produce highly original results. In his unabated research into original formal and functional solutions, Pesce has experimented with a whole range of techniques, such as those on display in the exhibition space of the ex-Conterie.

Alongside these extraordinarily precious glassworks are others created using the techniques of Pastis, Joliette, Vieux Port, Pâte de Verre and Plage, traditional methods that Pesce has adopted and reworked in a contemporary key. The investigative spirit of the exhibition and its desire to narrate a major creative phase in Pesce’s work focuses extensively on his expressive language, showing how in shaping glass he is able to optimally combine his exceptional sense of form with the volatility of this extraordinary material, producing unexpected and playful results.

Curated by Gabriella Belli, Chiara Squarcina and Francoise Guichon

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Venetian painter and designer Corrado “Dino” Martens (1894-1970) moved to Murano in the 1920s and began work with the firms SALIR (Studio Ars et Labor Industrie Riunite) and Salviati & Co. Martens exceptional sensitivity for glass led him to understood its potential and establish a special harmonious relationship, shaping it to his daring and original designs, at times “visionary” for the early twentieth century.

Thanks to the extensive Lutz Holz collection, the exhibition is able to present an artist and designer with natural scientific and technical mastery of his material. This is also amply supported by his drawings and notes, in which he meticulously detailed and described the stages of his work. This rigorous precision and attention to detail led him to become artistic director of the Aureliano Toso Glassworks in 1939, a prolific relationship that lasted until 1963.

Curated by Chiara Squarcina
with the support of the Lutz Holz Foundation, Berlin

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Garden Fracture / Mirror in Vapour: Part 2 previews on September 29th at the Spazio Conterie within the Museum of Glass, located on the island of Murano, and will remain open to the public until December 3rd. The exhibition presents the work of Australian artist Rosslynd Piggott in a visual articulation of her artistic path formed by a 30 year long career dedicated to the exploration of painting, photography and video in the investigation of glass. Using painting as the principal background to her work, Rosslynd Piggott has utilised the use of other materials in order to enhance and support her work, each chosen for their diverse expressive qualities. Glass, mirrors, fabric, antique and found materials, air, perfume, metals, paper and jewels have all become her methods of communication.

The artist’s works in glass began in 1990, the year in which she produced the work entitled ‘100 Glasses’ that  a spatially linear poem consisting of 100 glasses engraved with various words and placed on a long shelf. The sequence begins with names of faraway cities, charged with historical and sentimental meaning: ‘Rome’, ‘Egypt’, ‘Thebe’, and ‘Venice’. Then comes elements such as ‘salt’, ‘ink’, nouns, a date from the past, a date from the future, ‘Marcel’ (Proust or Duchamp), ‘Virginia’ (Woolf), followed by the Latin names of their favourite flowers. Lastly, 14 glasses devoid of any engravings implying certain openness, a space not yet finished. This initial work signals the beginning of Rosslynd Piggott’s budding interest in the metaphysical potential of glass.

Glass continued to be an important material for Piggott’s artistic practice, particularly for its paradoxical qualities simultaneously withholding and revealing, capable of maintaining both a solid and fluid form, with the capacity to evoke a sense of multiplicitous space. For a painter such as Rosslynd Piggott, used to working with within the realm of layering and veiling delicate semi transparent colour, glass offered a coherent and complimentary facet with a unique sense of material.

In 2011, after various experimentations with glass produced in Australia, Piggott arrived in Murano to work on a new project that was centred on a collection of air. For this work nine vases were realised, each with a florally inspired glass stopper, containing various samples of air collected from the famous Garden of Nymphs. Between 2012 and 2013 Piggott began to regularly visit Murano and collaborated with the master engraver Muarizio Vidal from the Ongaro e Fuga studio. The new works that were created as a result of this partnership were often accompanied by delicate floral designs in which images slowly dissolve until they disappear and fade into translucent white cellulose. The drawings on paper are both the predecessors and the continuations of the glass works, with very slight almost imperceptible pencil strokes representing the consistency of the sharp stone wheel gently translating the images onto the glass.

