Fondazione Querini Stampalia
A Wonder Booster

…drink in the beauty and wonder at the meaning of what you see.

Rachel Carson

We embrace the use of metaphors and puns, humour and invention, and we find inspiration in a pioneer who exemplifies daring and vision. Our practice of ‘reworlding’ and fostering wonder is guided by certain keywords: roots, archipelago, labyrinth, and foundation. To become truly familiar with these terms, it is essential to challenge conventional perspectives and get to the heart of the archetypes in the only way possible – swimming against the tide, with courage and a degree of risk-taking. We follow in the footsteps of Giovanni Querini Stampalia, the count whose clear vision and radical approach opened up new directions and laid the basis for new foundations – foundations, fondamenta, that in Venice are not just conventional support structures but the streets that run alongside the canals flanking the islands of the archipelago. The archipelago serves as a spatial framework that highlights a specific yet discontinuous relationship between entities and forms the essential bond between architecture and the city. The very form of the city is made up of coexisting and complicit architectures, indissoluble pluralities, rhizomatic patterns of knowledge and the organisation of contemporary wisdom.

The lagoon that serves to separate also acts as a unifying element, functioning as a pivotal medium for a logic that is inherently fragmented and transcends traditional hierarchies. The archipelago unleashes a profound heuristic potential, reflected in enclaves that embody interconnected micro-paradigms. These micro-paradigms coexist in a state of tension while maintaining solidarity, interdependence, and resilience.

‘If we’re already looking back, we owe it to the future to scan beyond the horizon, to search the remote regions of the past where the visionaries huddled in the margins, whispering dreams of a better world, drawing plans to make it happen,’ says Grafton Tanner. Bold, enterprising and radical, Giovanni Querini Stampalia was one of those visionaries. His precious legacy has been preserved by promoting a distinctive trait that looks towards experimentation and innovation while respecting history and tradition.

I envisioned a courageous, welcoming, generous and curious Fondazione with an open-source approach that thrives on a collaborative spirit, one that has the strength to take calculated risks, exploiting its great experience. An institution that knows how to win people’s trust and make every visit memorable.

We are ready for the torsion: the move will make our bones crack, it will herald the freshness we can bestow; we aim to crackle, sparkle and ignite the gaze of those who come along and who, like us, will wonder at the world and our existence, as we search for epiphanies that offer new perspectives. Wonder is inspiration, the beginning of philosophy, art and science. It is desire that is sublimated in contemplation or ignited in that restless curiosity that prompts us to explore. Wonder is the source and origin, the perception that the labyrinth we attempt to escape from is instead the interconnected form of all that coexists. We want to follow its movements, dissolve its ordinary meanings and inhabit new ones. And if curiosity is a desire for knowledge, wonder is a desire for meaning lived in the joyful awareness that it will never be completely satisfied, a never-ending quest that does not plunge us into doubt but makes it possible to create even deeper roots to travel anchored in other certainties and not entangled in sterile logical contradictions.

At the Querini we are all invited to philosophise, embrace the astonishment of unexpected discoveries, open our eyes wide and broaden our perspectives, to grasp the abundance and the excess. We are invited to come up close and perform that high-octane movement that brings us nearer to things and people, without the presumption of either the expert or the amateur.

Giovanni Querini Stampalia today could echo the words of David Thorp: ‘I expect an art institution of the 21st century to be flexible, sincere, democratic, multicultural, contradictory and bold. Splendid when it is rich, heroic when it has no money. It must have its head in the clouds, function in an exemplary manner, have team spirit, its feet on the ground and a heart as big as may be. I expect it to love artists, take care of the public and remain open until late’. It is a definition that I never stop quoting and always wonder why it is not on everyone’s lips,  given the often chaotic, obscure, unpredictable, and ungovernable nature of contemporary culture. But it is precisely in these characteristics that it can find its energy and strength. Fear and conformity contribute to an aesthetic of recession, reflecting a compelling desire to adapt to current circumstances and adhere to the principles of survival, contraction, and closure, hindering the expression and realisation of potential. 

It is our task to rekindle enthusiasm for the future, which is by no means a predetermined design but the framework for the project. But we must also choose our legacy and be accountable for it, acknowledging our debt to the past.  While it is crucial to recognise its full extent, it must still allow us to leave our unique mark on the present. Embracing the legacy means getting to work, giving it new impulse, keeping it alive, and inevitably contaminating it. It signifies revealing the break, the site of contamination by definition, the threshold that separates and unites like the waterways of Venice.

The process calls for a little unorthodox thinking and a utopian instinct. ‘Is one always at home in one’s past?’ I turn Nabokov’s quote into a question: we must nurture the future as we craft it so that we can truly feel at home everywhere.

Cristiana Collu
Director of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia