The project launched in the new premises in the building owned by the City of Venice and managed by Fondazione MUVE, is part of the programme aimed at establishing the town of Mestre as a vibrant centre for contemporary art.
From December 2024, the formerly home to the city’s Emeroteca – its newspaper library – will host 10 artists-in-residence selected through a public call for applications administered by the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, with which Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia has entered into a collaborative agreement. In addition, two residencies will be awarded to two artists from among the participants in the 2024 edition of the Artefici del nostro tempo (Creators of our time) competition and another residency to a painter participating in the Premio Mestre di Pittura (Mestre Painting Prize) 2024.
The 15 workshops of Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice and the further 13 at the palazzo in Mestre managed by Fondazione Musei Civici thus become the largest artist residency programme in Italy. Applicants must be between 18 and 35 years of age and have trained in the Triveneto area (comprising the regions of Trentino Alto Adige, Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia ). The artists are supervised by a single curator, selected through a public procedure.
The refurbished premises in the central piazza Ferretto/via Poerio in Mestre thus become a place for the production of contemporary art, and for the artists a unique opportunity to work in a place of direct comparison with colleagues, critics and art historians, curators and journalists. For the public and residents of the area, numerous opportunities for discussion with the artists and curator are planned, through studio visits in small groups, open studio days with free visits to the residencies and presentations of individual works or artists.
The building, managed entirely by the Fondazione Musei Civici, also hosts a Literary Café, which aims to be a convivial place for meeting, dialogue and aggregation for lovers of reading and art.
The Literary Café is located on the ground floor and mezzanine, with different layouts depending on the use that users wish to make of it: the ground floor, which also includes an outdoor refreshment area, provides the ‘faster’ bar area, for breakfast and lunch breaks. A ‘slower’ area characterises instead the mezzanine floor, furnished with volumes from the comprehensive collections of the Civic Museums of Venice; it offers an ideal area in which to work, read, organise a working lunch or a moment of relaxation among friends. An area of the mezzanine floor is also equipped to host a broad public programme of activities and events managed by the Fondazione Musei Civici in collaboration with associations and organisations operating in the area.