Venice’s Biennale week gained a new destination on Thursday as Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo inaugurated San Giacomo, a former island outpost in the Northern Lagoon that is now the latest exhibition site for her foundation. The project extends the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation’s footprint beyond Turin and into one of the city’s most closely watched cultural moments, with exhibitions, performances, and residencies planned for the site.
Re Rebaudengo acquired the island in 2018 from a private banking company. Since then, she and her husband, Agostino Re Rebaudengo, president of Asja Energy, have developed it as what the foundation describes as a circular ecosystem. The island sits about a 20-minute boat ride from the Giardini, where Koyo Kouoh’s Biennale exhibition opens to the public on Saturday, and Venice’s ACTV Line 12 now includes an on-request stop on the Murano-Burano route.
San Giacomo will open gradually, with access initially limited to exhibition openings tied to future Biennale editions and to guided tours by reservation. That slower rhythm suits a site whose history stretches back a millennium: it began as a monastery and resting place for pilgrims, later housed Cistercian nuns, served as a quarantine site, and then became home to Franciscan friars. Under Napoleon, the monastery was demolished and the island was converted into a military outpost. Abandoned in 1961, it was left to brambles, collapse, and the slow return of nature.
Two Napoleonic-era powder magazines now anchor the new venue. One hosts “Don’t have hope, be hope!,” a group exhibition drawn from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection. The other presents “Fanfare/Lament,” a solo exhibition by British artist Matt Copson (b. 1992), curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director at London’s Serpentine Galleries. Copson’s installation includes handcrafted kites on the roof, a score by British composer Oliver Leith, and a darkened interior animated by blue laser drawings on phosphorescent walls.
The grounds also feature permanent installations by Claire Fontaine, Mario Garcia Torres, Hugh Hayden, Goshka Macuga, Pamela Rosenkranz, and Thomas Schütte. Among the most striking is Hayden’s “Huff and a Puff” (2026), a chapel-like structure that seats about 10 people, and Macuga’s “GONOGO” (2023), a polished metal rocket on a blue launch pad. In Venice, where the Biennale often rewards speed and spectacle, San Giacomo offers something more measured: a place for art to unfold at the pace of the lagoon.
