From monumental glass sculptures to a lagoon in the sky: what to see beyond the Venice Biennale pavilions – The Art Newspaper

A rehabilitated island thrives once again

The collector and arts patron Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s years-long redevelopment of San Giacomo launches this year, positioning a once-abandoned lagoon outpost as a new node in Venice’s cultural geography. Opening on 7 May, the restored Napoleonic-era powder magazines that sat unused since the 1960s have been recast as exhibition spaces. The inaugural programme centres on Matt Copson’s installations using theatrical devices to explore life cycles and existential questions of contemporary existence, in the British artist’s first Italian solo exhibition. A concurrent group show features works from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo collection, including site-specific commissions embedded in the island’s shifting ecology.

Acqua alta reaches new heights

Above a stretch of Corte Nova, a street known for charming images of laundry hanging from suspended clotheslines, the interdisciplinary American artist Melissa McGill has transformed domestic ritual into civic gesture with Marea. Here, between the Biennale Gardens and Arsenale, around 100 paintings created with residents and students from Università Iuav di Venezia will be strung across the street (30 April-10 May). Rendered in lagoon blues and greens, the works ripple overhead, conjuring the tides threatening Venice and acting as a reminder of climate change’s impact on sea levels. The project’s endorsements from the Italian National Commission for Unesco and from the Italian Ambassador to the US underscore its urgency.

Dale Chihuly makes a return journey

What would the Biennale be without a show of glass? Part exhibition, part urban intervention, Chihuly: Venice 2026 (until 14 November). marks a calculated return by American glass artist Dale Chihuly to the city that helped define his practice. Opening on 5 May at the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, the project combines institutional gravitas with public spectacle, notably three monumental installations set along the Grand Canal and visible from the Accademia Bridge. Among these is Gold Tower (2025) in Palazzo Franchetti, glistening with undulating, resplendent tendrils climbing 30ft high. Presented by Pilchuck Glass School and the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, the exhibition and accompanying archival programme revisit the artist’s 1990s Venetian foray.

Venice and Shanghai unite in Wallace Chan’s titanium vessels

With Vessels of Other Worlds, Wallace Chan is staging an exercise as ambitious in scale and symbolism as is expected of the artist and jewellery designer. Installed within the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà, Chan’s three titanium sculptures modelled on Olea Sancta vessels contain intricate, glistening details like small flowers and figures, forming an installation that merges ecclesiastical setting with metaphysical enquiry (8 May-18 October). Adding an element of international dialogue, the Venice project will coincide with a parallel exhibition opening on 18 July in Shanghai at the Long Museum. For the Venice presentation, suspended elements resembling oil droplets in motion lend the space a sense of liquidity, while a video triptych connects the works to their monumental counterparts in Shanghai.