Venice, Museo di Storia Naturale Giancarlo Ligabue, ground floor

From 5 June to 13 September 2026

Curated by
Lorenzo Peter Castelletto 

Produced by
Area Marina Protetta di Miramare (WWF Italia)
Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e Geofisica Sperimentale

Divided between two worlds, water and the dry land, the tidal environment is a highly distinctive ecosystem of fragile and delicate balances. It is most clearly observed along coastlines where there is a significant difference between low and high tide. This habitat is home to plants and animals with extraordinary adaptations, enabling them to survive in an extremely inhospitable environment.

The Upper Adriatic, in addition to having a considerable tidal range, has varied coasts, with sandy, pebbly and rocky shores that create different habitats characterised by a great variety of flora and fauna. 

In and Out of the Water. The Tidal Environment of the Upper Adriatic is a project of photographic and scientific communication created to reveal what goes on behind the scenes of a fascinating environment suspended between land and sea. The exhibition engages the public with high-impact images, using photographs and videos taken both in and out of the water to reveal this unique habitat in its entirety. 

The exhibition is enriched by an information point created by the Museum entitled In and Out of the Water in the Venice Lagoon. Using texts and images, it describes the tidal environment in the lagoon and the organisms populating it, presenting species that are little known or unknown, and which live just beneath our feet in this zone.

The exhibition is open from 5 June to 13 September 2026, during the museum’s opening hours and with the museum ticket.

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.

From 16 April to 2 November 2025
Venice, Museo di Storia Naturale Giancarlo Ligabue, ground floor

Curated by
Carlo Beltrame
Elisa Costa
Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici

In 2021, the team of Professor Carlo Beltrame (Università Ca’ Foscari – Department of Humanities) conducted underwater archaeological excavations at Lio Piccolo (Cavallino-Treporti), which discovered a brick tank and wooden planks containing oysters.

This singular structure, interpreted as a space to keep the bivalves alive before consumption, can be dated to the 1st century AD. The only comparable structure was found in the lagoon of Narbonne in France. Abutting the basin, excavations are revealing the piles of the sub-foundations of what could be a rich villa, as shown by the discovery of hundreds of fragments of fine fresco and numerous mosaic tiles.

In the summer of 2022, the discovery of this ostriarium caused a stir in the media. Hence it is important to present the public in Venice, and further afield, with the first results of this research project. It provides further information about the inhabitants of the lagoon in the Roman imperial age with an exhibition of some finds, images, videos of the underwater excavations and research work, as well as a 3-D model of the archaeological site in the lagoon.

The research project by Ca’ Foscari University – Department of Humanities is made possible thanks to funding from the University, the Municipality of Cavallino Treporti, the CHANGES PNRR project, and a PRIN PNRR project, in collaboration with the Department of Geosciences at the University of Padua (Prof. Paolo Mozzi) and the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Florence (Prof. Adele Bertini).

Admission to the exhibition from 16 April to 2 November 2025, with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

L'articolo Research project exhibition proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.

29 April – 28 September 2025
Venice, Natural History Museum “Giancarlo Ligabue”, Garden

Curated by Harry Woodlock
With the support of British Council
In collaboration with Konrad Fischer Galerie

For over fifteen years, Alice Channer, a leading contemporary British artist, has been making sculpture that represents nature in various states of transformation. Megaflora, 2021, is a sand-cast aluminium bramble stem that has been extracted via three-dimensional scan and stretched vertically into a three-meter-high freestanding sculptural form, and is presented here outside, in the Giardino di Ingresso of Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia, for the very first time. 

Alice Channer, Megaflora, 2021 (detail), © Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen

By way of scale or material, Channer transmogrifies the form, nature or appearance of the flora and fauna that makes up our natural world, in a surprising, and oftentimes magical, manner. In this sense her work speaks directly to the Museum’s rich, varied and fragile zoological, paleontological and botanical collections and its evocative layout for discovering the secrets of nature and living beings. At the same time, it is also a comment on the way in which our environment has transformed, or adapted to, the human activity that has led to today’s climate crisis and the unprecedented threat capitalism is posing to nature.

For the first time, the sculpture is presented in an outdoor setting, powerfully showcasing the monumental evocative strength and the captivating ambiguity inherent in Channer’s work. Her art consistently operates at the boundary between the real and the artificial, between nature and its reconstruction using industrial materials, technology, or precious metals.

Alice Channer. Megaflora will examine the way in which the artist uses form so as to emphasise the violence of the current phenomenon of change, the protection it might be said to symbolise, and how we might rethink that which constitutes vulnerability today. This installation will be accompanied by a brand new publication, with contributions from authors such as art writer and broadcaster Louisa Buck.