The discovery of glass engraving and the artisanal mastery of Murano paved the way for further series of works composed of an unusual and fascinating stratification of glass plates engraved with botanical images superimposed in several layers. Beneath the plates lies a mirror resulting in a captivating multiplication of the images and an enchanting play of light. Etched glass and empty space alternate, and the mirror provides a backdrop that doubles the floral scenes creating an almost vertiginous element as well as presenting a reflection of the viewer, albeit ambiguously distorted.

Mirrors have maintained a role of primary importance in Piggott’s work, particularly when the surface becomes marred by time as the process of oxidisation renders the material and its reflection mysterious and obscure. In accordance with this theme of transformation and ambiguity, the artist has produced numerous distorted mirrors whilst in Australia, characterised by unique surfaces that appear both cloudy and almost liquid.

The series Garden Fracture / Mirror in Vapour also contains works which explore the reflective and refractive nature of glass as it toys with the viewer’s gaze, inviting it in one moment only to bounce it back the next. The eye is captured by a myriad of curved petals that lie in front of a branch scattered with blossoms of wisteria, whilst cherry blossom petals softly fall to the ground amongst the voluptuous blooms of peonies. Visions multiply in a beautifully chaotic garden that absorbs the viewer, transporting them away from themselves.

Piggott’s work carries you into a timeless and limitless world, a space for the imagination and the intangible, for wonder and joy, where everything returns to the fracture between the self and the non-self.

Curated by Chiara Squarcina, Francesca Giubilei, Luca Berta

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In cooperation with

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Glass. The island of Murano. A great history. Countless chapters with many more to write. With the objective of creating a didactic aid as a continuation of the history of Murano glass, the Museum has therefore decided to mount this exhibition.

It is never easy to recount the present but today the challenge is too important: reminding the world and reaffirming that artistic glass is produced on Murano, its centuries-old techniques and the boldness of those who are able to translate the evocativeness of this incandescent material are as alive as ever.

Thus, “Murano Today” is more than a simple exhibition because through its testimony, it enciphers a historic moment that reveals renewed interest in the universe of glass and a material that is as malleable as it is difficult to shape, reflecting a silent feeling by translating the extreme expressive potential of an intuition.

The occasion to immerge ourselves in contemporaneity thus materialises, and we find ourselves looking at works signed by designers, and others conceived and created by glass masters. We shall see ancient techniques, reappraisals and experiments that combine the rediscovered communicative power of glass today because it embodies the fragility of a world that is trying, in spite of itself, to conquer its own identity in an attempt to recognise itself in one that is ‘new’ whilst still in the past, despite tirelessly trying to reach out towards a new chromatic and aesthetic euphony.

Some we will recognise more than others but it will always be a dialogue with art in the sense of a sublime expression of talents that in glass have captured all the nuances of an interpretive palette and an interiorised narrative, one that is increasingly uncertain and fragile, but also more connected to its surroundings.

Grateful thanks go to everyone who participated in this undertaking because it is by working together as a group that we can highlight that Murano today is not clinging to its great and indisputable past, but is asserting itself with innovative pride and experimental obstinacy so that tomorrow will be as inevitable as the certainty that the DNA of glass flows here on this island in the lagoon.

This is the real, and unique difference that will always make Murano glass special, not by choice but by definition. Remembering it and not letting it be forgotten is the real, unique and demanding challenge.

Curated by Gabriella Belli and Chiara Squarcina

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Murano, Museo del Vetro
Brandolini Room
25 June – 23 October 2016

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Fondazione Musei Civici of Venice’s exhibitions in Murano Glass Museum will continue for the 2016 summer with the exhibition Il Vetro a Lume (Lampworking), with works and the organization of Mauro Vianello. This exhibition will take place in the Brandolini Room from June 25th to October 23rd.

The exhibition revolves around the manufacture of Lampworking  (blown and not), an ancient art that today has an extraordinary and universally acknowledged technique that allows the creation of a variety of works that couldn’t have been obtained in the furnace and that therefore, require hard work and uncommon skills.

