Venice has always been a city that thrives on encounters: between cultures, people and ideas. It is therefore fitting that the Palazzo delle Arti e delle Culture should find its home here as the headquarters of the Fondazione Giancarlo Ligabue, which preserves and promotes a legacy built over more than fifty years of exploration, research and cultural dissemination through the activities of the Centro Studi e Ricerche Ligabue.
Established in 2016 at the initiative of Inti Ligabue, Giancarlo’s son, the Foundation is, in the words of the renowned palaeontologist and broadcaster Alberto Angela, “an ark of knowledge, capable of fascinating and surprising anyone with a thirst for understanding”.
Faithful to its motto, To know and to share knowledge, the Foundation has, over the past decade, developed numerous initiatives, including more than twelve exhibitions in Italy and across Europe, organised in collaboration with leading scholars and enriched by loans from major national and international museums and cultural institutions.
Committed to engaging a wide public, it has also launched the Dialogues, a cycle of public lectures conceived to foster exchange across disciplines. The series has brought together prominent scholars and cultural figures, including Vito Mancuso, Philippe Daverio, Piergiorgio Odifreddi, Samantha Cristoforetti, Jane Goodall, Donald Johanson, Ilaria Capua, Luca Mercalli and Christian Greco.
Alongside these activities, the Foundation has pursued an extensive publishing programme through Ligabue Magazine. Published twice a year in a bilingual edition, the journal offers an interdisciplinary journey across places, cultures and historical periods, with particular attention to Venice, its history and its cultural identity.
To coincide with the 61st International Art Exhibition, the Foundation has inaugurated the new Palazzo delle Arti e delle Culture at Palazzo Erizzo Ligabue, opening with Collecto: an exhibition bringing together more than four hundred works and artefacts from the Ligabue Collection. Spanning an extraordinary temporal arc – from 4.5 billion years ago to the present day – and traversing distant cultures and geographical regions, the exhibition reveals unexpected affinities and profound connections between human experiences, aspirations and emotions.
As Inti Ligabue explains, Collecto is “the reflection of a profound journey, that of a spirit which is forged over time and which, to use an image dear to Hegel, takes shape through history itself, in the cultures, experiences and visions that humanity has expressed and continues to express.
At a time in history when geographical, cultural and ethnic divisions seem increasingly to define our present, the Fondazione Ligabue has chosen to take a different path: to connect these differences and celebrate them as part of a shared history. [...] The exhibition we have conceived stems from a simple yet profound idea: the origin of humanity is shared, and it is in these common roots that our strength and identity reside.”
Rather than following a strictly chronological sequence, the exhibition explores the major stages in humanity’s evolution through the universal themes that have shaped every civilisation: birth and death, beauty, prestige and power, ancestors and deities.
It opens with a rare pallasite meteorite and winds its way through the earliest man made artefacts – such as the Ligabue Amygdala – artefacts from the Sumerian, Assyrian and Syrian cultures and the Classical period, and an important selection of idols – including the Ligabue Venus, one of the finest examples of protohistoric art from Bactria, dating from between 2200 and 1800 BC. The exhibition is rounded off by key sections dedicated to pre-Columbian, Oceanic and Western art; the latter ranges from ancient sacred art to works by famous artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Giambattista Tiepolo, culminating in contemporary art featuring Arcangelo Sassolino, Nico Vascellari, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Vera Lutter, Thomas Struth, Chiara Enzo and Marta Spagnoli, the first artist-in-residence.
Through this continuous dialogue between epochs, cultures and artistic languages, Collecto offers an exceptional opportunity to reflect on the shared history of humanity and the enduring questions that unite us across time and place.
All images by courtesy Fondazione Ligabue