Venice's imposing historic customs house at Punta della Dogana has been transformed into a hi-tech museum for contemporary art
  A dream-team of engineers, builders and architects have transformed Venice's imposing historic customs house at Punta della Dogana into a hi-tech museum for contemporary art in just 18 months. The special relationship that French luxury goods magnate François Pinault has forged with the city of Venice over the past few years is partly to thank for this efficient turn-around, but also Pinault's billions (20 million euro of which he readily invested in the project). It also helps that he owns one of the biggest art collections of contemporary art in the world - about 2,500 pieces at last count and growing steadily.
  Filling the triangular eastern tip of the up-market Dorsoduro neighbourhood, and overlooking the Grand Canal, Piazza San Marco and the Giudecca Canal, the 17th century building has a privileged location. Pritzker-prize winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando was asked to keep the original structure and façade intact. He removed all traces of previous restorations and a series of long rectangular rooms with exposed and rough-hewn brick walls and vast original wooden ceiling beams emerged. He then used his trademark minimalist brushed concrete to great effect on many of the floors, on the steps and in cleverly located glossy partition walls (that look like marble).
  The most intrusive (but well-conceived) element is a reinforced concrete box-like space created at the centre of the building filled with daylight. It can be overlooked from the many glass and concrete walkways on the first floor, which are reminiscent of the bridges that adorn every corner of the lagoon city. Ando has not shied away from natural light, and many of the rooms feature high semi-circular steel windows offering beautifully clear, framed views of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca island. Underneath them rectangular windows are covered in decorative hand-crafted latticed steel frames that hark back to Carlo Scarpa and leave dappled shapes on the floors. The result is a modern, luxurious and contemplative cathedral to art. It is quite masterly.
 While in Venice we managed to grab a few words with Alison Gingeras, manager of François Pinault's contemporary art collection.
Q&A with Alison Gingeras
Alison Gingeras manages François Pinault's contemporary art collection and is co-curator (with Francesco Bonami) of ‘Mapping the Studio', the inaugural exhibition at the contemporary art centre of Punta della Dogana, and the new exhibition at Palazzo Grassi in June 2009.
What was your brief for ‘Mapping the Studio'?
There was no brief exactly. Mr. Pinault gave us full license to do what we wanted to do, while staying true to the nature of the collection, and its character and strengths. It was more a case of ‘Surprise me – and surprise the public'.
Were there specific challenges to curating one exhibition in two spaces?
It wasn't so much that there were two spaces, more that Punta della Dogana was new and we had to think about how the art would work with such intense architecture. The Palazzo Grassi is more of a conventional white cube space, whereas the work that went into Punta della Dogana had to be very site-specific. There was also Tadao Ando's architectural intervention to work with, and we had to choose art, especially in the central gallery, that married well with this minimalist contemporary architecture and still stood out.
What can you tell me about the Pinault collection?
Mr. Pinault has put a lot of heart into this exhibition in particular, and he is someone who is truly passionate about the art of now. ‘Mapping the Studio' presents around a tenth of the collection as a whole.
Do you know anything about the next show(s) that will be hosted at Punta della Dogana/Palazzo Grassi?
Punta della Dogana is now the permanent collection, and after Mapping the Studio ends, Palazzo Grassi will return to its mission of housing temporary exhibitions.
Is Venice set to become a centre of contemporary art?
I think it already is. With the Biennale taking the temperature of what's new in contemporary art every two years, and spaces like the Vedova Foundation, Palazzo Fortuny and the Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa all doing exciting things, Venice's contemporary art scene is thriving.
copyright Palazzo Grassi S.p.A, ORCH orsenigo_chemollo / Palazzo Grassi S.p.A, Andrea Jemolo Appeared on wallpaper.com in June 2009
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