07.03.2024
Museum Berggruen
After stops in Tokyo, Osaka, as well as Shanghai and Beijing, the international tour of Museum Berggruen – Neue Nationalgalerie continues in 2024 in Europe. From 24 March to 23 June 2024, selected artworks from Museum Berggruen form dialogs with works from the collection of Gallerie dell’Accademia at two venues in Venice. This fall, a comprehensive exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris will follow.
In the exhibition “Elective Affinities” taking place at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, located in the heart of the city, next to the bridge over the Canal Grande that bears its name, 17 artworks from Berlin will be integrated in the world’s largest collection of Venetian painting from the 14th to the 19th century. Each dialog using the selection of Modernist works initially chosen by Heinz Berggruen is motivated in a different manner: iconographically by displaying the same subject matter, or according to the genre of the works, but also because form and color create an unexpected effect when seen together.
These encounters share the status of the artworks as masterpieces of their respective era. The exhibition title “Elective Affinities. Works from Museum Berggruen/Neue Nationalgalerie in Dialogue with the Collection of Gallerie dell’Accademia” hints at these associative encounters and the potentials they produce. It is borrowed from the famous novel published in 1809 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who coming from Germany spent also a few months in Venice. The second venue of the exhibition is the Casa dei Tre Oci on Giudecca island. Following the same selection criteria, this presentation encompasses works on paper from the graphic collection of Gallerie dell’Accademia and 26 works on paper from Museum Berggruen.
Two Stations for “Elective Affinities. Works from Museum Berggruen/Neue Nationalgalerie in Dialogue with the Collection of Gallerie dell’Accademia”
The exhibition is curated by Giulio Manieri Elia and Michele Tavola (Gallerie dell’Accademia), as well as Gabriel Montua and Veronika Rudorfer (Museum Berggruen) and kindly supported by Mario Codognato and Berggruen Arts & Culture Venice.
Museum Berggruen – Neue Nationalgalerie will present a new performance work by Miles Greenberg (Canadian, b. 1997) on the occasion of the opening of the 60th Biennale of Contemporary Art. Co-curated by Klaus Biesenbach and Lisa Botti, Greenberg’s durational performance, “Sebastian”, forms a dialogue with the iconography of Saint Sebastian at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, as well as with Venice’s storied blackamoor motifs. This piece, as opposed to a linear narrative, shall be presented as open ritual over the course of eight hours at the historic Palazzo Malipiero.