Artworks by Mouna Rebeiz

From 20 May to 8 November 2026
Venice, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo

Curated by Roberta Semeraro

The artistic world of Mouna Rebeiz (Beirut, 1957) is devoted to celebrating female beauty and sensuousness, starting from the ideal of the “Three Graces”. In her nudes, inspired by classical iconography, Rebeiz reinterprets Classicism with a contemporary sensibility, prompting reflections on ideal beauty. Attracted by the subjects of ancient painting, as well as by symbols, she has developed a pictorial cycle devoted to the tarboosh (or fez), the traditional headgear that Muslim men still wear today, dating from the 14th century and depicted in numerous Venetian paintings and drawings.

This conical hat, made of red wool or silk and decorated with a band or feather, has always been worn at various official events, both political and religious, as a sign of respect for the elderly and the authorities. 

In Mouna Rebeiz’s works, this headgear provocatively identifies the distinctive feature of her female nudes in their monumental sensuality, because, as the artist states, it has never been more important to reflect at length on the very essence of “being a woman”, to quote the philosopher and psychoanalyst Elsa Godard. The tarboosh therefore evokes Venetian painting in shades of crimson red, but above all it emphasises the symbolic importance of accessories and their subliminal significance, which triggers unprecedented transversal interpretations. 

Admission to the exhibition with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

From 5 December 2025 to 19 April 2026
Venice, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo

Curated by
Lydia Manavello
Silvia Vesco

In collaboration with
Museo d’Arte Orientale Venezia

The exhibition, Men’s Kimono. Threads of Life, Tales of Style, focuses on the decorative schema observed in early twentieth-century male kimonos. This ornamentation functions as a compelling and intricate narrative source, offering valuable data on Japanese art, history, and social life.

Characterized by external sobriety juxtaposed with intricate internal detail, these everyday male garments represent a significant component of the vast Japanese textile tradition.
They delineate a veiled cultural sphere, typically concealed from public view and accessible exclusively within the private domestic context. The sophisticated imagery—whether suggestive, descriptive, minutely elaborated, or minimally sketched in ink, through skillful weaving or painting techniques—documents the culture of Japan. Such iconography encompasses themes ranging from literature and military history to the natural world and philosophical-religious concepts. In addition, specific, intriguing illustrations relating to sport, contemporary affairs, and technological advancements serve to celebrate modernity, thereby establishing a direct and unanticipated linkage with the Western cultural sphere.

The singular nature and intrinsic value of these garments necessitated the development of an exhibition dedicated to presenting and underscoring their historical, anthropological, and artistic significance. The selected kimonos date from the first half of the twentieth century, a pivotal juncture in Japanese history. During this era, Japan vigorously asserted its national identity and projected a revised global image, assuming a key role within the international geopolitical framework.

The exhibition makes a significant contribution to scholarship concerning Far Eastern art, emphasizing the aesthetic quality of both the singular garment and the collective value of the curated selection. The subsequent exhibition itinerary is systematically structured into nine thematic sections. This progression incorporates artifacts loaned by the Museo d’Arte Orientale di Venezia, a substantial segment dedicated to textile and decorative techniques, and specialized educational initiatives developed ad hoc. The primary objective is to appeal to and engage both specialized experts and a broader audience of scholars and cultural enthusiasts, thereby furnishing a valuable platform for both knowledge acquisition and academic inquiry.

Admission to the exhibition with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

NOTE: We inform our visitors that taking photographs of the garments on display is not permitted.

This project is the result of a collaborative endeavor involving several key institutional figures: Dr. Chiara Squarcina, Scientific Director of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and Director of the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo – Center for the Study of the History of Textiles, Costume and Perfume; Prof. Silvia Vesco, Lecturer in the History of Japanese Art at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; Dr. Lydia Manavello, an established expert who provided pieces from her private kimono collection; and Dr. Marta Boscolo Marchi, Director of the Museo d’Arte Orientale di Venezia, who was responsible for selecting the museum’s artifacts to complement the chosen garments.

