3 min read
In Venice, with its endlessly seductive palimpsest of water, light, and layers of history, fashion royalty Dries Van Noten is starting his next chapter. With the opening of the Fondazione Dries Van Noten, the Belgian designer has pivoted from masterminding seasonal runway collections to overseeing a living, breathing creative hub for craftsmanship inside a Renaissance palazzo on the Grand Canal.
“Celebrating craft today means recognizing its role in shaping how we design, innovate, and understand making, keeping us connected to the human side of creativity, while opening it up to dialogue across disciplines,” Van Noten tells ELLE Decor. “When fashion, jewelry, art, design, glass, ceramics and other creative fields come together, they create encounters where each work shifts how you see the next, revealing shared questions about emotion, convention and material.”
Camilla Glorioso
Designer Dries Van Noten at his Fondazione Dries Van Noten.
Craftsmanship, in the foundation’s view, is an evolving, sometimes radical language. Conceived with Van Noten’s longtime partner Patrick Vangheluwe, the non-profit’s mission is to dissolve the boundaries between disciplines, creating an ecosystem where artisans and artists can exchange ideas across generations and geographies. The foundation will host residencies and collaborations as well as ongoing exhibitions, weaving local craft traditions like Murano glass and Burano lace into a global conversation.
The foundation’s home is the Palazzo Pisani Moretta, a 15th-century jewel featuring richly frescoed ceilings, gilded salons and impressive chandeliers—all of it deliberately left in a state of romantic suspension. Rather than impose a heavy-handed renovation, Van Noten has chosen to let the building speak, its patina of centuries, its imperfections and opulence, forming a dialogue with the works on view.
Courtesy Fondazione Dries Van Noten
The exterior of the Fondazione Dries Van Noten, which is located inside a Renaissance palazzo on the Grand Canal.
The inaugural exhibition, “The Only True Protest Is Beauty,” sets the tone. Curated by Van Noten in consultation with longtime collaborator Geert Bruloot, the show includes more than 200 works that come together in interdisciplinary, intergenerational vignettes, creating compelling contrasts and shared connections.
Opening on April 25, just ahead of the Venice Biennale in early May, the show is positioned as counterpoint and complement to the world’s most celebrated contemporary art event. The foundation’s hope is that the layered meditation on making will be an unexpected highlight for visitors.
Camilla Glorioso
The interior of the Palazzo Pisani Moretta, the 15th century home of the Fondazione.
“The Only True Protest Is Beauty,” which will remain on view through October 4, draws on a wide spectrum of disciplines—jewelry, photography, collectible design—yet resists hierarchy. A couture silhouette by Christian Lacroix might shimmer against a backdrop of Venetian frescoes. Experimental glass and ceramics by names like Alexander Kirkeby and Ritsue Mishima echo the city’s own artisanal heritage. Sculptures by Misha Kahn bring an exuberant, edgy twist to the historic setting. The show invites visitors to move intuitively through the palazzo, discovering affinities between objects that transcend medium or era.
The exhibition title, borrowed from folk singer Phil Ochs, hints at a deeper ambition: beauty as a form of resistance, a counterweight to an increasingly digitized, accelerated, cynical world. In an age of algorithms and artificial intelligence, the exhibition makes a compelling case for the handmade, the irregular and the soulful.
Matteo De Mayda
Pieces in the new exhibition “The Only True Protest Is Beauty.” From left to right: Comme des Garçons Collection Spring/Summer 2025, headpiece by Julien d’Ys; Christian Lacroix Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2004 Look 37, Wig by Fabio Petri; Kate MccGwire STIFLE, 2008, mixed media with white dove feathers in antique glass dome with black wood base.
Yet the show is no exercise in nostalgia. Van Noten is clear-eyed about the future, embracing new technologies alongside traditional forms of making and positioning Venice not as a place of trapped-in-amber craft traditions but as a dynamic laboratory. As he says: “I hope [visitors] come to the Fondazione with a sense of discovery, and leave with that same sense of curiosity: experiencing beauty as a moment of shift that opens new ways of seeing and thinking.”
Matteo de Mayda
Ann Carrington, Persian Slipper, 2026; Ann Carrington, Qiulong, 2026; and Tuscan School, 17th-18th centuries Madonna and Child Enthroned Between the Infant Saint John and a Musician Angel.
Fondazione Dries Van Noten is located at the Palazzo Pisani Moretta, Quartiere San Polo, 2766, 30125 Venezia VE; fondazionedriesvannoten.org