Frist Art Museum to Present VENICE AND THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

The Frist Art Museum to present Venice and the Ottoman Empire, an exhibition that explores the artistic and cultural exchange between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire over four centuries. Organized by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and The Museum Box, the exhibition will be on view in the Frist’s Ingram Gallery from May 31 through September 1, 2025.

This ambitious cross-cultural exhibition examines the complex links between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire from 1400 to 1800 in artistic, culinary, diplomatic, economic, political, and technological spheres. “The relationship between Venice and the Ottomans represents a fascinating and multifaceted chapter in the history of Mediterranean geopolitics, one marked by a blend of cooperation and conflict, handshake- and arms-length approaches, diplomacy and back-stabbing, understanding and misunderstanding,” writes exhibition curator Stefano Carboni in the exhibition catalogue.

Featuring a richly diverse selection of more than 150 works of art in a broad range of media, including ceramics, glass, metalwork, paintings, prints, and textiles, the exhibition draws from the vast collections of seven of Venice’s renowned museums. The creative contributions of well-known Venetian artists such as Gentile Bellini, Vittore Carpaccio, and Cesare Vecellio are showcased alongside works created by the best anonymous craftspeople both in Venice and the Ottoman Empire. The Venetian loans are joined by a trove of recently salvaged objects from a major 16th-century Adriatic shipwreck of a large Venetian merchant vessel that have never been exhibited outside Croatia. A gallery dedicated to Mariano Fortuny’s Venetian- and Ottoman-inspired fashions and decorative arts created in the early 20th century brings the exhibition to a spectacular conclusion.

“Venice stood at the crossroads of a vast trade network connecting Africa, Asia, and Europe,” writes Frist Art Museum Curator at Large Trinita Kennedy. “To maintain its status as an international emporium, with markets full of ceramics, metalwork, spices, textiles, and other goods, Venice acquired overseas territories to its east and cultivated close ties with the Ottomans, whose empire became the wealthiest and most powerful in the Eastern Mediterranean after their conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and widespread expansion in the 16th century.”

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