Venice 2026 beyond the Biennale: art in the palazzi the queue never reaches
While the queue stands in the Giardini, the season's strongest art is laid out across the city. A curator's choice.
Every May people come to Venice for the Biennale — and every May thousands leave the Giardini wrung out: a hundred-odd artists, nearly a hundred pavilions, queues, heat, overload. The Biennale is a marathon, and frankly not the best way to see art. Because the strongest thing happening in Venice in 2026 is laid out not in the gardens but across the whole city — in palazzi, churches and foundations the Biennale crowd never reaches.
Here is a curator's distillation: where to go if you want not to 'tick it off' but to live it.
Pinault against all: four names in two palazzi
The Pinault Collection has rolled out four solo exhibitions this season — for the first time taking both its palazzi entire. At the Punta della Dogana, the American Lorna Simpson (Third Person, in partnership with the Met) and the Brazilian Paulo Nazareth (Algebra), whose line of salt across the halls slowly draws out the silhouette of a slave ship. At Palazzo Grassi, the Kenyan-British Michael Armitage, painting on Ugandan lubugo bark, and the Indian Amar Kanwar. They run until 22 November (Grassi until January 2027). This is perhaps the finest contemporary art of the season — and without the crush of the Arsenale.
Abramović at the Accademia: the body as exhibit
A stop of its own, worth planning the day around. Marina Abramović has for the first time been set directly into the permanent collection of the Gallerie dell'Accademia — among Titian and Bellini. To lie on the crystals, to pass through Imponderabilia, to stand before the Pietà — it is not an exhibition but an experience. 6 May – 19 October. A detailed look is in a separate article in the journal.
Peggy Guggenheim: how a legend is made
At the Peggy Guggenheim museum, Peggy Guggenheim in London (25 April – 19 October): on the collector's London years and her first gallery, with Kandinsky, Dalí, Mondrian, Brâncuși. A story of how an heiress became the chief woman collector of the twentieth century.
Glass, mirrors, kinetics
- Dale Chihuly — Venice 2026 at the Istituto Veneto (5 May – 14 November): the very artist whose glass chandeliers hang in museums the world over, returning to the city of glass.
- Anish Kapoor — at Palazzo Manfrin (from 5 May; check the closing dates, the show may end earlier than the Biennale): mirror and steel objects that distort the space.
- Lee Ufan — a retrospective at SMAC on St Mark's Square (9 May – 22 November), marking the 90th year of the master of the Japanese Mono-ha movement.
- Jenny Saville — at Ca' Pesaro (28 March – 22 November): monumental paintings of the body in a Venetian palazzo.
How to see it
The trick is in the logistics. Most of the Dorsoduro exhibitions — the Accademia, the Punta della Dogana, the Peggy Guggenheim, Palazzo Grassi — stand within walking distance of one another (the route is even called the Dorsoduro Museum Mile). Take one day for Dorsoduro, a second for San Marco and Cannaregio, and you will see more strong art than in three days in the Giardini queues.
And the main thing: almost all of it runs until 22 November. The Biennale is not going anywhere — but it is these exhibitions, not the crowd in the pavilions, that you will remember afterwards.
