Marina Abramović at the Accademia: performance enters the halls of the Renaissance
For the first time a living woman artist has taken the Gallerie dell'Accademia — and been set right among the halls of the Renaissance. What this exhibition is, and why it is worth the journey.
In most museums the art asks one thing: do not touch. The Marina Abramović exhibition at Venice's Gallerie dell'Accademia asks the opposite — lie down, sit, lean, stay. And it may be the most radical thing that happens to you in Venice in 2026.
Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy runs from 6 May to 19 October 2026 — alongside the Biennale, marking the artist's 80th year. Abramović has become the first living woman to whom the Gallerie dell'Accademia — one of the chief museums of the Venetian Renaissance — has given a large solo exhibition. The curator is Shai Baitel (the Modern Art Museum, Shanghai).
The body within the Renaissance
The main thing here is not a hall of contemporary art fenced off from the classics. For the first time in the museum's history the exhibition has been built directly into the permanent collection: Abramović's works stand among Titian, Bellini, Tintoretto and Veronese. Performance — an art of presence and vulnerability — has been settled in the very heart of the Venetian canon.
What you will do with your hands (and your back)
The centre of the exhibition is Transitory Objects: stone beds and structures set with crystals of quartz and amethyst. They are not looked at — they are lain upon. Abramović calls it a 'transfer of energy': the viewer's body becomes part of the work, and observation turns into participation.
Beside them, her legendary performances, live and in projection:
- Rhythm 0 (1974) — the very one where the public was given 72 objects and the right to do whatever they wished with the artist.
- Imponderabilia (1977) — to pass, you must squeeze between two naked bodies.
- Balkan Baroque (1997), Light/Dark (1977), Carrying the Skeleton (2008) — and new works made especially for Venice.
The scene worth the journey
The emotional peak is Pietà (with Ulay) (1983), set in direct dialogue with Titian's Pietà (c. 1575–76), his last, unfinished painting, completed by Palma il Giovane. Four hundred and fifty years on, the body Abramović holds in her arms is the body of Ulay, her partner and collaborator, who died in 2020. A Renaissance theme of suffering and redemption — and an utterly living, personal loss. It is hard to step away from this hall.
How to go
- When: 6 May – 19 October 2026. It is not a 'half-hour' exhibition — allow time; it works at a slow pace.
- Where: the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Calle della Carità 1050, Dorsoduro. Nearby are the Punta della Dogana and the Peggy Guggenheim: you can gather them into one day.
- Tickets: take them online ahead — on Biennale days the Accademia is overloaded.
All her life Abramović has proved a simple thing: art is not what hangs on a wall but what happens to you in the room. In Venice she has been given the best possible stage — and, it seems, her finest exhibition in years.
