When Flemish fashion icon Dries Van Noten and his partner Patrick Vangheluwe went looking for a ‘neutral, contemporary’ space for Fondazione Dries Van Noten, they somehow ended up in an opulent, rose-plastered 15th-century palace on Venice’s Grand Canal.

The notion of opening a foundation had simmered over years of conversations between the two about ‘what a creative life could look like beyond the rhythm of fashion,’ Van Noten says, but Venice was never an evident choice. The pair initially set about finding a location, not necessarily in the Italian city, ‘where the architecture would step back and let the work speak,’ but fell for the Palazzo Pisani Moretta – the former seat of the noble Pisani family – the moment they stepped inside. Dripping with 24-candle chandeliers, inlaid marble floors, and theatrical Guarana and Tiepolo ceiling frescoes, it is the opposite of neutral or contemporary. But it is here that Van Noten has just opened the doors to his foundation’s permanent home.

Fondazione Dries Van Noten is but the latest in a bloom of new private arts foundations transforming Venice in recent years – Berggruen Arts & Culture, the Anish Kapoor Foundation, the San Marco Art Centre, and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo are all newcomers following in the footsteps of the Fondazione Prada, which opened in 2011. Long predating it are the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa. Activity in Venice’s contemporary art scene traditionally fluctuated to follow the dates of the Biennale Arte – the 61st edition of which opens on May 9 – but the gaggle of recent openings is consolidating the city’s status as a year-round creative hub beyond its well-trod art-historical treasures. As perennial as La Serenissima’s appeal is, why are so many foundations opening there now? And what does it actually take to put down roots in a centuries-old floating city?

Each has its own story. Van Noten met the palazzo’s previous owner through a series of unexpected introductions. The period between obtaining the keys late last summer and the show’s opening has been brisk. Because of the complexities implicit in restoring a building of such historical importance – winding paths to the necessary permissions for even minor structural tweaks; the stop-and-start cadence of work due to the discovery of archaeologically significant objects; the gentle approach required for a 600-year-old building that sits on water – he decided to present the inaugural exhibition in the space largely as it was found.

The designer’s first major creative undertaking since retiring from his eponymous fashion house in 2024, the exhibition ‘The Only True Protest Is Beauty’ sprawls across 20 rooms on three floors, spotlighting the value of craft across artistic disciplines. Co-curated with Van Noten’s longstanding collaborator, the curator and retailer Geert Bruloot, the show unites more than 200 objects spanning fashion, jewelry, art, collectible design, photography, glass, ceramics, and more in a material dialogue – with one another and with the palazzo’s resplendent Rococo interiors. It is a clear mission statement highlighting an undergirding belief in ‘craftsmanship as a vital language of cultural identity,’ Van Noten says.

A full restoration led by Venetian architect Alberto Torsello will commence on the show’s closing in October, equipping the palazzo properly for its new life while remaining deeply respectful of everything the building already is, as the designer says. Studio San Polo, a second, less delicate space dedicated to more ‘experimental’ creative practice, will open later this year, housing the foundation’s programming while works on the flagship are underway.

Van Noten has yet to grapple with the challenges that will inevitably surface, but an awareness of the palazzo’s autonomy gleaned from curating its first exhibition has steeled the designer’s nerves. ‘There were certainly moments where the building had its own opinions about our plans,’ he notes. ‘There were works we were certain about that changed meaning completely once they arrived inside, sometimes for the better, occasionally requiring a complete rethink. It has taught us to stay flexible, and to listen.’

Nicoletta Fiorucci, the esteemed art patron who opened her eponymous foundation’s Venice location in line with last year’s Biennale Architettura, also discovered her space in a turn of kismet. Homesick for her native Italy, she decided to leave London in 2023 to pursue a lifelong dream of living in Venice. The chance discovery of a derelict palazzetto behind an unassuming facade in Venice’s Dorsoduro district triggered a coup de foudre. A hodgepodge of historical styles dating to the 15th century, the ‘large, but not pompous’ building was once the home and studio of the early 20th-century Venetian painter Ettore Tito – a fact Fiorucci discovered only after she had signed on the dotted line.

