Fondazione Civici Musei di Venezia and Venice International Foundation present Musei delle Lacrime , a project conceived by Francesco Vezzoli (Brescia, 1971) in a site-specific manner for the rooms of the Correr Museum in Venice from 17 April to 24 November 2024 . The exhibition, curated by Donatien Grau , is based on Francesco Vezzoli's continuous research dedicated to dialogue with the artistic heritage and carried forward in a radical and innovative way. Almost thirty years ago, the artist began to embroider tears onto images of masterpieces, thus creating his own museum and challenging the very idea of the museum as a statement of power. In the Correr Museum, where the Modern installation highlights the collection, the artist brings his research into a new vision with works that span over twenty years of artistic production, from historical pieces to newly created works, created specifically for the exhibition.

The exhibition writes a new chapter in the planning of the Venice International Foundation, born from the will of its President Luca Bombassei. Architect and collector of contemporary art, Bombassei takes up the historical objective of the Foundation, which identifies itself in the safeguarding and protection of the Venetian artistic heritage, and declines it according to his own experience, inviting for the first time contemporary art to act as spokesperson and vehicle of new forms of enjoyment and enhancement of the most fascinating and significant places that make up the urban fabric of Venice.

Musei delle Lacrime draws on Francesco Vezzoli's relationship with the history of art : it expands, questions and challenges the various ways in which heritage is told to the public and how our era relates to it through the ideological premises of each exhibition for explore universal themes of human experiences. The exhibition project, conceived at the invitation of the Venice International Foundation, finds its roots in the Correr Museum itself, where the architect and designer Carlo Scarpa conceived the modernist layout to host paintings and sculptures from the 13th to the 17th century. Scarpa invented new ways of theatricalizing paintings, thus creating a new sanctuary for Venetian heritage. Addressing this ambivalence between contemporary and historical, Francesco Vezzoli fits into the exhibition context of the Correr Museum with the utmost respect for Scarpa's approach, paying homage to the double history of Venice as testimony to a historical heritage and manifestation of modernity; as such, it connects the museum's collection, creating ideal parallels with other Carlo Scarpa installations. The exhibition elements were designed by Filippo Bisagni.

Francesco Vezzoli embroiders his paintings himself, in a private and intimate experience that overturns the categories of masculine and feminine, a subversion here in dialogue with a history of art defined by the rules of masculinity from conception to exhibition. The artist's intervention opens up a different experience of heritage and our time.