Marina Abramović will celebrate her 80th birthday with a career-spanning exhibition titled "Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy" at the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice from May 6 to October 19, 2026, coinciding with the 61st Venice Biennale. The show, previously staged at the Modern Art Museum in Shanghai in fall 2024, features 150 works including furniture-sculpture hybrids made from quartz, amethyst, and tourmaline. Abramović's "transitory objects" will be installed throughout the 14th-century building alongside the museum's permanent collection of Renaissance masterpieces by Titian, Tintoretto, Giorgione, and Mantegna, with a notable pairing of her 1983 photograph *Pietà (with Ulay)* and Titian's *Pietà* (1575–76).
This exhibition matters because it marks the first time a contemporary artist's work will be in direct dialogue with the Accademia's renowned Renaissance collection, bridging centuries of artistic practice. For Abramović, the show represents a homecoming of sorts—she first visited the Venice Biennale with her mother in 1960 and received the Golden Lion there in 1997. The timing during the Venice Biennale, one of the world's most prestigious art events, ensures global attention and underscores Abramović's enduring influence as a pioneering performance artist entering her ninth decade.