"Everybody Talks About the Weather”

"The project," says Foundation president Miuccia Prada, "was born with the idea of taking weather as a starting point to highlight the urgency of climate change, establishing an empirical equation between meteorology and climatology, using the tools of art and science together. The goal is to frame the environmental crisis and its undeniable impact on our lives through the evocation, representation and analysis of meteorological phenomena. Climate is a global and universal issue, affecting the actions and destinies of women and men in all regions of the world. To talk about weather today is therefore to talk about and worry about everyone's future."

So after the exhibitions "Human Brains: It Begins with an Idea," presented in Venice in 2022, and "Anatomical Waxes: La Specola di Firenze | David Cronenberg," currently underway in Milan, the new exhibition project, which already in its title recounts an everyday life of contemporary man, as if to say that the 'weather is on everyone's lips, stands as a new attempt to address current cultural challenges with the tools of science and artistic creation. 

Developed on two levels with more than 50 works by contemporary artists, the exhibition was set up by New York-based studio 2x4 and interweaves the artistic dimension of the project with a series of scientific insights developed in collaboration with the New Institute Centre For Environmental Humanities (NICHE) at Ca' Foscari University in Venice. Welcoming visitors is a large ledwall that loops weather forecasts extracted from traditional and online media from around the world.

The halls of the Venetian palace then house historical and contemporary artworks that reveal the artists' constant focus on "talking about time," from allegorical paintings and en plein air paintings to recent multimedia installations and transnational activism. A selection is then juxtaposed with text and graphic information that includes brief introductions to the artists and their work associated with charts, images, and scientific data. This second alternative reading offers an in-depth view of the physical phenomena and environmental processes evoked or explicitly addressed by the artists and related to different periods of human history (from the Little Ice Age from the 16th to the 19th century to the future of Venice in the late 21st century) and to distant geographic areas and cultures (from the desertification and expansion of the Sahara to the impact of the retreat of Arctic ice on the lives of the Inuit).

A series of "research stations" brings together more than five hundred books, scientific publications, and articles, as well as a selection of video materials and interviews with scholars and activists. These materials will enable the public to freely consult the various bibliographic sources of the extensive research behind this project and to delve deeper into the scientific and cultural issues addressed by the exhibition.