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

13 – 21 September 2025
Venice, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo

Organized by Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia
with Via delle Spezie

Europe’s undisputed protagonist in the considerable trade with the East between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, Venice bears an invaluable historical, cultural and artistic legacy. Enormous quantities of oriental spices arrived at the Rialto market: cloves, ginger, coriander, cardamom, saffron, and, above all, black pepper – so rare and precious that, since 408 BC, it had served as a true currency.
It even earned the nickname ‘black gold’. Once inspected and priced by the Messeri del pepe (officials of the Republic), the pepper and other spices were packaged and sold in what became known as “Venetian bags”.
Yet their use extended far beyond gastronomy. Thanks to the many properties of their essential oils, spices played a fundamental role in pharmacology, herbal medicine and perfumery.

In its role as a training academy devoted to elevating spices into a complete sensory and cultural experience, Via delle Spezie presents a new artistic creation for The Venice Glass Week 2025. The project offers not only a journey back into the atmosphere of mercantile Venice, but also celebrates the beauty and mastery of two ancient arts that have made the city renowned worldwide: Murano glassmaking and artistic weaving on original eighteenth-century looms.

Admission to the exhibition with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

29 August – 2 November 2025
Venice, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo

Curated by
Gianni De Luigi
Monica Viero
Luigi Zanini

On the occasion of the 300th anniversary of Giacomo Casanova’s birth, a special exhibition is proposed to celebrate the myth of this iconic figure through the lens of art and cinema, with a particular focus on Federico Fellini’s cinematic masterpiece Casanova (1976).

The project involves the Museo Fellini in Rimini and collaboration with the Sartoria Farani, which preserves the original costumes designed by Danilo Donati for the film. Also on display will be three paintings by the 18th-century painter Giambattista Pittoni and a portrait of Casanova attributed to Pietro Longhi, along with numerous Casanova-related documents from the Ravà collection held at the Correr Library.
The exhibition will offer opportunities for reflection on Venetian history and culture, linking the figure of Casanova to the most innovative interpretations in the cinema.

Discover the exhibition itinerary >

Admission to the exhibition with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

From 21 May to 30 November 2025
Venice, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo

Exhibition curated by
Chiara Squarcina
Marco Vidal
Monica Baggio
Barbara Savy
Massimo Vidale
Luigi Zanini

In collaboration with MAVIVE

A selection from the Storp Collection will be presented to enhance the section devoted to perfume, which has amplified the permanent exhibition itinerary of the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo for over a decade.

An aesthetic and historical overview of the most significant perfume bottles will address and explore different themes. They range from the creativity unleashed over the centuries to evocatively identify the qualities of the essential accessory, namely perfume, to the use of new and precious materials to give an original form to the container.

All this together with the use of essences and their identification among the most precious goods traded first on the Mediterranean routes and then across the oceans.
The museum will conduct an accurate historical-cultural investigation of perfume, bringing together the multiple implications reverberating above all from the wonderful micro-caskets, the expression of virtuoso craft skills that have always expressed the aesthetic tastes of every age.

This important project reflects the continuity of the prestigious collaboration with MAVIVE, with which the Fondazione Musei Civici has long organised joint initiatives on the theme of perfume.

Admission to the exhibition with the Museum’s hours and ticket.
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Image gallery: photo Riccardo Tarantino – Veneta Video

L'articolo Permanent collection proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

7 March – 27 July 2025
Venice, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo

Curated by
Roberta Orsi Landini
Chiara Squarcina

An icon of a world and a civilisation, Giacomo Casanova is a remarkable key to understanding 18th-century Europe: the world of the great courts and powerful dynasties, exciting encounters with leading figures in art and culture, the enthralling uncertainties of gambling and of the boundless, many-sided theatrical metamorphoses.

The exhibition of 18th-century garments – partly from the collections of the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo, Centro Studi di Storia del Tessuto e del Costume – takes us into the 18th-century world in which Casanova was one of the most illustrious figures.

The exhibition, organised in the rooms of the first piano nobile of the museum, already styled in 18th-century Venetian taste, helps us understand how greatly aesthetics formed an essential language, not only in seduction but above all in the social rise of the individual, in an age when appearances were the only way to assert one’s social and economic position.

