Culturespaces, producer of the exhibition

Culturespaces organises and produces exhibitions at the Jacquemart-André Museum, staying faithful to the sophisticated and eclectic tastes of the museum’s illustrious founders. Prominent 19th century art collectors, Nélie Jacquemart and Edouard André were won over by the charms of Venice, immortalised in the 18th century on the canvases of Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto, and Francesco Guardi.

The artists embodied the two main movements in the art of painting views, known as veduta. Canaletto developed a scientific approach to perspective and a strong sense of detail. Guardi, on the other hand, chose to immerse the city in a dreamlike universe, his capricci creating an imaginary, fantastical and seductive Venice.

To mark the three hundredth anniversary of Francesco Guardi’s birth, Culturespaces is paying special homage to an artist inextricably linked to the veduta movement, as well as to Canaletto, who preceded and inspired him. The exhibition explores their artistic journeys while giving them their rightful place among the other leading exponents of veduta in the 18th century, including Gaspar van Wittel, Luca Carlevarijs, Michele Marieschi and Bernardo Bellotto. All these artists turned Venice into a poetic, mythical and theatrical object, from St Mark’s Square to the Grand Canal and from the city’s majestic palaces to its mysterious alleyways. Venice is a hymn to the sublime, with the delicate lines of its architecture, subtle colours of the sky and water, shifting expanse of the lagoon and flamboyant festivities on the Grand Canal with its countless boats.

Curatorship of the Canaletto – Guardi, two masters of Venice exhibition at the Jacquemart-André Museum has been entrusted to Bożena Anna Kowalczyk. An internationally recognised specialist in veduta, she guides our viewing experience so that we can recognise the interpretive qualities specific to each painter in this genre. Thanks to the renewed support of leading international museums and collections, over fifty remarkable masterpieces have been brought together for the exhibition, opening the doors to the Venice of the past.

Bruno MONNIER
CEO of Culturespaces

Culturespaces produces and manages, with an ethical and professional approach, monuments, museums and prestigious historic sites entrusted to it by public bodies and local authorities. These include the Jacquemart-André Museum in Paris, the Ephrussi de Rothschild and Kerylos Villas on the French Riviera, the Roman Theatre of Orange, the Château des Baux de Provence, the Carrières de Lumières, the Nîmes Arena, the National Automobile and Train Museums in Mulhouse and the Waterloo Battlefield.

In 18 years, in close collaboration with curators and art historians, Culturespaces has organised many temporary exhibitions of international standing in Paris and in the regions. Culturespaces manages the whole chain of production for each exhibition, in close collaboration with the public owner, the curator and the exhibition sponsor: programming, loans, transport, insurance, set design, communications, partnership and sponsorship, catalogues and spin-off products.

Today Culturespaces works with some of the most prestigious national and international museums in the world.

Recent exhibitions organised at the Jacquemart-André Museum:
2012 The Twilight of the Pharaohs. Masterpieces from the last Egyptian Dynasties - 139 000 visitors
2011 Fra Angelico and the Masters of Light – 250,000 visitors
2011 The Caillebotte brothers’ private world. Painter and photographer – 220,000 visitors
2010 Rubens, Poussin and 17th century artists – 150,000 visitors
2010 From El Greco to Dalí. The great Spanish masters. The Pérez Simón collection – 200,000 visitors 
2009 Bruegel, Memling, Van Eyck… The Brukenthal Collection – 240,000 visitors
2009 The Italian Primitives. Masterpieces of the Altenbourg Collection – 160,000 visitors.
2008 Van Dyck – 200,000 visitors
2007 Fragonard – 200,000 visitors
2006 The Thracians’ Gold – 150,000 visitors
2005 David, intimité et grandeur – 150 000 visiteurs