Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia announces 2025 program, including exhibitions and inclusion

The Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia(MUVE) announces its program of activities for 2025 and renews its commitment to the enhancement of its collections and venues. The museum network offers a journey through the history of Venice, highlighting its central role in European culture and its connection to the world, with proposals ranging from art to history, from archaeology to Venetian traditions, with a focus on innovation and accessibility.

Exhibitions and events

The 2025 exhibition calendar is full of initiatives celebrating important historical figures and artistic movements. Prominent among the main events are the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giacomo Casanova, with two exhibitions at the Museum of Palazzo Mocenigo The Renewal of the Male Image in the Time of Casanova, which can be visited from March 7 to July 27, 2025, and Casanova 1725-2025: the Legacy of a Myth between History and Cinema, from August 29 to November 2, 2025. These exhibitions will provide an overview of Casanova’s life and influence, exploring his impact on fashion and film culture.

At the Museum of Palazzo Mocenigo, the exhibition season concludes with Men’s Kimono, from Dec. 5, 2025 to April 5, 2026, an exhibition created in collaboration with the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice. The exhibition traces the phenomenon of Japanism between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, offering an in-depth look at Japanese culture and its influence on Western art. Ca’ Rezzonico will host the exhibition dedicated to theCicognara Album, from Sept. 26, 2025 to Jan. 12, 2026: a liber amicorum assembled by Leopoldo Cicognara, with drawings by Appiani, Bossi, the young Hayez, French authors, and the drawings of his friend Antonio Canova. Palazzo Ducale will be the venue for the exhibition The Painted Gold. El Greco and Painting between Crete and Venice, from April 30 to September 29, 2025: staged in the rooms of the Doge’s Apartment, it will explore the artistic production that flourished on the island of Crete during Venetian rule.

The Museo Correr dedicates an exhibition to Carlo Scarpa with The Correr by Carlo Scarpa 1953-1960, focusing on the architect’s ability to combine form and function through an unmistakable stylistic signature. Also kicking off is the first Canovian Dialogues initiative with Karen LaMonte. Nocturnes, from Oct. 23, 2025 to Feb. 2026: an itinerary reflecting on Canova’s classical heritage and neoclassicism through nocturnal visions characterized by blue hues. Ca’ Pesaro will then host, reunited once again, Giulio Aristide Sartorio’s Poem of Human Life, from May 16 to Sept. 28, 2025. A large decorative cycle created for the Central Salon of the 1907 International Art Exhibition. The gallery will also dialogue with contemporary artists through the exhibitions Raoul Schultz. Works 1953-1970, from March 22 to June 8, and Antonello Viola. Gold of the Lagoon, from June 20 to Sept. 28. The fall season will then open with a major retrospective on Gastone Novelli (1925-1968), from Oct. 25, 2025 to Feb. 22, 2026, and will continue with Terry Atkinson. Art and Language, from November 14, 2025 to February 22, 2026.

In Mestre, the Candiani Cultural Center instead hosts until March 2025 Munch. The Expressionist Scream in the Twentieth Century, pending the opening of new spaces dedicated to temporary exhibitions and the permanent collection. Group exhibitions will also return with the eighth edition of the Mestre Painting Prize, from Sept. 13 to Oct. 26, 2025, and, at Forte Marghera, Artefici del nostro tempo 2025, from June 7 to Dec. 31, 2025. The Fortuny Museum will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its founding as an institution (1975-2025), following the bequest of Henriette Nigrin, widow of Mariano Fortuny, to the City of Venice. A program will be held around the Fortunys to tell the biographical and artistic stories of the protagonists of an era, with an official celebratory moment on June 10, 2025. The Museum of Natural History “Giancarlo Ligabue” will also present to the public the first outcomes of the research project dedicated to A Roman Ostriarium in the Venice Lagoon, scheduled from April to October 2025. Through artifacts, images, and videos of underwater excavation operations and research activities, as well as a three-dimensional model of the lagoon archaeological site, the exhibition will delve into life in the lagoon during the Roman imperial era, offering a narrative of “Venice before Venice.” A dialogue with contemporary art will be provided by Alice Channer’s installation Megaflora, from May 8 to Sept. 28, 2025: a freestanding sculpture reproducing a bramble stem. Placed in the museum garden, the work invites visitors to discover the secrets of the natural world in an evocative and engaging way.
The Glass Museum in Murano continues the tale of Stories of Factories, Stories of Families. Fratelli Toso (from July 12 to Nov. 24) in anticipation of the opening of the new permanent itinerary, scheduled from Dec. 12, in the renovated Ex Conterie with the first chapter dedicated to The Nineteenth Century: from Crisis to Rebirth. Finally, at the Burano Lace Museum, the competition A Lace for Venice returns (June 14, 2025 to January 8, 2026).

Innovation and accessibility

MUVE renews its commitment to innovation and accessibility through the MUVE Academy project, which offers educational paths for students, scholars, and professionals. Workshops, guided tours and interactive laboratories aim to provide new perspectives on history and art, sharing the rich heritage of the museum collections. With this in mind, MUVE’s participation in events such as the Boat Show, the Salon of Italian High Craftsmanship, and Venice Glass Week is renewed and consolidated, all of which have the Abate Zanetti School and the production and research of glass art and craftsmanship as their cornerstones.

Special attention is paid to inclusion, with more than 150 educational proposals dedicated to schools, families and adults. These include multi-sensory paths accessible to all, art conversations for people with Alzheimer’s, and initiatives for language and cultural integration.

“The Fondazione Musei Civici not only responds to its fundamental role of custody and enhancement of precious assets and heritage of all for centuries,” says Luigi Brugnaro, Mayor of Venice, “but over the years it has become a driver of a widespread city cultural production, with transversal projects that include the permanent collections in the contemporary times, promoting the art of today made by the youth of our territory and our country. The Foundation acts as the driver of an inclusive system that has art in all its forms at its center, giving a constant stimulus to the city through numerous investments. We open the doors of our museums to visitors with extended hours and with free admission days dedicated to visitors to our great city, as well as with dedicated services, such as dog-sitting, which in the last year has been chosen by more than 900 visitors.A service made possible by all the workers who I will never cease to thank for the work they offer daily to those who choose to admire our wonderful halls. A Foundation that is attentive to its guests but also constantly on the move and able to open itself to new requests: the Emeroteca dell’Arte in Mestre with its artist studios and reading rooms is an example. How it has been able to be an outstanding partner for the ”Artisans of Our Time“ competition dedicated to our young people and how it has been able to bring inside the Boat Show the art of the museum through the cultural history of our traditions but also the intuition of our young people.”

“Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia is the institution that preserves and enhances the most relevant historical, artistic and cultural heritage of the city of Venice,” says Mariacristina Gribaudi, President Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia. “A responsibility and a commitment of inestimable value that with vision has undertaken, for some years now, a decisive change of step. A path that starts from its primary mission of protection, preservation and promotion, but that is also configured for a new function as a cultural and creative enterprise: MUVE has become a reality capable of enhancing the production of excellence, the historical and artistic beauty, the national cultural roots, of the territory and the city of Venice, aimed at the growth of each individual but also at social and economic development. In concrete terms, it is capable of sustaining itself independently, of attracting third-party resources from private individuals, of generating added economic value for the territory, and of reinvesting its own resources in high-impact infrastructural interventions in the city, as much in the historic center and islands as in Mestre and the mainland. A virtuous example, unique in our country, of which we can be proud.”

To see the full program of activities for 2025, you can visit the official website of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia: www.visitmuve.it

Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia announces 2025 program, including exhibitions and inclusion

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