THE ADVENTURE OF GLASS
A millennium of Venetian Art

From December 11th 2010 to April 5 th 2011
Museo Correr, Venice

After almost 30 years, once again the Correr Museum is hosting a prestigious exhibition on glass, a continuation, from a diverse angle of the same-named exhibition “The Adventure of Glass”, which has just ended at Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento. While some of the items on display in this great Venetian edition are different, other more important ones have been added in celebration of over a thousand years’ history of glass in Venice and the Lagoon. An initiative of Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, “The Adventure of Glass” is actually the largest exhibition on this theme since the extensive exhibition in 1982 at the Doge’s Palace, Correr Museum and the Glass Museum. The background to this event is the imminent celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Museum, which was founded in 1861 thanks to Abbot Zanetti, and also in view of the plans foreseen for the expansion in the spaces of the nearby Conterie, in the hope of encouraging more donations of 20th century works.

Organised chronologically in four sections – archaeological glass, the 15th to 18th centuries, the 19th century and the 20th century – with over 300 objects on display, all from the collections of the Murano Glass Museum, the great exhibition at the Correr Museum goes back over the entire extraordinary “adventure” of glass in Venice: from its arrival in the lagoon during the Classical age with glass from distant lands, to the growing union of glass and design that represents both the present and future of glass production on Murano.

With an unprecedented sequence of ancient glass recovered from the lagoon beds and the sand of the city canals, the opening section of the exhibition shows just to what extent glass became an integral part of Venice. Extremely fragile masterpieces, these objects will be on display to the public for the very first time since they were retrieved from the waters where they were preserved for centuries. This section also includes archaeological pieces from the Manca Fund, in the Correr Collection, that demonstrate their function not so much as a “memory archive” but, rather, as objects that inspired what was destined to become an iconic Venetian activity.

It was these very items that influenced the taste of Venetian glassmakers throughout most of the Golden Age of glass in Venice, from the fourteenth to the entire 16th century when Venetian glass was so sought after and copied. This significant period is represented in the exhibition with an extensive series of masterpieces.

Then the 18th century developments with the ingeniously successful attempts to present glass not merely for what it is, but for what else it can and will inspire when worked with skill and creativity.

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Curated by Aldo Bova and Chiara Squarcina
Layout by Daniela Ferretti