A banner 2022 for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection: nearly 400,000 visitors

Nearly four hundred thousand visitors for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in 2022. In short, it can be said that the Venetian museum has now left Covid behind: 381,000 visitors during 314 days of operation, a daily average of 1,215 guests, a 65 percent increase over 2021 in which the museum, due to the pandemic, always had restricted admissions and short periods of closure, the great success of the exhibition Surrealism and Magic (216,000 visitors over 147 days of opening).

To these figures, described as “exceptional” by the museum, must then be added more than 4,000 people who visited the collection at openings, institutional, corporate, and private events, plus the 7,000 participants in Public Programs, Kids Day, accessibility programs, and visits related to the At Guggenheim School project.

“For us, 2022 was the year of rebirth,” says Director Karole P. B. Vail. “After two years of difficulties and uncertainties, which forced us to be very cautious and first to open the doors of Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, with the permanent collection, and then to organize a single, extraordinary exhibition, which was Surrealism and Magic. Enchanted Modernity, we can now look forward to this new year with greater optimism and confidence. In 2023 there will be two temporary exhibitions flanking Peggy Guggenheim’s collection, aimed at celebrating two interpreters of 20th-century art history, both of whom are in the American patron’s collection: Edmondo Bacci and Marcel Duchamp. Of course, concurrently with the exhibition program, there will be no shortage of free collateral activities, Public Programs, and accessibility and inclusiveness projects for all audiences and our members.”

So the museum is setting visitors up for the 2023 exhibitions. Opening the exhibition season on April 1 will be Edmondo Bacci. The Energy of Light, curated by Chiara Bertola, head of the contemporary art program at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, an exhibition that fits well into the exhibition tradition of the Venetian museum, which for years, alongside exhibitions of international scope, has also hosted shows aimed at celebrating the protagonists of the national art scene after World War II, such as Lucio Fontana, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Tancredi Parmeggiani, and now Edmondo Bacci. Featuring some 80 works, including previously unpublished paintings and drawings, from national and international museums and private collections, this is the first and most comprehensive retrospective ever dedicated to the Venetian Edmondo Bacci (1913 - 1978), an artist who is within the small circle of artistic excellence in the Veneto, including Tancredi himself and Emilio Vedova.

The year then continues with the highly anticipated tribute to Marcel Duchamp (1887 - 1968), to whom the museum is dedicating, from October 14, 2023 to March 18, 2024, the exhibition Marcel Duchamp and the Seduction of the Copy, curated by Paul B. Franklin, an independent scholar and expert on Duchamp. An artist as eclectic as he is multifaceted, Duchamp was also a friend and adviser to Peggy Guggenheim. Among his masterpieces now part of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection is Box in a Suitcase (1935 - 41), which will be the focal point of this exhibition, aimed at redefining the concept of artwork and replication, within the artist’s output. There will be no shortage of important loans from prestigious Italian and American museums, as well as from various private collections. Accompanying both exhibitions will be a rich as well as articulated program of free collateral events and activities, dedicated to the exhibition themes and aimed at different types of audiences, adults, children, and Generation Z youth.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection also confirms Thursdays for Venetians: throughout the year, every Thursday from 2 to 6 p.m., the museum will be open free of charge to residents or those born in the municipality of Venice, students from city universities, from training schools recognized by the Veneto Region (Academy of Fine Arts, IUAV, Ca’ Foscari University, Benedetto Marcello Conservatory, Venice International University, Carlo Goldoni Theater Academy), from Provincial Centers for Adult Education (C.P.I.A.) and the University of the Third Age of the City of Venice. Free access will require reservations on the museum’s website.

Through its exhibitions, Public Programs, and various activities related to inclusion and accessibility, the Collection also intends to continue its goal of educating an increasingly broader community that participates in museum life and, therefore, in the dissemination of modern art, as well as promoting the educational and social role of the museum itself. In this regard, it is worth noting the new online course on art history, kicking off on January 23 and intended for members, EFFECT ART. How Art Can Form a Sustainable and Conscious Consciousness, by Professor Alessandra Montalbetti of the Brera Art Gallery. During the four lectures, Montalbetti will lead participants to discover how artists and their works have addressed issues such as climate change, peace, justice, inequality reduction and sustainable industrial development, finding answers and offering new perspectives with respect to topics that should be at the center of every single citizen’s daily life. For all information you can visit the Peggy Guggenheim Collection website.

Pictured: the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Photo by Matteo De Fina

A banner 2022 for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection: nearly 400,000 visitors

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