The objects that were suited for this typology of glass-working -that reached its technical and aesthetic  ‘apogee’  during 19th century- were pearls and their production engaged a great part of the labour that took part in this activity. From their creation and decoration originated all of these objects that had a massive diffusion during 19th century: from perfume flasks or salt containers to adorn ladies’ belts, to the sophisticated and complex art of millefiori and figurative murrine, in which excelled the personality of relevance that was Giacomo Franchini (active approximately during the mid century) that, even with the limited processing means, he realized figurative canes of such sophisticated technical virtuosity that rivaled the ones of the most expert figurative miniaturists.

Amongst the most complex subjects made with this technique there is without doubt the work know as “glass zoo” -having as subjects animals-, of which the production reached its peak during the 20th century. There are also other examples of blown lampworking in the déco period in Venice, influenced by the  nord European works, that represent swans, storks, deers and various animals, all worked with the technique of blown glass and mercury silver.

In 19th century the realization of animals and botanic subjects had mostly a didactic purpose and were intended to be exposed in natural history museums and universities that, for those species, mostly marine (since they couldn’t be stuffed they had to be necessarily realised with another technique that reproduced the complex shapes and peculiar colours) found their optimum exactly in lampworking.

The pioneers of this activity were the Bohemians Blaschka: Leopold (1822-1895) and his son Rudolf (1857-1939), who achieved their subjects -mollusc and all kinds of marine invertebrates amongst which stand out, for vividness, the complex and numerous species of jellyfish -based on zoologists’ and botanists’ designs, that were reproduced in the three dimensions.

In Venice there are many masters that stood out in the realization of lampworking. Amongst the ones that dedicated their greater efforts in the creation of naturalistic works, with all individual solutions, the Venetian. Muranese by adoption, Mauro Vianello (1968) – glass artisan-artist and great studious of Blaschka’s art- stands out. This exhibition presents a selection of works that can be defined in continuity and inspired by the Bohemians’ art, but that are also realized integrating  Venetian culture. Especially in the use of colours, inspired by the pictorial art of the great Venetian renaissance art and by Muranese glassware between 19th and 20th century.

It is the complex chromatic effects used in the moment of rebirth and creativity of Muranese art that Vianello makes his own -from aventurine and aquamarine or ruby, merged together with other polishes and adding sometimes gold and silver leaves- and thanks to that merging of colors his personal ‘habitat’ made of glass animals, often marine, comes to life, restoring all the beauty and allurement of an incredible local craft.

L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su Archivio Museo del Vetro.

It also has close ties with the territory of the industrial areas of Northern Italy and Canton Ticino, since a special federal law enacted in the late nineteenth century ordained that only alcohol – hence also aperitifs – produced in Switzerland could be served in the confederation or exported from it. The result was that in the early years of the twentieth century, numerous Italian companies set up branches in Chiasso and the rest of Ticino. They included Campari, Carpano, Cinzano, Cynar, Martini, Zucca, alongside the Ticinese firms Franzini, Gazzose Galli, Ferrario, Pintails, Peri, Noè and Gildo.

By the end of the nineteenth century the art of drinking toasts denoted a mode of convivial gathering. The exhibition explores, through their graphic expression, the various transformations of the modes of the pleasure of social drinking, from the Belle Époque to the Deco period and the post-war recovery of the dolce vita to the contemporary happy hour, a phenomenon that takes on the values of a social ritual.

The exhibition presents a highly pleasurable visual heritage with flyers, posters, playbills, placards, menus, calendars, advertising graphics, metal and ceramic signs, logos, as well as designer objects such as tables and chairs, not to mention items used in drinking aperitifs: designer glasses with various logos, coasters, ice buckets and soda siphons, all highly refined in their imagery.

The exhibition emphasises not only the passion for aperitifs and the sharing of a moment with a domestic and social significance, but also a cultural phenomenon that has its roots in civil life, corroborated by skill in mixing drinks.

The purpose is to provide an outline of a true history of communication by major companies, such as Branca, Campari, Carpano, Cinzano, Cynar and Martini, as well as the Ticinese Franzini and Galli, which entrusted their image to distinguished artists, including Marcello Dudovich, Leonetto Cappiello, Fortunato Depero, Adolf Hohenstein, Franz Laskoff, Mario Gros, Achille Luciano Mauzan, Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Plinio Codognato, Marcello Nizzoli, Lora Lamm and Armando Testa, to name only a few.

