Venice | Imago Mundi - Map of the New Art

Imago Mundi: Map of the New Art, an exhibition of 6,930 works by artists from around the world is presented by the Luciano Benetton Collection at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice. Map of the New Art is the largest exhibition of the collection to date, presenting work by emerging and established artists whose only limitation is the 10x12 cm format. The exhibition is open 31 August - 1 November, during the 56th International Art Exhibition—la Biennale di Venezia as well as the 72nd Venice International Film Festival. Map of the New Art contains works commissioned and collected by Luciano Benetton during his world travels to more than 40 countries across the five continents. Sourced from over 38 collections, the exhibition expands upon the Luciano Benetton Collection's 2013 Imago Mundi exhibition, which presented some 1,000 works from Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, United States, Latin America, Russia, China and Mongolia—arranged according to nationality, region and continent. With Map of the New Art, the Imago Mundi project continues its democratic, collective and global mission to push toward new horizons of art through works that transcend borders and break cultural silence. By the end of 2015, under the auspices of the Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche, the Imago Mundi project will have engaged more than 20,000 artists from over 100 countries and indigenous people, with works exhibited and promoted internationally through the project's web platform, regional art catalogues, events and travelling exhibitions in both public and private institutions. The Luciano Benetton Collection seeks to unite our world in the name of a common artistic experience that differs from those offered by conventional methods and platforms for exhibition. The collection has been assembled without purchase, through the voluntary participation of artists, and is based on the principle the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus developed in order to classify organisms—now the universally accepted method of naming plants. "Ideas, meanings and inspirations are not monopolized products, but fluid and evolving expressions born of interaction and communication between East and West, North and South, and through the convergence of cultural experience," says Luciano Benetton. "We look to the new frontiers of art—personalities, countries, emerging languages and different cultures—to foster openness towards the world and the coexistence of expressive diversity." Map of the New Art previews on August 31 at 7pm and is on view through November 1 at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, Italy.