VENICE — We met Lorenzo Marsili, director of the Berggruen Institute Europe, inside Casa dei Tre Oci on the Giudecca, the 1911 artist’s studio that now serves as the Institute’s European home. He told us Venice was chosen precisely because it is no nation’s capital, a universal city that frees the Institute from being read as German, French or Italian. The Berggruen Institute, founded in Los Angeles in 2010 by Nicholas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels, now runs three Venetian buildings and hosts thinkers from Carlo Rovelli and Giorgio Agamben to Slavoj Žižek and Peter Sloterdijk, publishing their conversations as books. Marsili, who co-founded DiEM25 with Žižek and lives between Venice, Berlin and Palermo, also flagged two unmissable spring shows, a Joseph Kosuth solo at Casa dei Tre Oci and a Hans Ulrich Obrist-curated exhibition on protocol art at Palazzo Diedo.