Admission to the exhibition with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

19 November 2024 – 2 March 2025
Venice, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo

A weaver, artist and craftswoman, Elda Cecchele (San Martino di Lupari, 1915 – Cittadella, 1998) expressed her talent with threads and ribbons of every material, from leather to plastic, silk, cotton, fur, trimmings and lace with all their colours. The natural world and her surroundings were often her source of inspiration. The originality of her achievement was to create textiles with an artistic value that far exceeded the level of what was normally produced by weavers in their country houses in the last century.

Elda began work by producing household linen and then moved on to the creation of art fabrics. She soon made a name for herself and was invited twice, in 1956 and 1960, to the Venice Biennale in the applied arts section (one of the fabrics on display at the time is preserved in the archives at Palazzo Mocenigo). She also worked with Roberta di Camerino and Franca Polacco in Venice and Salvatore Ferragamo in Florence in the 1950s and 1960s.

The museum hosts the Elda Cecchele Textile Archive: an important collection comprising all the documents and most of the textile materials left in the workshop of the Venetian weaver Elda Pavan Cecchele at the time when she ceased business (in 1981), and donated to the museum by her heirs in 2014. The museum has received not only textile materials, but also documentary materials, constituting a collection unique in the history of Italian 20th-century fashion, if we exclude the grand ateliers and great names of haute couture.

The archive preserved in the museum consists of two macro-sections: Documents and Materials. The documentary section contains some 2500 sheets and is organised into 15 series, including one that brings together all the technical-graphic material in 41 notebooks and some 500 technical entries, graphically representing the weaver’s whole oeuvre. The materials section in turn contains some 2200 pieces and is divided into 13 series.

Admission with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

L'articolo Permanent collection proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

Alfabeto Marco Polo

7 – 16 May, 2024 *Extended to 19 May, 2024
Venice, Palazzo Mocenigo Museum, ground floor

Organized by Nadia De Lazzari, President Associazione Venezia: Pesce di Pace

The international cultural project Marco Polo Alphabet, Venice Istanbul marks the 700th anniversary of the death of the Venetian Marco Polo, a great traveller, merchant of fabrics and precious stones, and ambassador of peace in the world.

The initiative between Italy and Turkey, conceived by the Associazione Venezia: Pesce di Pace in collaboration with schools, institutions and businesses, seeks to awaken a love of history and curiosity while exchanging and developing educational content between young people from different countries and cultures.

The beneficiaries of the project are 1,000 children in Venice and Istanbul. Marco Polo has been presented to the young students with topics in history, art and geography and readings of short specially prepared narrative texts. Cooperation in the classroom with an innovative teaching method is inspired by the exploratory spirit of Marco Polo updated in contemporary terms.

Combining enthusiasm and creative graphic skills, the children, guided by teachers and designers and organised in groups, coloured Marco Polo in Venice and Istanbul, the city where the family resided in the house with the Lion of St. Mark and had a warehouse. Together with the cultural experience, the project presents a bilingual book in Italian and Turkish.

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Thanks to: Scuole Cavanis, Diedo, Foscarini, Gallina, Grimani, Manzoni, Michiel, San Domenico Savio, San Giuseppe, Visintini; disegnatori Valerio Held e Maurizio Amendola; Nicolao Atelier; Carcere Femminile della Giudecca

With the patronage of: Consolato Onorario della Turchia in Veneto

#MarcoPolo700

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

14 May – 30 September 2024
Venice, Palazzo Mocenigo Museum

Curated by Stefano Nicolao

Marking the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo’s death, on 8 January 1324, the exhibition’s purpose is to relive and showcase his extraordinary adventure on the “Silk Road” through a selection of costumes representing the route followed by the great Venetian merchant and traveller. When he was just seventeen, with his father and uncle he sailed the seas, traversed boundless deserts and visited legendary cities, meeting powerful princes and dangerous warlords from very different countries and cultures. This was shown by the RAI’s major TV production with international participation including China itself. The exhibition will pay tribute to the director Giuliano Montaldo, costume designer Enrico Sabbatini and composer Ennio Morricone, to recall these extraordinary Italian geniuses who have passed away.

