Venice Biennale 2026: Inside the Art, Fashion, and Parties That Defined the Opening Week

Venice has always understood itself as a stage. Not metaphorically—literally—a floating republic built on spectacle, ceremony, and illusion. Visiting during the Biennale feels like stepping into that legacy mid-performance: a city already in motion.

I arrived just after noon on the first day of the Biennale and traveled across the lagoon toward the island Giudecca, the water flickering under a clear, golden sky. Venice revealed itself gradually, like a Titian composition—first atmosphere, then architecture, then detail.

Airelles Palladio emerged not as a hotel, but as a kind of apparition. Set within former monastic buildings and noble residences, it possesses the rare quality of feeling both entirely preserved and improbably alive. Entering its gardens, the exterior dissolves into a cultivated Eden of clipped hedges, terra-cotta vessels, citrus trees, and an almost orchestral layering of fragrance—roses, wild herbs, sun-warmed greenery—rising gently rather than announcing itself.

My room overlooked the lagoon, framed by carved wooden beams and softly patterned walls, as though the centuries had been carefully edited rather than erased. The light—Venetian, unmistakable—poured in with that diffuse, gilded softness that painters have chased for generations. It is a light that flatters, but more importantly, it forgives.

At the Fortuny headquarters on Giudecca, the collaboration between the luxury fabric house and Chahan Minassian revealed itself as something far more immersive than a design presentation. In transforming the Countess Gozzi’s former house, next to the Fortuny Factory, the designers created a dialogue between fabric, furniture, and light. Fortuny’s historic textiles, already synonymous with Venetian interiors, were recontextualized through Minassian’s eye with Murano glass, sculptural furniture, and a layered scenography that felt less curated than composed. The result was not decorative—it was operatic. One did not merely observe it; one wished to remain within it.

At the newly opened Dries Van Noten Foundation’s exhibition “The Only True Protest is Beauty,” garments transcended their function entirely, assuming the presence of relics or ceremonial objects. Voluminous, textural, almost ecclesiastical in their construction, they occupied space with the authority of sculpture. In Venice, where dress has always bordered on ritual, this felt entirely natural.

The Fortuny + Chahan showcase.

JR’s “Il Gesto,” staged within the Venice Venice Hotel, expanded the city’s long tradition of theatrical tableaux into something communal and contemporary. Inspired by Veronese’s “The Wedding at Cana,” the installation blurred the boundaries between spectator and subject. Venice has always thrived on the tension between public spectacle and private life; here, the two collapsed beautifully into one.

At the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, “The Making of a Collector” offered a quieter counterpoint. Before Venice, before legacy, there was instinct. This look at Peggy’s London years revealed not just taste, but the formation of vision—a reminder that collecting, at its best, is less about possession than about perception.

The Prada Foundation, ever precise, introduced a more intellectual cadence—cool, deliberate, architectural. And then, almost hidden, Irene Cattaneo’s “The Secret Garden” emerged as something entirely different: bronze swings and sculptural forms nestled within a private garden near the Fortuny Museum. Nostalgic without sentimentality, it carried the faint melancholy of childhood remembered rather than relived.

JR’s work “Il Gesto.”

The American Pavilion dinner, hosted by Tilman Fertitta, the U.S. ambassador to Italy, in honor of Alma Allen’s “Call Me the Breeze,” was also held on Giudecca. Cipriani oversaw the dining, while Fai Khadra orchestrated the atmosphere with a cinematic sensibility that was glowing, sensual, and deliberately intimate.

Allen’s work anchored the evening. There had been, of course, conversation—controversy always travels quickly during the Biennale—but what remained undeniable was the integrity of the work itself. His forms carry a geological patience, shaped as though by time rather than hand. They resist urgency, and in doing so, command attention.

The night drifted, as Venetian nights do, toward something more ephemeral: a gathering at Palazzo Brandolini, where the city shed its diplomatic composure in favor of something looser, more instinctive.