The exhibition is the result of close collaboration with the Civica Raccolta di Stampe “Achille Bertarelli” in Milan, the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich, the Museum Gebrüder Thonet in Vienna and the corporate archives of important producers of aperitifs. It also presents works from some of the most important private galleries and collections in Europe, with particular reference to those of Alessandro Bellenda, Marco Agosti, Marco Gusmeroli, Valerio Bigano, Nicola Corti and Uberto Valsangiacomo.

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A path between personal story and historical memory of a country

I was born in Buenos Aires in 1957.

I was part of a generation that fought to change a society that seemed terribly unjust. I was 19 years old in 1976 when the military gained power with a coup d’état, and in August of that year my daughter Natalia was born. She is now the same age as the youth born during the dictatorship, from whom the military stole biological identities. With inconceivable cruelty, pregnant female prisoners were assassinated after giving birth and newborns were illegally put up for adoption and treated as trophies of war.

The title of the exhibit – Identidad desaparecida – alludes to the emptiness that the children, who are now adults, left in their biological families and in society. It is an absence that weighs as much as a boulder in the history of Argentina. The military and their civil accomplices – doctors, priests and corrupt officials – wanted to make a generation and their descendants disappear from the face of the earth. Using institutionalized methods of terror, they tried to silence the mothers assembled every Thursday in front of the government headquarters in Plaza de Mayo, asking for the liberation of their absent children or the return of their bodies. Hard fighting, the Mothers, who in time became Grandmothers, moved the focus of their protest and began the search for the children of the sons desaparecidos.

The central installation of the exhibit – one hundred nineteen pieces of infant clothing made in colored glass – is a reminder of the resolved cases of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, meaning the one hundred nineteen children who were able to know the names of their real parents, the circumstances of their births, and meet their biological families. Even if the children of the desaparecidos are now adults, in my work I always speak about children, because the trauma originated in childhood, when the military took upon itself the right to determine the fate of parents, negating every form of family identity.

As an artist I have always been interested in interpersonal relationships and in the relationship between family and society. In this case those involved in the illegal adoptions had to keep the family secrets sealed, while counting on the complicity of those who chose not to look or search beyond.
“Revealing”, making visible what is normally hidden or cannot be seen, is an integral part of my work, and I use glass to represent this metaphor; a material we use daily to preserve foods and beverages, their integrity protected in containers and bottles. In my artworks I use glass to preserve the memory of people and objects for future generations. I am not interested in the potential beauty of the material, but in its function to preserve and protect. To me glass embodies the idea of resilience. When ancient glass artifacts are discovered, often broken, they require time and dedication to be put together again. Objects speak to us of the person who created them and transport us back in time.

The story of the desaparecidos’ children will be pieced together in its entirety once the work of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo concludes and all those still missing will have answered. After extensive research, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo have identified at least five hundred cases of children stolen from their parents or born in captivity, who were subsequently put up for adoption illegally. Over the years they created a campaign, inviting children born between 1976 and 1983 who had doubts about their identities to take a DNA test. Thanks to the Grandmothers, today one hundred nineteen young people have reclaimed a basic human right, the right to an identity.

Working on this exhibit I have had occasion to reflect on my personal history. I left Argentina at the age of 23 with my partner and our children Emiliano and Natalia, and have lived since than, for the most part, in Italy. In my work I continuously return to the period of my existence in Argentina, which profoundly transformed me. It is as if I am trying to be a “salve for my wounds,” as Etty Hillesum wrote during World War II. Through my work I observe those wounds, and I am aware that perhaps the only possible salve is in not forgetting.

I would like to dedicate this show to the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, creators of this authentic miracle. Different from the model proposed by Western society, of a happiness that is allergic to old age and pain, where the elderly are more or less invisible, in Argentina the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo have had and continue to have a very important role within society. This exhibit is also a tribute to these generous, tireless women, who have walked straight through hell, but are still here, with their sweet smiles, fighting for memory, truth and justice, contributing significantly to the pacification process between Argentinean society and its history.

