FITZ & CO and Contxt have launched Contxt Venice, a new conversational intelligence platform designed to help visitors navigate the vast landscape of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia — and the hundreds of exhibitions unfolding across Venice alongside it.
Timed to coincide with the 2026 edition of the Venice Biennale 2026, the browser-based platform spans more than 900 artists across 190+ exhibitions, offering a mobile-first experience that allows users to build their own Biennale journey in real time — no app download required.
Rather than simply functioning as a map, Contxt Venice operates as a conceptual guide, helping visitors move through Venice according to themes, ideas and artistic connections rather than geography alone. Users can search exhibitions by artist, venue or location, but more significantly by the concepts linking them — whether that’s ecology, surveillance, ritual, mythology, technology or authorship.
In a city where the scale of the Biennale can often feel exhilarating but overwhelming, the platform aims to create a more intuitive way of experiencing Venice’s sprawling cultural programme.
A key feature is a curated layer developed by FITZ & CO, led by founder and CEO Sara Fitzmaurice. Drawing on more than three decades of international art world experience, Fitzmaurice’s editorial selections organise Venice into thematic pathways including Art and Technology, Regional Spotlight: Asia, and FITZ Founder Favorites — offering visitors alternative routes through the Biennale beyond institutional or national structures.
These curated strands spotlight artists and exhibitions exploring urgent contemporary questions around digital systems, ecological thinking, performance, mythology and political infrastructures — effectively turning Venice into a city-wide network of interconnected ideas.
As Fitzmaurice explains:
“The Biennale has always required a way of thinking as much as a way of navigating. With Contxt Venice, we’ve co-created a structure that allows visitors to move through Venice conceptually and physically, connecting exhibitions through ideas rather than proximity alone.”
For Lukas Amacher, founder of Contxt, Venice offered the perfect testing ground for the platform’s ambitions:
“Venice has more context than any one visitor can hold at once. Contxt Venice allows you to follow a line of thought across the city, connecting works, exhibitions, and ideas in a way that feels intuitive and open-ended.”
At a moment when audiences increasingly engage with art through both physical and digital frameworks, Contxt Venice feels less like a guidebook and more like a new curatorial tool — one that could fundamentally change how large-scale art events are experienced.
Contxt Venice is live now ahead of the Venice Biennale 2026: contxt.art/venice
About
Contxt builds conversational intelligence for art and culture internationally. It scales curatorial voices and helps audiences connect the dots between artists, artworks, movements, and ideas. Designed as a mobile-first, browser-based experience, Contxt surfaces important background on artists, artworks, and curatorial concepts. It enables a more connected, self-directed way of engaging with art across global institutions and formats. contxt.art
