Fashion exhibition: Venice bound? Visit this new exhibition displaying the works of Cecil Beaton, Helmut Newton and more

Next spring, images spanning the worlds of fashion, art, politics, sports, and design over seven decades will go on display in Venice, as the Pinault Collection mounts a fashion exhibition of photographs and illustrations from the Condé Nast archives—the first of its kind. Titled “Chronorama: Photographic Treasures of the 20th Century,” the show is set to run from March 12, 2023 until the following January at the stately Palazzo Grassi, François Pinault’s art museum and theater on the Grand Canal. 

Made up of more than 400 masterworks published between 1910 and 1979, the “Chronorama” fashion exhibition gathers the imagery from Vogue, Vanity Fair, House & Garden, Glamour, GQ, and other Condé Nast-owned titles that helped to define the look, feel, and tastes of the 20th century—to say nothing of capturing many of that period’s most famous and influential figures. Among the artists included are Cecil Beaton, Edward Steichen, Lee Miller, Horst P. Horst, Diane Arbus, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Eduardo Garcia Benito, Helen Dryden, and George Wolfe Plank, while the subjects range from models to actors, musicians, writers, painters, socialites, athletes, and beyond. 

To accompany that rich vein of archival imagery, Matthieu Humery, the Pinault Collection’s photography consultant, has also arranged “Chronorama Redux,” a project that tasks four contemporary artists—Tarrah Krajnak of Peru, Giulia Andreani of Italy, Daniel Spivakov of Ukraine, and Eric N. Mack of the United States—to create new works inspired by the old. The results will be installed at four sites throughout the palazzo, forcing a break in the chronology to create a dialogue across space and medium. History meets the future in this innovative arrangement.