Specifically, the exhibition reveals the ability of Stefano Nicolao, involved in the production directly by the great costume designer Sabbatini, to work in the Himalayas to create the scenes and costumes of the journey from Persia to China. This initiative presents some thirty costumes recording the route of Marco Polo’s journey from Venice to China, with original sketches, the result of four years of study and preparation of the film and photos of the sets.

#MarcoPolo700

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

From 11 January to 29 February, 2024 *Exhibition extended to 03 March, 2024
Venice, Palazzo Mocenigo Museum

Curated by
Qian Zhaoyue, Director of the Suzhou Silk Museum
Liu Xu Dong, Consultant of the Suzhou Silk Museum
Chiara Squarcina, Head of the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo
Massimo Andreoli, President Wavents srl
Laura Fincato, Honorary Citizen of Suzhou

The first appointment for the Celebrations of the 700th Anniversary of the death of Marco Polo (1324/2024) is at the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo with The Axis of Time: Textiles for silk clothes from Suzhou (“L’Asse del Tempo: Tessuti per l’Abbigliamento in Seta di Suzhou”) from 11 January to 29 February 2024.

The project recalls and renews the historical bond between Venice and Suzhou. Officially twinned since 1980, the two cities stand on water at either end of the Silk Road. Above all, both have a strong connection with Marco Polo who, during his long journey to the East as Kublai Khan’s appointee, was captivated by Suzhou. In Il Milione he describes it as “a very noble city […] many silk cloths do they make, and they are rich merchants”.

It is precisely silk that is the protagonist at Palazzo Mocenigo with the exhibition in the portego of some twenty garments, original creations, textiles and faithful replicas of ancient garments from the Suzhou Silk Museum, a centre of primary importance for the research, preservation and protection of the millenary weaving technique that made the silk of the Jiangnan region famous. Creations such as the Song dynasty brocade, lampas, Kesi, silk tapestries, or the typical Suzhou embroidery known as pattern velvet, are here on display with precious specimens. All are today examples of China’s intangible cultural heritage.

The dialogue with the spaces of the Museum, the Centro Studi di Storia del Tessuto, del Costume e del Profumo (Study Centre for the History of Textiles, Costume and Perfume), which houses the textile and antique clothing collections of the Civic Museums, also provides a very special opportunity to compare the style of clothing under the Republic of China with that of the main ruling dynasties in the ancient Chinese empire, from an aesthetic and manufacturing point of view.

The exhibition is backed by the City of Venice, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Suzhou Silk Museum, Suzhou Municipal People’s Government Foreign Affairs Office, Suzhou Municipal Office for Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism, Suzhou Radio and Television Media Group, Confucius Institute at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice.

#MarcoPolo700

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

25 May – 24 November 2024
Venice, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo

Curated by Clara Santini and Chiara Squarcina

In all cosmogonies, the Origin is represented vertically. It is born and arises from the water and reaches out towards the sky. It is almost always a mutant object between the animal and plant kingdoms. Its metamorphoses are paraphrases of evolution or the story of creation in an indecipherable time, finite and infinite, as infinite are the forms in which the initial energy is manifested and embodied.

In Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings, the Bahamuth is fantastic: a fish rises immeasurably from the water, which then becomes a tree, a bull, a bird, a ruby, an angel.
On the 496th night of the Book of the Arabian Nights, Isa (Jesus) manages to see the Bahamuth but loses consciousness. Under the fish there is the sea, and under the sea an abyss of air, and beneath it is fire, and below it is a great serpent that has hell in its mouth. The story seems to illustrate the cosmological proof of God’s existence, in which it is argued that every cause presupposes an antecedent cause and affirms the necessity of positing a first cause in order not to continue indefinitely.