Silvia Levenson

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BIOGRAPHY

Silvia Levenson, born in Buenos Aires in 1957. Lives and works in Italy since 1980.

She exhibited in international museums such as Triennale and Pac in Milan, Museo Archeologico in Aosta, Quadriennale in Rome, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fè, USA, Museo d’Arte e Design (MUDAC), Laussane, Ludwig Museum in Budapest, Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco and Bornholms Kunst Museum, Denmark.

Her works and installations are included in public collections such as: Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Corning Museum of Glass, NY, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe (USA), Tikanoja Art Museum,Vaasa, Finlandia and private collections: Elton John Collection,USA, Bullseye Co., Portland, Fondazione Remotti, Camogli and Fondazione della Banca San Gottardo in Italy.

In 2009 she was visiting artist by ANU (Australia National University), Canberra, in 2005 artist in residence at the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, USA, where in 2004 she received the Rakow Comission Prize, in 1998 and 1995 artist in residence by Bullseye Glass Co., Portland (USA) and in 1996 artist in residence by the Museè Atelier de Verre de Sars Poteries.

She was guest lecturer by Accademia di Belle Arti in Venezia and in Verona, National Glass Center, Camberra, Australia, Northlands Creative Glass, UK, Accademia di Scultura in Barcellona, Pilchuck Glass School, USA, Space Verre, Montreal, Canada, School of Art & Design of Wolverhampton, UK and Design University in Helsinki.

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Exhibition curated by Elena Povellato

Catalogue PuntoMarte Editore
In collaboration with Galleria Traghetto Venezia

L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su Archivio Museo del Vetro.

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The Murano Glass Promotion Consortium Promovetro is the driving force behind A Light for Emilia Romagna, an unusual cultural operation that combines solidarity with safeguarding the artistic heritage of the part of the region of Emilia Romagna that was hit by an earthquake in 2012.

This came about when the Murano Glass Promotion Consortium Promovetro accepted an invitation addressed to it by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and of Tourism (MiBACT), through the Superintendency of Fine Arts and Landscape for the provinces of Bologna, Modena, Reggio Emilia and Ferrara, to recuperate and restore several masterpieces of glass art that had been damaged by the earthquake, including the chandeliers in the building that housed the offices and council chamber of the small town of Sant’Agostino, in the province of Ferrara.

The result of this project will be presented in an exhibition, scheduled to be held from 23 January to 28 February 2016, at the Murano Glass Museum, in partnership with the MiBACT, the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and the Municipality of Sant’Agostino, with the patronage of the Region of Veneto, the Region of Emilia Romagna, the Province of Venice, the Province of Ferrara, the City of Venice, the FAI – Italian National Trust and the University of Venice at Ca’ Foscari and with the support of the Chamber of Commerce of Venice, Rovigo and the Lagoon Delta.

The exhibition, whose design was curated by the Theatre of La Fenice, will gravitate around the imposing gold amber glass chandelier whose four levels together stand nearly five metres tall, enclosed in a circumference of nearly three metres. Made in the mid-twenties of the last century, its style echoes the great eighteenth-century Venetian tradition of monumental chandeliers, along the lines of the ones that can still be seen to this day in the Museum of Palazzo Mocenigo or in Ca’ Rezzonico – the Museum of Eighteenth-Century Venice.

Originally intended to illuminate the room known as the Sala dei Giochi (named after the games held in Rome’s imperial arenas) in Ferrara’s Este Castle, this enormous piece of craftsmanship was moved at the end of 1933 into the council chamber of the town hall of Sant’Agostino, which was often used to host festivities from the mid-nineteenth century until the end of the Second World War. Although no certain confirmation has been found in any official documents, a persistent rumour has it that this great chandelier was moved on the order of Italo Balbo, who often attended balls with his mistress in the large chamber in this building designed by Antonio Giordani.

