The Venice Glass Week
Venezia, Murano and Mestre
September 14 – 22, 2024

The eighth edition of The Venice Glass Week, the international festival created in 2017 to celebrate, support and promote the art of glass, is just a few days away, and will be held in Venice, Murano and Mestre from September 14 to 22, 2024. As is usual, also this year the event will have a new “title-hashtag”: #AWorldofGlass, designed to celebrate the fascinating and creativity-rich universe of art glass, even at the international level.

It is precisely the international flavor that characterizes this year’s festival, which received the highest number of applications ever with more than 300 entries received from 45 countries (including Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Australia, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Cyprus, South Korea, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Nigeria, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia, Syria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and the United States), which were selected by the Scientific Committee, chaired by Venetian glass historian Rosa Barovier Mentasti and composed of a team of experts in the field at the international level: Rainald Franz, Head of the Glass and Ceramics Collection at the MAK Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art in Vienna; Susanne Jøker Johnsen, Head of Exhibitions at the Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation in Copenhagen and Director of the European Glass and Ceramic Context in Bornholm, Denmark; Jean Blanchaert, gallery owner and curator; and Alma Zevi, art historian, writer and curator; Alma Zevi, art historian, writer and curator. These applications, from foundations, art galleries, museum institutions, cultural bodies, universities, glassworks, furnaces, companies and artists from Italy and abroad, testify to the great vibrancy of the art, cultural and production scene not only in the city, but also in the rest of the world, in the glass sector.

Among the new features of #AWorldofGlass is a new partnership with Homo Faber, which from September 1 to 30 will offer the best of contemporary high craftsmanship at the Cini Foundation. In particular, the collaboration with The Venice Glass Week will be concretized, as part of Homo Faber in Città, in the program of The Venice Glass Week Tours by Select, free guided tours with aperitif in historic Murano furnaces curated by Select, also this year the Official Cocktail Sponsor of the festival, which will not coincidentally end with a convivial moment in which the historic Venetian aperitif cannot be missed. In collaboration with Select will also be held The Venice Glass Week Closing Party, the special closing event of the festival scheduled for Sunday, September 22 at Ca’ Select, a place created from the recovery of an artisan workshop dedicated to metalworking in the Cannaregio district (entrance by invitation only).

A Glass Bateo, designed by the Promovetro Murano Consortium, will instead ply the canals of Venice for the duration of the festival. For the occasion, one of the Actv fleet’s vaporetti (familiarly called “bateo” by Venetians) will be refitted to host events, meetings, demonstrations and workshops, with the aim of acquainting an increasingly wide audience with the history and charm of Murano art glass. There will also be no shortage of activities for young and old: of particular note is the Family Program proposed by MUVE Education. Stories of art, sand and fire will be the title of the guided itinerary along the halls of the Murano Glass Museum, which houses world-famous works that have expressed over the centuries – and in contemporary times – the technical expertise of the masters and the creativity of artists and designers. The tour will be completed with a furnace demonstration at the Abate Zanetti Glass School, one of the most important glassmaking institutions on the island. The program of The Venice Glass Week will be composed also for this edition of the most varied initiatives scattered throughout the territory, which will also involve Murano and Mestre, and most of which will be free admission, for audiences of all ages. The full list of participants in the eighth edition of The Venice Glass Week will be announced at a press conference scheduled for early September.

Promoted and organized by the Municipality of Venice, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, LE STANZE DEL VETRO – Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Pentagram Stiftung, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti and Consorzio Promovetro Murano, The Venice Glass Week is again this year among the “Great Events” of the Veneto Region. The 2024 edition of the festival is also supported by the many partners who believe in the project, including Select, Homo Faber / Michelangelo Foundation, Pentagram Stiftung, Venice Rovigo Chamber of Commerce with Sistema Camerale Veneto and VenicePromex, Venice Foundation, Vela, Intesa Sanpaolo, Nexa – Event & Travel Designers. Technical sponsor is GreenSpin.

Once again this year, the nerve centers of the event in the city will be The Venice Glass Week HUB and The Venice Glass Week HUB Under 35, for the first time both of which will be free for all selected artists and hosted in Campo Santo Stefano at the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in the Palazzo Loredan venue. The Venice Glass Week HUB, which offers the public a selection of works by 25 national and international artists, will be held in the magnificent halls of the main floor, while The Venice Glass Week HUB Under 35, featuring the works and projects of 19 young artists and designers under 35, most of them international, will occupy the ground floor exhibition spaces. The Venice Glass Week HUB Under35 will be realized as part of the Veneto Region’s Program of Economic Promotion and Internationalization Interventions 2024, in collaboration with the Venice Rovigo Chamber of Commerce, Sistema Camerale Veneto and Venicepromex.

more. www.theveniceglassweek.com