On Tuesday, 24 June 2025, starting 10.30 a.m.
Presentation of the exhibition project and catalogue Alice Channer: MEGAFLORA
Find out more >>>

ITALIAN VERSION >>>

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Alice Channer was born in Oxford, UK, in 1977. She lives and works on the edges of London. She graduated from Goldsmiths College, London (2006), with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art, from the Royal College of Art, London (2008), with a Master’s degree in Sculpture, and from the University of Sussex with a Bachelors degree in English Literature (1999).

Channer has exhibited internationally in numerous institutional solo and group exhibitions including the Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany; Tate Britain, London, UK, and Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany. Most recently she presented Heavy Metals / Silk Cut, a major mid-career survey, at Kunstmuseum and Kunsthalle, Appenzell, Switzerland, accompanied by the artist’s first comprehensive monographic catalogue.

This solo installation marks the second time Channer has exhibited work in Venice under the auspices of Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, following the inclusion of four of the artist’s works in Senza respiro. Arte contemporaneo a Londra, a group exhibition at Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art in 2019. In addition, she also participated in Massimiliano Gioni’s 55^th Venice Biennale exhibition Il Palazzo Enciclopedico in 2013.

L'articolo Installation proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.

Underwater photography by Hussain Aga Khan
Videography by Simone Piccoli

9 June – 9 October 2022
Venice, Natural History Museum of Venice Giancarlo Ligabue

The Living Sea presents the view of two friends, Hussain Aga Khan and Simone Piccoli, on the extraordinary diversity of the underwater world of three countries: Tonga, Mexico and Egypt.

Both born in 1974, Hussain Aga Khan, a photographer and author of books and exhibitions, and Simone Piccoli, director of underwater documentaries, met in November 2014 on a dolphin expedition Simone was guiding in Sataya, Red Sea, where gigantic groups of spinner dolphins cruise and near where the strange and peaceful dugong can be seen grazing.

In subsequent years, they set their sights on Vava’u, one of the two main islands in Tonga, whose deep waters whales come to give birth in every summer, and the Revillagigedo islands far off the coast of Mexico, where megafauna like oceanic manta rays and scalloped hammerheads flourish, as do gigantic whale sharks, the biggest fish in the sea that eat only plankton.

To guide us through these three fascinating, diverse places, Hussain Aga Khan’s large format prints, accompanied by the author’s comments, dialogue with Simone Piccoli’s award-winning films, shot during their joint expeditions.

For this exhibition, the environmental association Marevivo Onlus and Marevivo Veneto ETS have partnered with Focused on Nature, the Swiss association created by Hussain Aga Khan to promote, through the power of photography, awareness of environmental causes and to finance some of the best wildlife charities in the world for particular species and ecosystems of interest.

Visit the exhibition with the virtual tour created by Simone Piccoli 3S Production

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.

From 4 to 30 September 2021
Venice, Natural History Museum of Venice Giancarlo Ligabue

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More Real than Real is a words game and a challenge to the visitor that in the days of The Glass Week will admire, tracking down, the extraordinary glass miniatures by Bruno Amadi, shown in a comparison with the shells, the roaches, the locusts, the mosquitos, the butterflies, the crustaceans… of the permanent collection of the Venice Natural History Museum Giancarlo Ligabue.

The exhibition – curated by Cristina Beltrami – presents a selection of about forty unique pieces realized by the great Master of the lampworking, from the Seventies till today, contributing to keep alive this technique of eternal wonder.

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.

On show will be a selection of anatomical charts created by the students during the Artistic Anatomy course, presented side by side with the original museum relics on which their study was based.

The exhibition consolidates the years-long interaction between the Academy and the Museum, in which the scientific rigour of the researcher encounters the artist’s versatility, illustrating the inextricable symbiosis that exists between art and science.

L'articolo The Exhibition proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.

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Once again this year, the museum’s ‘Cetacean Gallery’ will host an exhibition of the International Underwater Photography Competition, now in its ninth edition, organised by Abissi-UnderwaterPhotoVenice, San Marco Underwater Club, the Argo Group, and sponsored by Dan Europe and the International Academy of Underwater Sciences and Techniques.

For the last edition the jury of experts reviewed more than 350 top-quality photographs taken in the seas across the planet, selecting from them thirty winning images by photographers from Belgium, France, Switzerland, England, Greece, Spain, Malta, Singapore, the United States, Taiwan, and of course Italy.

To add to the significance of the photo collection, and to promote love and respect for the sea and the life that inhabits it, the participants donate their work to the museum, thus enriching the archives for educational and cultural purposes. In addition, as with past editions, the public will have the opportunity to vote for their favourite photo from among those on show.

The results of the vote, which is also open to the youngest visitors, will be published on the museum’s website at the end of the exhibition.

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.

