Fondazione Giancarlo Ligabue Opens Palazzo delle Arti e delle Culture in Venice

The Fondazione Giancarlo Ligabue has opened its new permanent home at Palazzo Erizzo Nani Mocenigo on the Grand Canal in Venice, after a decade since its founding. The foundation, led by Inti Ligabue, son of the late Giancarlo Ligabue, presents a collection of over 400 works spanning 4.5 billion years, from a pallasite meteorite to contemporary art. The exhibition, titled "Collecto," is organized thematically around universal human questions such as birth, death, beauty, power, and the divine. Highlights include a rare 14th-15th century Tuscan wooden Pietà, a 19th-century Kongo-Yombe Phemba fertility figure, a 3rd millennium BCE seal from Jiroft, Iran, and works by Leonardo da Vinci, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Gian Battista Piazzetta, Giambattista Tiepolo, and contemporary artists Arcangelo Sassolino, Nico Vascellari, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, and Chiara Enzo. A new monumental painting by Marta Spagnoli, "Fantasmata VI" (2025), created during a residency supported by Galleria Continua, greets visitors. The foundation also organizes the Venice Sounds music festival, its third edition starting October 24 at the Tese dell'Arsenale, featuring Morcheeba, The Zen Circus, Motta, and Emma Nolde, with proceeds supporting cancer research. The foundation publishes the Ligabue Magazine since 1982. Visits are by reservation, in small groups with a guide, from mid-September to December and again in spring.