ABOUT
The Archive
Located on the island of Giudecca, in what was originally the artist’s studio, the Foundation houses the De Santillana Archive, created in its first years of activity and still growing. The archive, both physical and digital, is open by appointment to scholars, curators and researchers.
What it holds
From the 2025 inventory: about 150 boxes, folders and rolls, close to a cubic metre of boxed material. The archive is still growing as material is found and ordered.
34
boxes and folders of documentation
47
boxes and folders of photographs: albums, prints, slides, negatives, Polaroids
28
large drawings, flat or rolled
15
furnace books
14
boxes of magazines, press cuttings and catalogues
12
boxes and folders of notebooks, textiles, prototypes and other objects
Documents online
Forty-seven documents from the Bindu chapter of The Archive Capsule: notes and sketches, photographs, printed matter, letters and interviews.
The digital archive
Alongside the paper and the objects, the digital archive brings together what Laura de Santillana kept on her computers and in her mail, and what the Foundation has scanned since 2021. Selected documents are published online, one exhibition chapter at a time.
100,000+
emails, 2002–2019, from her two accounts
50,000+
digital images of works, exhibitions and the studio
6,900
negatives, slides and prints scanned in 2021–22
5,000+
digital documents: texts, inventories, exhibition files
How we use AI
We use AI tools for the slow first passes of archival work: reading book spines and labels from photographs, drafting first catalogue entries and captions, searching across large sets of documents to date and connect them, and drafting English and Italian versions of texts.
What the tools produce is a draft. The team checks it against the original before it enters the catalogue or goes online.
The Glass Library
About 400 books on glass, Venice, architecture and design from Laura de Santillana’s library are kept at the Foundation and are being catalogued.
Visit the archive
The archive is open by appointment to scholars, curators and researchers. Write to us with your subject and the dates you would like to come.
Fondamenta S. Biagio 800Q, Giudecca, 30133 Venezia