Rather than renovate this architectural palimpsest of Venetian history, Fiorucci embraced its dereliction, seeing its potential for a no-holds-barred residency program offered to a single artist each year. A rarity in Venice, ‘the facade is listed, but the inside isn’t – there are no historical limitations,’ she says. ‘It’s more of a studio than a gallery – a place where experimentation is possible.’ For the venue’s inaugural exhibition in 2025, Georgian artist Tolia Astakhishvili lived and worked here over four months, responding to its raw architecture and fashioning its material histories into an arresting Gesamtkunstwerk. This year, peripatetic artist Lydia Ourahmane transforms the space into a ‘site-sensitive, rather than site-specific’ show, Fiorucci stresses, that grapples with the Venetian context, in particular its oft-overlooked communities of craftspeople and technicians.

The story behind Laurent Asscher’s AMA Venezia, another of last year’s headline openings, differs somewhat. The prolific Belgian collector already owned a lofty piano nobile suite in a San Marco palazzo that once belonged to the 99th Doge of Venice, where he would rotate paintings from his expansive collection for private exhibitions during the Biennale. But at some point, he wanted to expand. Realizing that to share his collection as he envisioned truly, he needed a dedicated space – Venice was the natural choice.

‘I knew I wanted an industrial building,’ Asscher says, put off by the bureaucratic and logistical complications that come with the city’s postcard canal-front properties. ‘The Palazzo Grassi [one of the Pinault Collection’s two Venetian sites] and Ca’ Corner della Regina [the home of Fondazione Prada] are fantastic buildings, but it’s quite difficult to bring art into them – there are more constraints,’ he explains. He eventually happened upon a 16th-century red-brick former soap factory in the Cannaregio district. A single-story, 1,000 square-meter expanse beneath a cathedral ceiling with heights of up to 14 meters, AMA Venezia allows for ambitious multimedia shows: Its sophomore exhibition includes works by Sang Woo Kim, Brandon Morris, Arthur Jafa, and Tino Sehgal. ‘We only renovated what was technically necessary,’ Asscher notes, describing the restoration’s end result as a ‘contemporary, old building’. ‘We really wanted its 500-year history to be felt.’

Each foundation safeguards the soul of its respective home; each is also a testament to how intrinsic the dialogue between past and present is to Venice’s contemporary reality. But what about the future? While these openings warrant clinking glasses, they hardly dispel gloomy projections around what lies ahead for the city – whether further stampedes of tourists (the number of tourist beds in Venice’s center surpassed the number of permanent residents in late 2023), or, worse, eventual uninhabitability due to rising seas. Venice’s newest residents cannot do much to help on those fronts, but they can help preserve or even build upon Venice’s unique sociocultural and physical contexts by supporting existing initiatives, like curator Paolo Rosso’s transformation of Isola di Sant’Andrea into an art and cultural hub, or bringing people together in new ways. ‘Our ambitions for the Fondazione are perhaps less spectacular than people might expect,’ Van Noten explains. ‘We want it to become a genuine part of Venetian life – not only a destination for visitors but a space that local communities, students, and artisans feel belongs to them in some way.’ Its year-round, cross-disciplinary programming will emphasize process over polished outcomes, aiming to engage the local community. 

This reflects why so many foundations have settled in Venice in recent years: Here, the love of art is a cherished virtue, and there is time and space to truly commit to that passion. ‘The city has a way of slowing you down and opening you up,’ Van Noten offers. Preserving the pace and unique cultural identity feels increasingly urgent right now. ‘If in 10 years the Fondazione has contributed to keeping certain crafts alive, has created real opportunities for younger generations, and has added something meaningful to the conversation between Venice’s past and its future,’ Van Noten says, ‘that would feel like more than enough.’