Admission to the exhibition with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

Biography of the artist >>>

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

From 24 March to 26 November 2023
Venice, Palazzo Mocenigo Museum – White Room

In collaboration with Sonnabend Gallery, New York City

The Civic Museums of Venice presents at the Museum Palazzo Mocenigo – White Room an installation by Matthias Schaller consisting of two independent photographic series “Tessuto Urbano” (2022) and “Lagunenwalzer” (2012). Through the 53 works on display, the german photographer synthesizes his own imagery of the contemporary city, inspired by De Barbari’s famous 16th-century “veduta”.

The series “Tessuto Urbano” portrays the seven Sestieri of Venice through a succession of seven shots obtained from the same seventeenth-century lace belonging to the Burano Museum Collection. Each photograph reproduces, according to a reduced scale reproduction, a Venetian Sestiere, guiding the viewer among the intricate finishes of the fabric that become the “calli” and “campielli” of the city. The lace, a symbol of the lagoon’s textile manufacturing past and presence, has stimulated the artist’s historical soul and is a metaphor for the city urban dimension of the city.

“Lagunenwalzer”, that goes along with the “merletto” is a selection of 46 vinyl records taken from a venetian archive of punk music. The records, in their tight succession, become the correlative of water that seeps into Venice and constitutes its peculiarity. The etched-surface vinyls outline the horizon of the view, and their provocative titles allude to the revolutionary yet latent spirit of the city.

Matthias Schaller with his eye fond of the Venetian reality, to which he already dedicated  seventh project, by using the strategy of the indirect portraiture to propose an alternative image of Venice to the more common city map. In this exhibition lace and vinyl are the figures of an immersive metaphor of Venice, reflecting on the past of the city and directly addressed to the viewer. The pictures activate our imagination without imposing the spatial delimitation to which topography forces us.

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The visit at the exhibition is included in Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo’s ticket

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

From 2 February to 1 October 2023
Venice, Palazzo Mocenigo Museum

Curated by Chiara Squarcina

Anna Moro-Lin’s art has become part of history through the donation of her works to the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo – Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia. This extremely generous gesture will provide the opportunity to explore an important branch of fiber art, and to follow its development though the characteristic traits of the work of this artist from the Lido, a member of an ancient Venetian family that has always promoted culture and its dissemination.

The creations of Anna Moro-Lin enable us to appreciate the intrinsic value of textiles, which when freed through fibre art become a versatile material for original artistic expression. This fundamental principle motivates Palazzo Mocenigo Museum’s desire to continue as a Study Centre. Moreover, the donated works stimulate comparative interpretations with respect to the other collections of fibre art held by the museum.
Nor should we forget that the main exponents of this field of art originated and developed in the lagoon area and have had a national and international influence. This solo exhibition will provide an in-depth look not only at Lin’s art but also her evolution, which involved overcoming the limitations that restricted the expressiveness associated with this type of art.

Today, these works are a decisive component in understanding the wider context of visual art forms that increasingly feel a more pressing need to intersect and interconnect with reality and assume a bold and promising visionary approach.
With Anna Moro-Lin, tradition is not disregarded but assimilated and transcended in order to translate ideas and psychological insights embedded in contemporary life: uneasiness, loneliness and the search for knowledge of an unidentifiable self, yet one that in some way can interweave with material fibres and reconstruct a credible and truthful identity.

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

From 21 April to 27 November 2022
Venice, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo

Devoted to Palazzo Mocenigo’s vocation for and interest in perfume, Es-senze, exhibition part of MUVE Contemporaneo programme, presents a group of artists who have risen to prominence since the start of the new millennium.

A generation of artists who are important members of the international creative scene and who have drawn inspiration for their work from perfume and the sense of smell; artists who differ in culture and idiom but share a perspective that prompts them to explore, each in their own way, an alternative creative dimension to the usual ones.

Twelve olfactory installations are on display in the first-floor rooms of Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo in the form of an original itinerary: a virtual, immersive, multisensory journey interpreted in three-dimensional, pictorial, graphic and installation form.
Almost as if art could actually emit its own perfume, the works on display envelop viewers in a broad spectrum of fragrances in equally extensive tones, as numerous as the many sensations they are able to evoke.