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A traveller and photographer, Umberto Knicz has always been fascinated by African culture, and thanks to long and tiring personal research and numerous expeditions to the crags of Bandiagara, he has gathered many extraordinary examples of the art and culture of the Dogon people.

Masks, sculptures, doors, bronze objects and jewellery by this still mysterious population from Mali will go on display in the fascinating venue of the Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia. The Dogon are skilful farmers who a long time ago adapted to living in the crags, transformed into a form of architecture, and they remained relatively isolated from the rest of the country until the 20th century. Over the course of five centuries, this has enabled them to develop a wholly original culture.

They are animists, with a rigid social and religious organisation, living suspended between earth and sky, expressing themselves through ritual dances and ceremonies. Their ancestors left paintings and pictograms on the walls of the Bandiagara caves, and these have only recently been deciphered, as they were under the custody of the Hogon, the high priest, guardian of knowledge.

Thanks to the fine collection on show here, it is now possible to learn more about the Dogon culture, which has been defended and preserved so tenaciously and for so long.

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Curator Umberto Knycz

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.

On display are 50 posters of the students of the Bachelor’s Degree in Design and seven landscape communication projects from the Master’s Degree in Design

presentation
Saturday, January 30, 2016 at 15:00
by Fondazione Musei Civici of Venice – Museum of Natural History
and IUAV University of Venice
Admission on invitation only

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Since the re-opening of the Museum, its scientific staff has been working on the design of a further new section dedicated to the lagoon of Venice, to its natural and environmental features as well as to its history and its centuries-old co-evolution with the city and the people. The concept developed here is the “widespread museum”, with an exhibition filled with cross-references to the surrounding territory, aimed at suggesting the direct exploration of the environments and themes presented in the Museum. An invitation to go and discover the lagoon, starting from places where local people is keeping alive environments, traditions, handicraft activities and knowledge that make up our culture and identity.
Within this perspective of interrelationship with other local bodies, we found a particularly favorable opportunity in collaborating with the IUAV university of Venice, particularly with the Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree courses in Design, whose students have produced really interesting, original and effective projects.

Master’s students have been engaged in imagining a museum widespread in the territory, to serve both the community and the delicate ecosystem of the lagoon. The projects consist of a series of routes that wind between the museum and the lagoon of Venice, each made precious by its own atmosphere, each one communicated through a different narrative framework and through various communication means.

Bachelor’s students instead, had the task of conveying with their posters the mission and values of a science museum. Working in small groups, they have addressed the communication issues of the museum, addressing three different targets: tourism, the city and its territory, the school.

The projects will remain on display at the Museum from January 30 to February 14, 2016.

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.

ABISSI
City of Venice 2015

VII International Underwater Photography Contest

From October 10th to November 1st
Venice, Natural History Museum

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This year, the museum will again host the Exhibition of the International Underwater Photography Contest organised by Abissi- UnderwaterPhotoVenice, the Club Subacqueo San Marco, Gruppo Argo and Scubashooters in its “Cetaceans Gallery”.

In the last edition, the jury of experts looked at over 400 photographs of the highest quality taken in the seas around the world, and selected the 33 winning images sent by photographers from the United States, Indonesia, Norway, Spain, Greece, the UK and Italy.

In order to show the material collected to best effect and promote a love and respect for the sea and the creatures living in it, the participants will give their images to the museum, adding to its archives for didactic and cultural purposes.

Moreover, as in past editions, the public will be able to vote for its favourite photograph amongst those on show: the vote, which may be cast even by the “littlest” visitors, will be published on the museum’s site at the end of the exhibition.

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L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.

From June 13th to August  2nd, 2015
Venice, Natural History Museum
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Hot-spot of global biodiversity, Madagascar proposes itself as a classic paradigm of conservation.

On its varied territory there is in fact a great number of animal and plant species that are not present elsewhere and still the subject of taxonomic descriptions and there are unique ecosystems.

At the same time the 18 “karazanas” (ethnic groups) that live there since about 2000 years show wide degrees of mixture, witnessing articulated processes of colonization between Africa and Asia. A paradise, therefore, to study the processes of evolution and bio-geography.

Unfortunately, Madagascar’s fragile habitats are nowadays disappearing at a rapid rhythms, and new species are destined to extinction as soon as they are discovered. Country’s natural resources are too often exagerately exploited, with the result that human populations are being depleted more and more. The causes of such a paradox are manyfolds and difficult to fully understand.

This photographic exhibition offers for the first time a selection of pictures taken over more than 20 years of zoological research, with the keen eye to everyday life and the great challenges that highlight the indelible interweaving between man and nature in an extreme country.

Franco Andreone is zoologist at the Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali of Turin. In Madagascar he conductsand coordinates research and conservation projects. The exhibition can be visited within the usual schedules and with ticket of the Natural History Museum.