At the Arsenale the next morning, Kennedy Yanko’s work appeared almost impossibly suspended, her sculptural language balancing weight and air with extraordinary precision. Sheets of paint and metal seemed to defy gravity, rising within the cavernous space as though answering its history with something altogether more fluid. Her work felt weightless, not in spite of its materiality, but because of it.

Nick Cave’s “Two Points in Time at Once” expanded across the Arsenale and beyond, his figures—rooted in the lineage of his Soundsuits—merging body, flora, and sound into something both theatrical and deeply human. Gramophone forms, birds, botanical eruptions: each piece carried a sense of transformation, moving through grief toward something resembling renewal. Conceived with the late curator Koyo Kouoh, the work felt both personal and communal—an offering, rather than a statement.

The famous palace Ca’ d’Oro.

Before evening, I visited the Ca’ d’Oro with Toto Bergamo Rossi, where Venetian Heritage is undertaking the restoration of the Galleria Giorgio Franchetti. The palazzo, a masterpiece of late Gothic architecture, has long stood as one of Venice’s most exquisite façades. Inside, the work being done is both technical and philosophical: climate systems, light, accessibility—all in service of preserving not just objects, but relevance. As Bergamo Rossi remarked, it is one of the rare moments in Italy where private patronage is restoring a national museum not for prestige, but for continuity.

Lunch returned me to Airelles, where I met Diana Picasso at ABC Kitchens Palladio by Jean-Georges Vongerichten. The table was generous: grilled artichokes, burrata with Amalfi lemon, cacio e pepe, and a truffle pizza so precise in its indulgence that it carried me, unexpectedly, back to ABC Kitchen in New York—a reminder that taste, like architecture, can collapse geography.

Diana herself embodies a continuity of lineage and invention. Her palazzo—designed with Jacques Grange—is layered, luminous, and deeply personal, with a remarkable tapestry connected to her grandfather, Pablo Picasso. Her jewelry line, Menē, reflects that same sensibility: sculptural, elemental, quietly powerful.

That evening, she wore a bow-and-arrow necklace that felt both ornamental and symbolic—a gesture as much as an object. If Friday had been diplomatic, Saturday was imperial. After cocktails, we headed together to the Venetian Heritage Ball generously supported by Dior.

The Dries Van Noten Foundation.

The room unfolded in a composition of deep green, gold, and flickering candlelight. Palms—rendered in luminous metallics—rose above long tables dressed with extraordinary precision. The effect was less event than environment: immersive, enveloping, and unapologetically grand. I was seated between Princess Martine Orsini and Nick Cave, whose presence carried the same energy as his work—generous, curious, alive. Dinner unfolded with elegance—courses paced, light shifting, the room deepening into evening. And beyond the beauty, there was purpose: the evening raised €1.7 million in support of the Ca’ d’Oro restoration. In Venice, where aesthetics can so easily become spectacle, it mattered that this one carried weight.

Earlier, I spent time with Diane von Furstenberg, who has made Venice her part-time home with characteristic conviction. The night before, she had hosted a buffet dinner at her palazzo alongside Gildo Zegna and is now preparing for the DVF Awards this September at Teatro Carlo Goldoni. There is something entirely fitting about Diane being here—her sense of independence, her instinct for reinvention, her ability to transform presence into narrative.

By Sunday morning, Venice had softened. The city, so animated the night before, seemed to exhale. The air was quieter, the light gentler, the pace unhurried. It was, perhaps, the most luxurious moment of all, a final pause before departure.

Venice, in the end, resists summary. It is at once excessive and restrained, theatrical and intimate, historic and immediate. During the Biennale, these contradictions sharpen, becoming almost visible.

What remains is not only the spectacle—but the intervals between them. The way light moves across water. The way a room holds silence. The way a city, built on illusion, can still feel profoundly real—like a painting one never quite finishes looking at.