The artists in the show are Mircea Cantor, Mateusz Chorobski, Jason Dodge, Bruna Esposito, Eva Marisaldi, Florian Mermin, Giuseppe Penone, Paola Pivi, Namsal Siedlecki, Achraf Touloub, Nico Vascellari and Luca Vitone.

In partnership with

Colophon >>

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

From 21 December 2021 until 16 February 2022
Venice, Museum of Palazzo Mocenigo

Last September, Alberta Ferretti hosted a fashion show event at Ca’ Rezzonico in support of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia to celebrate the 1600th anniversary of the foundation of Venice. These special pieces can be viewed inside of the Portego of Palazzo Mocenigo Center of Studies Fabric, Costume and Perfume, starting 21 December 2021 until mid-February 2022.

A selection of eight unique pieces from the “A tribute to Venice” collection enriches the large hall of Palazzo Mocenigo, which was once used to celebrate Venetian nobility. The blown Murano glass jewels by artist Massimiliano Schiavon made exclusively for Alberta Ferretti complete the dresses.

To recreate the mise en scène of a fashion show, a catwalk with reflective black glass welcomes these unique pieces, creating a dialogue between the clothing and the historical, decorative room.

Once the exhibition ends, the pieces will be donated to the Museum of Palazzo Mocenigo and become a part of its permanent collection, further solidifying the bond between Alberta Ferretti and the city of Venice.

Description of the eight unique pieces >>>

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

From 4 to 30 September 2021
Venezia, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo

The extraordinary creation of flowers made with minuscule glass beads is a “family affair” for Benedetta Gaggia; it’s a passion inherited from her mother Mariagrazia Gaggia, who learnt this handcraft work from the legendary Donna Nella Lopez y Royo Sammartini. Benedetta still also uses Murano’s old “conterie” which are now stored in the family Palazzo.

Benedetta creates buds and multicoloured petals, sometimes inspired by real flowers other times by the artist’s imagination, revitalizing the old “conterie” handcraft work, which in old times was very popular in Venice. Today this technique has almost disappeared.

For the 2021 Glass Week, the stunning rooms of Palazzo Mocenigo will present Seabead flowers, an exhibition curated by Cristina Beltrami: a selection of about forty unique pieces, expressly made by Benedetta Gaggia, will be shown in the extraordinary 17th century portego of Palazzo Mocenigo.

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.

BRIGITTE NIEDERMAIR
Me and Fashion

9 May – 24 November 2019
Venezia, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo

Curated by Charlotte Cotton

Scientific direction Gabriella Belli

Brigitte Niedermair’s solo exhibition at the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo is a dynamic interplay of the artist’s photographs – drawn from her archive of over twenty years of photographic practice – with the architecture and décor of the interconnected rooms of Palazzo Mocenigo.

Working with international photography curator Charlotte Cotton, Niedermair has responded to the distinct atmosphere of each room, and inserted her hallmark tableaux fashion and still life photographs into these historic environments that range from intimate to imposing scale. The synergy between the public and once-private interiors of this historic Mocenigo family palazzo – Venice’s Museum of fabrics and costume since 1985 – and Niedermair’s photographs is multilayered, with a tenor that shifts from room to room. Niedermair selected paintings from the Palazzo Mocenigo collection for de-installation, replacing them with her photographs to consciously amplify and counterargue with the embedded subtexts of gender and identity that permeate these predominantly 17th century interiors. The installation viewer gradually becomes aware that the only portrayed women that look out of the confines of their frames date from the 17th and 18th centuries, while their contemporary counterparts resist and turn away.

Niedermair’s intervention at the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo re-animates the interiors and the narratives of gender that they hold. The exhibition is accompanied by Niedermair’s survey book Me and Fashion, published by Damiani Editore, which creates further context to the artist’s ongoing visual commentary on the representation of women and the meaning of fashion. Niedermair is an exceptional figure within the field of fashion image-making as both a female auteur and one who activates her female gaze within a male dominated image system.

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Palazzo Palazzo Mocenigo.