The Fondazione Prada is pleased to announce the opening of its new exhibition space in Venice, the Ca’ Corner della Regina, an historic palazzo on the Grand Canal. Belonging to the Comune di Venezia, the building was made available by the Fondazione Musei Civici, which oversees its use and administration, for a period of six years with the option of renewal. Ca’ Corner will open with an exhibition documenting the multiple activity of the Fondazione Prada.

Ca’ Corner della Regina is considered the first architectural example to introduce non-Baroque parameters as dominant themes, even if some elements of the prior style remain. Built between 1724 and 1728 by Domenico Rossi for the Corner family of San Cassiano atop the ruins of the palazzo in which Caterina Corner—future queen of Cyprus—was born, it displays an architecture stylistically reminiscent of Baldassare Longhena’s nearby Ca’ Pesaro, the current venue of the Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna.

The building is modulated over three storeys and features two mezzanines between the ground floor and first floor. The façade is of Istrian stone, with rustication over the ground floor and mezzanine. The last descendant of the Corner family bequeathed the palazzo to Pope Pius VII. Until 1969, it was home to the Padri Cavanis and the Monte di Pietà, and from 1975 to 2010 it housed the ASAC, the Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee. With the support of the Prada Foundation, the restoration of the building, which for now will be limited to conservation, has been planned in gradual stages based on the directives of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici e Paesaggistici di Venezia e della Laguna, with the help of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.

The first exhibition describes the Foundation’s cultural approach without imposing a single, thematic interpretation of the art and museum materials presented. Each individual installation and presence in the palazzo’s rooms should therefore be considered as examples of the different aspects of the Prada Foundation’s identity since its founding in 1993 by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli as a venue for the promotion of contemporary art. The show features a selection of art works from the collection, a glimpse of future collaborations, and the project for its new, permanent site at Largo Isarco in Milan, designed by Rem Koolhaas and OMA, which includes, at Ca’ Corner della Regina, a series of scale-models of the future exhibition complex, which will open in 2013.

Using the work collected over the years as its starting point, the opening of “Fondazione Prada _ Ca’ Corner dell Regina,” curated by Germano Celant, features a wide range of works and installations created in learned collaboration with such museums as The Hermitage of Saint Petersburg, the Fondazione Musei Civici of Venice, The Mathaf - Arab Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Islamic Art of Doha, and with the creative interpretation of contemporary artists such as Thomas Demand and theorists such as Marco Giusti and Nicholas Cullinan.

Those rooms of Ca’ Corner della Regina, which have been involved in the first phase of conservation, will house the imposing sculptures of Anish Kapoor, Michael Heizer and Jeff Koons. Together they will constitute the entire exhibition space, interspersed with important works by Walter De Maria, John Baldessari, Charles Ray, Tom Friedman, Domenico Gnoli, Damien Hirst, Louise Bourgeois, Blinky Palermo, Bruce Nauman, Pino Pascali, Donald Judd, Francesco Vezzoli and Maurizio Cattelan.

The exhibition documents, through special projects, the ongoing dialogue with international museum institutions, establishing creative exchanges between their collections and the interventions of contemporary artists.

For this purpose, Thomas Demand was asked to respond to important materials drawn from the Musei Civici of Venice, just as Jean-Paul Engelen, director of the Public Art Museums of Doha, Qatar, was invited to build a linguistic bridge between a historical artifact from the Museum of Islamic Art and the work of the contemporary artist Buthayna Ali. Similarly, the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg will present some unpublished 18th-century ceramics alongside Jeff Koons’ Fait d’Hiver (1988), while Nicholas Cullinan, curator of International Modern Art for the Tate Modern of London, has been tasked with going through the collection and giving his interpretation of Italian art from 1952 to 1964, a period that includes works by Alberto Burri, Enrico Castellani, Lucio Fontana, Francesco Lo Savio, Piero Manzoni, Salvatore Scarpitta and Mario Schifano.