Designer Dries Van Noten to set up foundation in Venice

Fashion designer Dries Van Noten and his partner Patrick Vangheluwe will launch a new foundation dedicated to craftsmanship in Venice next month.

The new Dries Van Noten Foundation will be located in the historic Palazzo Pisani Moretta on the Grand Canal near São Paulo. Each year, the Foundation hosts numerous lectures, collaborative projects, residencies, special events and activities for artists, designers and craftsmen at all levels of their careers.

The foundation’s goal is to “unify the arts by erasing traditional boundaries and affirming that all creative expression stems from the gestures and skills that define human creation,” according to a press release.

A manifesto issued by the foundation reads: “Here, centuries of craftsmanship become the backdrop for new dialogues: between art objects and craftsmen, between past and present, between local talent and international creativity. The Foundation envisions Venice not as a static museum, but as a living, evolving center where ideas circulate as freely as the tides.”

Built by the Pisani family in the second half of the 15th century, Palazzo Pisani is famous for its Gothic floral-style exterior and Baroque interiors, completed by various Venetian artists in the 18th century. In the near future, the palace will be renovated by Venetian architect Alberto Torsello. The Studio San Polo satellite site will open later this year.

“Venice is more than just a weekend getaway; it is a vibrant city with unique cultural excitement, from its markets to its young residents. We fell in love with Palazzo Pisani Moretta not because it is a monument frozen in time, but because it is a stage for creativity,” Van Noten and Vangheluwe said in a statement about the project.

They added: “Through the foundation, we aim to develop a vibrant place where artists and craftsmen can display their work, students can engage in hands-on exploration, and visitors can experience making as a cultural act. This is to foster an ecosystem that empowers crafts, giving them visibility, relevance and vitality in an age of machine and digital revolutions, while connecting the city’s past, present and future.”

The Fondazione Dries Van Noten opened on April 25 with its first lecture titled “The only true protest is beauty”, curated by Dries Van Noten and Belgian fashion designer Geert Bruloot.

“Here, the idea of ​​beauty,” reads a press release describing the exhibition, “is understood not as mere beauty, but as a moment of intensity: a dynamic encounter, an unexpected harmony, or a subtle disturbance that can unsettle, awaken and create space for something new.”

The exhibition will be spread across more than 20 rooms of the Palazzo Moretta in Pisani, bringing together more than 200 objects ranging from “fashion, jewelry, art, collectible design, photography, glass, ceramics, to material experiments that jointly investigate beauty’s ability to question norms and break dogma,” according to a press release.

Haute couture pieces from Christian Lacroix and Comme des Garçons will be integrated with photography by Steven Shearer and sculptures by Joyce J. Scott and Peter Buggenhout. Emerging Palestinian fashion designer Ayham Hassan showed work similar to the ceramics of Rebecca Manson and Kaori Kurihara. Artists represented by contemporary design galleries such as Antwerp’s Supercut, Brussels’ Objects With Narratives, New York’s Friedman Benda and Barcelona’s Side Gallery will also appear in the exhibition.

“We are interested in beauty not as an answer but as a question,” Van Noten and Wanhluwe said in a statement about the exhibition. “This is not escapism, but a way of engaging with reality. When beauty allows for ambiguity, slowness, and contradiction, when it disrupts rather than resolves, it becomes a subtle form of protest.”