Conserving the Future

Conserving the Future is the book that bears witness to twenty-five years of curating contemporary art in the same place: the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice.

It is a long time in which curator Chiara Bertola has been able to observe the metamorphoses and rebirth of this ancient palace, which, through the different visions of the artists projected into its spaces, have made it many places each time.

Conserving the Future is a program and a working method based on the relationship with time, the past, and history because in every project the historical place becomes a subject that asks to be seen, recognised, listened to and then opened to dialogue with present.

Chiara Bertola recounts, in a single text that trace the site-specific exhibitions from 1997 to 2022, the questions, thoughts, and discoveries made together with the artists living with them the creative process. She defines a curatorial line beyond the canonical and consolidated confines, focused on the concepts of precariousness and instability.

The perception of a time never closed, the intuition of hidden possibilities behind established meanings and the search for margins of meaning revealed beyond the usual confines become the keys to open up unexpected poetic worlds.