VENICE—The Biennale isn’t the only major art event transfixing Venice this month. Coinciding with that international spectacle is "Mapping the Studio," which opens June 6 and showcases selections from the François Pinault collection. For the exhibition, co-curators Alison Gingeras and Francesco Bonami chose 300 works by 50 talents, many of whom — including Robert Gober, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons and Cady Noland — the French tycoon has acquired in depth. The show reveals how "direct encounters with the artists in their own environments is crucial to the way Pinault thinks about art," Gingeras says. Pieces are installed at the Palazzo Grassi as well as in the Tadao Ando-restored 17th-century customs house, Punta della Dogana, which opens this month after a $26 million restoration. Charles Ray’s commissioned sculpture of a boy holding a frog, installed at the triangular point of this gleaming marble edifice, beckons viewers to the site.

"Venetian Canvas" originally appeared in the June 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2009 Table of Contents.