In 2015 there will be a radical change to the ways of preserving and using the archives kept on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore (in the fields of theatre, music, art, history and literature). Thanks to the adoption of the Xdams platform (also used by the historical archives of IntesaSanpaolo and Pirelli), the Foundation will start the online publication of its archives. The first available for use will be the Theatre Iconographic Archive – an interdisciplinary collection of over 12,800 images, ranging from stage design to portraiture, theatre architecture and costume design – and part of the Institute for Music Archives. Next year will also be 30 years since the creation of the Institute and to mark this important anniversary the documents in the Bruni Tedeschi, Casella, Cisilino, Malipiero and Respighi Archives will be published. Totalling around 20,000 items, this mass of invaluable material will be available for musicologists worldwide.

The major events next year include the seasonal opening of the Palazzo Cini Gallery at San Vio, from 25 April to 15 November 2015. The new season will feature exhibitions and cultural and educational activities (Art Conversations, lectures, interpretations and guided tours) reflecting the nature of the museum and according to strategies highlighting the special features of the Palazzo Cini collection. It will also be a means of promoting and making better known the Foundation’s other art collections.

In spring, in concomitance with the Gallery opening, an exhibition devoted to Ettore Spaletti on the second-floor piano nobile will present works specially created by the artist in an intimate and close relationship with the setting. The exhibition will be staged in collaboration with the Studio La Città, Verona. In autumn, the same second-floor space will host an exhibition of a significant group of drawings from the Giuseppe Fiocco Collection,held bythe Institute of Art History. In 2015 the Guest at the Palace will continue with two more “surprises”.Organised in collaboration with major international institutions (begun last spring with the display of Bronzino’s Young Man with Lute, courtesy of the Uffizi), the series involves welcoming into the rooms of the Gallery’s permanent collection “guests works” to create a dialogue in terms of form and content with the other works.

In 2015 4 exhibitions will be staged on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Das Meisterstück. Die europäische Malerpalette (Palladian Refectory, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 7 May – 7 June 2015), a series of photographs by the German artist Matthias Schaller, portraying the palettes of artists who have shaped the last 200 years of European painting – Bacon, Cézanne, Chagall, Courbet, Dalí, Delacroix, Degas, van Gogh, Kandinsky, Klee, Matisse, Monet, Morandi, Modigliani, Munch, Picasso, Twombly and Turner. Each palette is a kind of “indirect portrait” of the artist and his pictorial technique. Magdalena Abakanowicz: Crowd and Individual(Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 7 May – 7 June 2015), an exhibition in which Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz, who uses textiles as her principal sculptural medium, will show around 80 jute figures as part of her Crowds series. The exhibition will be staged in collaboration with Magdalena Abakanowicz’s studio in Warsaw and the Beck & Eggeling Gallery.

Lastly, there will two exhibitions organised by Le Stanze del Vetro (Rooms for Glass), the long-term project to study and promote 20th-century Venetian glass,set up jointly by Pentagram Stiftung and the Fondazione Cini. Glass from Finland in the Bischofberger collection, 1932 – 1973 (Le Stanze del Vetro, 12 April – 2 August 2015) will feature a wide-ranging selection of items now in the Bischofberger collection from the “illustrious years” of modern Finnish glass, while Fulvio Bianconi at the Venini (Le Stanze del Vetro, September 2015 – January 2016) is an exhibition in the series on designers who worked for the historic Venini glassworks. An unusual combination of graphic artist, illustrator and industrial designer with an art background, Fulvio Bianconi (Padua, 1915 – Milan, 1996) met Paolo Venini on Murano in 1946, thus starting a fruitful collaboration with the glassworks.

