Venetian Detours: What New York’s Art Crowd Is Chasing in Italy This Summer

On a humid Friday morning in July, the departures board at JFK flickers with flights to London, Paris, and—this week’s darling—Venice. While most New Yorkers are angling for a sliver of Montauk sand, a different city beckons the art world’s insiders: Venice, where the labyrinthine alleys and sun-bleached palazzos host a summer’s worth of secrets for those who know where to look.

Jason Farago, a Brooklyn native and one of the city’s sharpest art critics, touched down in Venice last weekend and has been charting a route through less-trodden corners—places that ripple through New York’s gallery circles as quietly essential. Forget the selfie-thronged Rialto Bridge. Farago’s picks run from a centuries-old printmaker’s workshop tucked behind Campo Santa Maria Formosa, to a minimalist contemporary space in Dorsoduro where Manhattan curators swap rumors over Campari spritzes.

The influence runs both ways. At the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the canals pulse with the ghosts of New York’s own avant-garde—Jackson Pollock’s drips, Lee Krasner’s ruptures—while local Venetian artists, newly in vogue, are cropping up in SoHo showrooms this season. One Lower East Side gallerist, sipping espresso at Caffè Florian, noted, “You see who’s here this week, and you know what’s going to be in Chelsea by September.”

Venice’s art venues are more than destinations; they’re a glimpse into the future rhythms of New York’s scene. As the city sags under July’s heat, the cultural vanguard has decamped for the lagoon. But their finds—a 17th-century fresco, a neon-lit installation in a crumbling warehouse—will surface in Manhattan’s conversation before summer’s end. For those stuck stateside, consider this your preview of what’s soon to hang on the city’s walls.