Venice, 9th – 16th September 2018

The Venice Glass Week The international festival dedicated to the art of glass returns with more than 180 different events including exhibitions, guided tours, conferences, workshops, performances and educational activities; all the details will soon be available on the new website www.theveniceglassweek.com The Town Council of Venice, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Fondazione Cini/LE STANZE DEL VETRO, Istituto Veneto and Consorzio Promovetro Murano present the second edition of the festival that from 9th to 16th September will in-volve all the main institutions in the city, with several new additions. VENICE, 5th July 2018 – From 9th to 16th September 2018 more than 150 participants, with a total of over 180 events across Venice, Mestre and Murano, will take part in the second edition of The Venice Glass Week, the major international festival dedicated to the art of glass, conceived to celebrate the artistic and economic resource for which Venice is famous around the world. The event is promoted by the Town Council of Venice and conceived by three of Ven-ice’s principal cultural institutions with considerable experience and expertise in the field of glass - Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti – along with the most important trade association, the Consorzio Promovetro Murano, which also manages the Vetro Artistico® Murano trademark of the Veneto Region. This year’s edition has again attracted a large number of participants, with a 20% increase over the first year’s festival. Hundreds of applications were originally submitted for review and selection by the cura-torial committee that was introduced this year, chaired by the Venetian glass historian Rosa Barovier Mentasti, and including critics and curators Chiara Bertola and Jean Blanchaert, journalist and editor of the German magazine NEUES GLAS – NEW GLASS: art & architecture Uta Klotz, and chemist, university teacher and expert in the composition of glass materials Marco Verità. The high volume of applications, from foun-dations, art galleries, museums - among which we note the participation for the first time of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Palazzo Fortuny and Museo di Storia Naturale -, cultural institutions, universities and advanced education institutes, as well as glass fur-naces, companies, artists and private Italian and foreign collectors, confirms the dyna-

mism and vitality of Venice’s cultural scene, and provides a strong indication of the local and international interest in the field of glass. The rich and expansive programme for The Venice Glass Week festival will involve var-ied and widespread events across the district, which this year also extends to the main-land, with Mestre now one of its main centres, along with Venice and Murano. The events, most with free entrance, will all have artistic glass as their main theme and be aimed at audiences of all ages: exhibitions, guided tours, conferences, seminars, prize-giving ceremonies, film screenings, educational activities, parties, drinks re-ceptions, open studios and a non-competitive night-time race around the candle-lit streets, canals and glass-furnaces of Murano. All details about the events will soon be available on the festival’s social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) and in particular on the new responsive website: www.theveniceglassweek.com, currently being constructed by D’Uva Firenze, the fes-tival’s technical sponsor. THE PROGRAMME The ‘week of glass’ will begin on the evening of Saturday 8th September at the Museo del Vetro di Murano with the opening of the Mario Bellini for Murano exhibition, curat-ed by Gabriella Belli and Chiara Squarcina. It will present the glass work of Mario Bellini, an individual who impacted the history of architecture and international design with his in-tense work in the field of industrial design. The festival will then come alive on Sunday 9th September with the opening of The M.V.M Cappellin Glassworks and the young Carlo Scarpa 1925-1931 exhibition, cu-rated by Marino Barovier at LE STANZE DEL VETRO and focusing on the importance of M.V.M. Cappellin & C. in the Murano of the 1920s and 1930s. Animated by the enthusi-asm and passion of Giacomo Cappellin, the glassworks also benefited from the input of the young Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa, who was active there from the end of 1926 until 1931. At San Giorgio, in the garden in front of the exhibition venue, visitors can also admire the monumental glass sculpture by the American artist Pae White, entitled Qwala-la, a 75 metre curved wall made with thousands of hand cast, coloured glass bricks. On the occasion of The Venice Glass Week, the Centro Studi del Vetro will present the Open Glass Archives throughout the week, offering the chance to visit the Archivio del Vetro and the specialist library, and guided tours around the Fondazione Giorgio Cini premises. The Fondazione Giorgio Cini will also be hosting the first major exhibition dedi-cated to European craftsmanship, Homo Faber: Crafting a more human future, organ-ised by the Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship, from 14th to 30th September. This is a cultural event of international importance, which will put the best of

rare, contemporary and traditional art crafts under the spotlight, along with their links to the world of design, including a section dedicated to glass curated by Jean Blachaert. Among the events organised by the Promotional Committee for The Venice Glass Week, we then note the seventh edition of Study Days on Venetian Glass, an annual appoint-ment that is one of the most important events for glass scholars, held by the Istituto Ve-neto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. During the ‘Days’, from 10th to 12th September, ex-perts and enthusiasts from all over the world - museum curators, scholars, collectors, re-storers, glass artists - will meet to discuss a particular and ancient glass working tech-nique: mould blown glass, by mezza stampaura, and hot applications over the centuries. During The Venice Glass Week, on Wednesday 12th September, the Glass in Venice and Riedel prizes will be awarded; the exhibition of the winning works will be open to the public until 14th October. The Consorzio Promovetro Murano is then organising a multimedia installation inspired by glass at the Palazzo Querini from 9th to 16th September: Glasses Archipelago is intended to represent the variety of Murano artistic production through especially chosen glass pieces. The Consorzio will also present, for the second year running, itineraries for discovering Murano glass: the Murano Glass Experience pathways will allow visitors to observe master glassmakers at work in furnaces and workshops that are normally closed to the public, but which will be opened specially for the occasion. However, the events organised by the Promotional Committee are only part of what will bring The Venice Glass Week to life. Along with the initiatives more directly linked to glass, there will also be poetry, music and cinema events. Finally, there will be chil-dren’s activities organised by Artsystem; drinks receptions and themed dinners; guided tours and also The Mouth of Fire 2018, a night-time race organised by ASD Venezia Runners Atletica Murano in which participants will run along the calli and across the bridges of Murano on Saturday 15th September on a course lit by candles, passing through six fully operating glassworks. THE FESTIVAL IMAGE All events in The Venice Glass Week programme will be distinguished by a unique logo conceived in 2016 by Anna Scaini, a second year student in the graphic design course at IED Venice. The logo has been creatively enhanced for the 2018 edition by Cristina Mo-randin, who has adapted it to evoke the filigree working of Murano glass and digital modelling.

For information: info@theveniceglassweek.com www.theveniceglassweek.com Press and communications office:

Elena Casadoro m +39 334 8602488 elena@casadorofungher.com Francesca Fungher m +39 349 3411211 francesca@casadorofungher.com www.casadorofungher.com