Together with this piece, the exhibition will also show another three, somewhat smaller, restored lamps, which were located in the same room.
The exhibition is accompanied by a book (published by Baraldi) curated by the writer and journalist Alberto Toso Fei, which describes the history of the Sant’Agostino chandeliers and the work done to restore them.

“A Light for Emilia Romagna”, comments Luciano Gambaro, president of the Promovetro Consortium, “is a project that comes straight from the heart, a gesture of solidarity with our friends in Emilia who took such a hard hit from the quake and, at the same time, an attempt to safeguard part of our history”. “The restoration work,” he continues, “was a long, demanding process of teamwork, involving many of the consortium’s member firms and a large number of craftsmen, who pooled their resources for one purpose: to give the chandeliers a new lease of life. As of today, the great Sant’Agostino chandelier represents a symbol of Murano’s determination to endure, to achieve a renaissance: nothing is ever lost if we have a good will and love the work we do, our traditions and our history”.

Over the last three years, the project A Light for Emilia Romagna has developed in several stages: first to salvage the four Murano glass chandeliers from the town hall in Sant’Agostino, which had to be demolished because of serious structural problems following the earthquake, then to contact the technicians and expert glass workers to study how to go about the restoration, then finally and above all to co-ordinate the work undertaken by the consortium’s member firms specialised in lighting and mirrors, so as to execute the actual restoration.

A Light for Emilia Romagna.
THE SANT’AGOSTINO CHANDELIERS
Murano Glass Museum (Fondamenta Giustinian, 8 – Murano)
23 January – 28 February 2016
Opening hours: daily, 10.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m. (the ticket office closes one hour earlier)
Tickets: full price, € 10.00; reduced price, € 7.50
Information: Tel. +39 0415274718 | email: museo.vetro@fmcvenezia.it | https://archivio-museovetro.visitmuve.it
Catalogue: Baraldi Editore

Press offices
CLP Relazioni Pubbliche |
Francesco Sala | tel. +39 02 36 755 700 | francesco.sala@clponline.it | www.clponline.it
This press release and images are on www.clponline.it
ph. f.barbini© – Consorzio Promovetro Murano

L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su Archivio Museo del Vetro.

This wide-ranging, important 20th-century nucleus offers a comprehensive overview of one particular company which, through artists like Zecchin and Radi, made a fundamental contribution to the introduction of design into the world of glassmaking.

The relationship between master glassmakers and designers constitutes an important chapter in the history of glassmaking, which renews itself be re-interpreting the aesthetic evolutions of the 20th century as the they trace out the new artistic forms through the decorative arts.

Essential in form and innovative for the new colour effects, these glass objects displayed here constitute examples of some of the finest glass production of the Art Nouveau period.

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Curated by Chiara Squarcina and Lutz Holz
Scientific coordination: Gabriella Belli
Layout design: Daniela Ferretti

L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su Archivio Museo del Vetro.

from April 18 to June 7, 2015
Murano, Glass Museum

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The international EGE – European Glass Experience project dedicated to contemporary art and glass, launched in 2013 with an international contest co-financed by the Cultural Programme of the European Commission, now reaches its central phase.

Many works were presented for the project by young artists aged between 18 and 40, and about 80 works and projects (studies or drawings) have been chosen from these by the jury coordinated by Cornelia Lauf, going to make up a travelling exhibition that has visited Finland and Spain, and will subsequently move to Poland, the United Kingdom and Sweden.

The works chosen reveal a growing generation of young artists working with glass. They come from different schools and cultures and originate not only from Europe, but also from Argentina, Japan, Israel, the United States and Turkey.

The exhibitions that have already taken place, at the Finnish Glass Museum in Riihimaki and the Fundación Centro Nacional del Vidrio in Segovia, each presented about 20 works and sketches; only the show at Murano will display all the winning works and, for the occasion, 20 of the projects chosen will actually be made in Murano glass by the island’s master craftsmen.

Download  EGE Workshop programme (26-30 May 2015, Real Sitio de la Granja de San Ildefonso, Spain) >>

Admission is allowed with times and tickets of the museum >>>

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L'articolo Exhibition sembra essere il primo su Archivio Museo del Vetro.