Vestigia
Vestigia presents contemporary art and research-led design through curated exhibitions, bringing completed works into view together with the questions, materials, skills, places and relationships from which they emerge.
Perspective
A work can enter a collection without being reduced to the category of collectible. The market may be part of an object’s life, but it is not its full meaning.
Vestigia looks beyond rarity and price to the knowledge condensed in a work: the tests that preceded it, the resistance of a material, the intelligence of a hand, the choices made with a workshop, and the cultural and physical conditions in which an idea took form.
The object is not treated as the end of the story, but as a visible trace of a longer process.
Context
Every work is encountered somewhere. For Vestigia, that context is not a neutral frame.
Tuscany is more than scenery. It is a working field of materials, workshops, production histories, skills and relationships. Architecture, landscape and local knowledge do not simply surround the works; they help reveal how the works can be read. A visitor’s movement, changing light, weather and scale are part of that encounter too.
Villa Marie has hosted Vestigia’s first two editions. Its architecture, cultivated grounds, water and daily life create the conditions in which the exhibitions are experienced. Vestigia develops, curates and presents each edition; Villa Marie welcomes it into a lived place.
2025 — 2026
Each Vestigia edition begins with a curatorial question. The first two exhibitions moved from placing design in a lived setting to examining the research and production choices carried by a work.
2025
Curated by Jonathan Bocca, Vestigia’s first public project explored the relationship between objects, people and a lived setting. It approached works as the result of material, care, time and place.
Explore the 2025 edition ↗2026
Curated by Cosimo Bonciani, the second edition developed that inquiry through research design, asking what becomes visible when an object is read beyond category or ownership.
Explore the 2026 edition ↗Method
At Vestigia, art is not presented in isolation. We bring artists, designers and studios into conversation with collectors, curators, critics, art lovers and those discovering a practice for the first time. Through carefully composed exhibitions at Villa Marie, each work is encountered in relation to the ideas, materials and processes that shaped it.
These encounters create room to look closely, exchange perspectives and build lasting connections between artists, their work and the people who engage with it. When a work is available for acquisition, Vestigia guides the enquiry personally and with care.
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