The National Archaeological Museum of Venice, part of the Archaeological Museums of Venice and the Lagoon, hosts ArcheoMateria by artist and designer Michela Cattai, curated by Francesca Giubilei, with the contribution of glass historian Rosa Barovier Mentasti. The exhibition transforms the museum’s rooms into a poetic laboratory where matter, form, light, and memory intertwine.
The exhibition presents around thirty glass works created by the artist in recent years, exploring the dialogue between contemporary glass and classical sculpture. The museum’s history, connected to Venice as a city of collectors and its relationship with antiquity, meets the Murano glassmaking tradition, which since the 15th century has established the city as a center of artistic excellence. In this context, glass becomes a symbol of both luxury and art, entering into a dialogue with classical sculpture and renewing Venice’s historic fascination with both glass and marble. Cattai’s work acts as a contemporary echo of classical sculpture, reinterpreting traditional aesthetic motifs such as fluting, folds, and chiaroscuro.
Two main series shape the exhibition. ArcheoMateria explores the concept of the artifact as an object of aesthetic contemplation: ancestral glass forms, threaded with metallic filaments, seem to emerge from a time suspended between past and present. Colonne d’aria evokes the fluted shafts of ancient columns, transforming glass into a light and dynamic element, with surfaces rhythmically punctuated by solids and voids. The result is an experience that merges contemporary art and historical memory, inviting visitors to rediscover the relationship between matter, form, and light through the dialogue between the ancient and the modern.