Discover the exhibition sections:

– Daily life >>
– Fauna in Madagascar >>
– Landscapes >>

Admission is allowed with times and tickets of the museum >>>

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.

From April 15 to May 18, 2014
Natural History Museum, Venice

The Istituzione Parco della Laguna (Lagoon Park Institution) is organising a competition for infant, primary and secondary schools in the province of Venice for the purpose of raising awareness about the area of the lagoon, and encouraging children to learn why it is important to defend this heritage while at the same time collecting ideas from them for sustainable use of the area.

In this edition, participants are invited to suggest their own ideas for the Park’s activities: for welcoming visitors, encouraging coexistence between residents and their environment, promoting the landscape and its ‘natural’ inhabitants and, finally, for publicising the Park itself.

At the end of the didacticprogramme, which includes aseries of creative workshops, the classes will present their projects, which will goon display in the Museum; this event will also be an opportunity to involve local citizens and participate in the section dedicated to the Venice Lagoon, which will be opening soon.

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.

From October 11 to November 2, 2014
Natural History Museum, Venice

The International Competition of Underwater Photography returns in 2014 with the display of the wonderful photographs selected by a jury of experts and on show in the fabulous “Cetaceans Gallery”, at the ground floor of the museum.

On Saturday, October 11 at 3:30 p.m. science writer Marco Affronte will hold a lecture titled “The sea that you do not expect”.

Earlier editions, organised by Abissi-UnderwaterPhotoVenice, the Club Subacqueo San Marco, Gruppo Argo and Scubashooters, have seen the participation of some of the most famous Italian and foreign underwater photographers, who have submitted over 1500 images taken in all of the world’s seas.

All the photographs in the competition are then added to the archives of the Museum,
which can use them for research and educational purposes.

Realized by Abissi-UnderwaterPhotoVenice, Club Subacqueo San Marco, Gruppo Argo and Scubashooters.

Visit the exhibition: get info about Venice Natural History Museum ticket and hours >>

L'articolo Exhibition proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.

From June 14th to August 24th, 2014
Museo di Storia Naturale, Venice

The collaboration between the Museum and photographer Giampietro Mattolin and journalist Piero Verni, which began in January 2013 with the presentation of a book entitled “Lung Ta Universi Tibetani – Tibetan Universes”, continues in 2014.

The exhibition will aim to be an introduction to the complex world of Buddhist culture seen through oneof its most symbolic aspects: the ritual dances executed in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the Himalaya.

The exhibition is divided into chapters which, through a series of images and texts, depict the eight main themes set out by the authors: the dance of the mind; the description of a Cham; where, when and why; the dancers; the costumes and masks; the characters; the music and orchestra of the monastery;the public at these ritual dances.

Every day (Monday excluded) visitors can increase their knowledge about the themes of the photo exhibition with the vision of the film by Karma Chukey, Piero Verni and Mario Cuccodoro. Showing hours: 11:00 a.m. and 03:00 p.m.

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Coordinated by Luca Mizzan e Mauro Bon

Admission with hours and tickets of the museum >>>

L'articolo The exhibition proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.

From October 12th to November 3rd 2013
Natural History Museum of Venice

The exhibition of the International Underwater Photography Contest “City of Venice 2013” organised by the Committee of UnderwaterPhotoVenice, by the Club Subacqueo San Marco and by Gruppo Argo Ricerche Subacquee, returns to the museum’s fascinating Cetaceans gallery, with a series of extraordinary photographs selected by an expert jury.

The event continues to evolve in the international arena, attracting the attention of the most renowned underwater photographers in the world. This edition in fact see for the first time the participation of competitors from the United States and Taiwan, but also from Greece, France and England, as well as the best Italian specialists.

Moreover, this year there are new categories dedicated to jellyfish and the sea slugs, as well as the “Woman Fotosub”, a real tribute to the skill of the practitioners of this discipline.

In order to further strengthen the event, not reducing it to a mere photographic competition, but to promote love and respect for the sea and for the organisms that inhabit it, all the photos in the competition will be added to the museum’s archives, where they may be consulted for reserach and educational purposes.

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VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE PHOTO!

The photos on display were selected by a jury of experts, but all visitors will have the opportunity to express their opinion by voting their favorite picture. The judgment of the public will be posted on the website from Monday, November 4th 2013.

More than 400 visitors voted and your favorite photo by the public is:

Category: Compact Macro Mediterranean

Foto n. : 21 – “The horse and the sun”

Author: Rafael Cosme – Spain

Scientific name: Hippocampus guttulatus

Common name: Seahorse

Location: Tossa de mar, Spagna

L'articolo Exhibition-contest proviene da Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia.