"The Only True Protest is Beauty", the first book by Fondazione Dries Van Noten

Fondazione Dries Van Noten’s first Presentation becomes a book. The Only True Protest is Beauty, published by Marsilio Arte, is the Foundation’s first editorial project and was conceived in dialogue with its inaugural exhibition, on view at Palazzo Pisani Moretta in Venice until 4 October 2026. Rather than simply documenting the exhibition, the volume expands on its ideas, placing craft as a contemporary cultural practice at its core and exploring the increasingly fluid boundaries between art, design, fashion and other creative disciplines. Materials, gestures, time and care become a way of looking at making and at its ability to create connections between people, cultures, communities and generations.



The editorial project was designed by Sebastiano Girardi Studio, which also created the visual identity of the Foundation and its first Presentation. Commissioned essays, extensive visual documentation and insights into the works, artists and their creative processes unfold throughout the book. Typography, image sequencing, rhythm and the material qualities of the volume itself also contribute to shaping its narrative.
Three essays open the publication and establish its conceptual framework. Design historian, curator and writer Glenn Adamson revisits John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice, drawing a connection between the nineteenth-century understanding of craft and the Foundation’s contemporary vision of making as a dynamic cultural force. Venice is not simply the setting for this reflection, but its intellectual starting point. Fashion journalist, author and critic Alexander Fury examines the connections between fashion, craft, identity, memory and artistic expression, considering fashion as a cultural practice capable of moving across different disciplines while remaining deeply rooted in the act of making. Writer and curator Ezra Babski, meanwhile, reflects on the increasingly porous boundaries between art, craft and design. His contribution proposes a more open understanding of making, based on dialogue, hybridity and exchange rather than on the need for rigid classifications.



Palazzo Pisani Moretta also becomes part of the book. The architecture, decoration and layered history of the building on the Grand Canal are woven into the narrative, reinforcing the dialogue between memory and the contemporary that runs through the Foundation’s project. The volume therefore also captures a specific moment in the Palazzo’s history: one that precedes both the conclusion of the first Presentation and the restoration work that will accompany the next chapter in the evolution of Fondazione Dries Van Noten.