Moby Dick – The Whale: From Myth to Modernity

Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick has always been more than a novel; it’s a vast ocean of myth, obsession, and human struggle. This fall, the Palazzo Ducale transforms its monumental halls into a voyage through that world with Moby Dick – The Whale. The Story of a Myth from Antiquity to Contemporary Art.

The exhibition co-curated by TBA21 and Palazzo Ducale casts its net wide: from ancient depictions of Jonah and the whale to contemporary installations, from whaling relics to cutting-edge design. Visitors will encounter artworks, artifacts, and multimedia pieces that echo the novel’s themes: revenge, destiny, nature, and the eternal pull of the sea.

Sections trace the obsessions of Captain Ahab and his crew: the whiteness of the whale, the sound of whales, the butchering, the stars at night. Along the way, the show invites us to reflect on urgent issues, our fraught relationship with the environment, the history of exploration, and the myths that shape our imagination.

The journey is enriched by a program of talks, workshops, and guided tours, designed in partnership with Ocean Space (TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Literacy Hub in Venice) to engage both scholars and families.

Featured artists include John Akomfrah, Wu Tsang, Joan Jonas, Roberto Cuoghi, Claudia Losi, and many others, who bring Melville’s leviathan into dialogue with contemporary culture. "The contemporary artworks included in Moby Dick – The Whale exhibition aim not merely to represent the ocean and its beings but rather to think with it. Their practices are less about showing marine life and more about learning with it and embodying its resistance to full comprehension. This shift marks a crucial episte-mological turn: the ocean is no longer just subject matter but collaborator and archive," explains Marina Avia Estrada, Director of exhibitions and public programs at TBA21 and co-curator of the exhibition.

Far from being just a tribute to a literary masterpiece, Moby Dick – The Whale becomes a cultural voyage—part art, part history, part myth—that speaks powerfully to our own turbulent age.

If Melville’s Ishmael ends with the haunting line, “And I alone have escaped to tell thee,” this exhibition invites us to imagine another course: not solitary survival, but collective transformation—where art becomes the vessel, the whale our guide, and the ocean the living commons we are called upon to protect together, concludes Markus Reymann, Co-Director TBA21