The principal Cini events open to the public in 2015 include four first-rate concerts: the Venetian première of The Magic Flute according to the Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio, staged to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the International Ethnomusicology Seminar, organised by the Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies (Teatro Goldoni, 30 January 2015); a concert of Indian music by Pandit Vishwa MohanBhatt– the celebrated virtuoso will play the Mohan Veena, an Indian adaptation of the slide guitar(Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 19 March 2015); a Concert of five pianos and six voices, the final event in the 7th edition of the Solti Peretti Répétiteurs Masterclasses, devoted to the Bel Canto repertoire (Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 10 April 2015); and a concert of Korean Traditional Music performed by the great master of Korean musical traditions, Hwang Byungki, a composer, virtuoso on the kayagum (zither) and musicologist (Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 26 May 2015), organised by the Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies in collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University, Venice and the King Sejong Institute Venice (KISV) with the involvement of the Art Council of Korea (ARKO).

The many international conferences and seminars organised by the various Institutes and Research Centres over the year include: Archives, heritages and new creativities –the20th International Ethnomusicology Seminar(Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 29 – 31 January 2015); Fulvio Bianconi – international conference(Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 4 February 2015); Vera Komissarzhevskaya meets Eleonora Duse. The “Joan of Arc of the Russian stage” and the “Divina” of Italian theatre – international conference(Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 4 – 5 March 2015); Memory blanks; haunting spectres –Historical Studies Seminar(Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 11 – 13 May 2015); The Young Jacopo Tintoretto – international conference(Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 28 – 29 May 2015); Music-Dance: Body in Motion between Stage and New Media –international conference(Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 8 – 11 July 2015); The evolution of gender – 11th International Conference on the Future of Science (Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 17 – 19 September 2015); Music, Art and Spirituality in Central Asia –international conference(Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 29 – 31 October 2015); Avant-garde theatre and experimental music for the stage in Italy: 1950-1975 –conference and workshop(Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 27 – 28 November 2015); and Italian composers and cinema: 1945-1975(second edition)–seminar(Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 5 – 6 December 2015).

The following workshops or masterclasses will also be held on San Giorgio Maggiore: Hermeneutic meetings with Haim Baharier –Spirituality seminars, organised for the first time as part of the activities of the Centre of Religions and Comparative Spiritualities, led by mathematician and psychoanalyst Haim Baharier (3 – 10 – 17 – 24 – 31 March 2015); the fourth edition of the advanced workshop on Ottoman music, directed by Kudsi Erguner – Bîrûn. The maftirîm and the works of Sephardi Jews in Ottoman classical music (Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 13 – 18 April 2015)– aimed at making San Giorgio a centre of cultural development and thinking on the musical heritage of the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean basin; the Egida Sartori and Laura Alvini Early Music Seminar directed by Pedro Memelsdorff – Matteo da Perugia and Milanese Gothic Music (1390 – 1425) – featuring music by the maestro di cappella of Milan cathedral from 1402 to 1416 (Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 17 – 21 May 2015); The Shylock Project. Shakespeare in Venice Summer School (Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 15 June – 11 July 2015), dedicated to the playwright and his Merchant of Venice, organised by the Theatre Study Centre in collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, ahead of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death (2016) and 500 years since the birth of the Venice Ghetto;and Shobana Jeyasingh – masterclasses (Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 4 – 5 November 2015), in which Shobana Jeyasingh will hold two intensive days of lessons with professional and semi-professional dancers on how her training as a bharata-natyam dancer has influenced her way of thinking about dance and creating choreographies.

The special initiatives for next year include the second edition of the International Poetry Translation Prize named afterBenno Geiger  (his literary archive is preserved and used on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore),which was set up in 2014 by the Fondazione Cini, in compliance with Elisabetta Paolina Geiger’s will. The second edition of the prize has a significant addition: the jury will be able to award an extra prize for the best first work or for the best young translator. The prizes will be awarded at an official ceremony on 22 October 2015.

2015 will also see the tenth edition of Books at San Giorgio, a series of six presentations of the latest Fondazione Cini publications, the outcome of its Institutes’ research activities in various disciplines: art history, 20th-century music, Venetian history, Vivaldi, drama and ethnomusicology. In the last ten years the Fondazione Cini has published over 250 publications and has presented 60 of them at these launches (books of essays, art catalogues, critical editions of music, and magazines). The guest speakers at the launches are leading figures from the world of culture and offer audiences of specialists and enthusiasts evidence of the vitality and variety of the cultural production on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore.