Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal, is an unfinished palace and worth a visit even if you think modern art is just a load of Jackson Pollocks. The museum first opened to the public in 1951 and Peggy Guggenheim lived here for 30 years.
Not only is the building itself architecturally interesting, but there is also the Nasher Sculpture Garden as well as other temporary exhibitions. We were lucky to catch the exhibition Jackson Pollock’s Mural: Energy Made Visible which runs until November 16 and which focuses on Jackson Pollock’s ‘Mural’, but the permanent collection includes works by Kandinsky, Dali and Picasso to name a but a few!
After our visit we returned through the back streets of Venice, our son is interested in street art – Grafitti as Art? He wanted to get photos of interesting examples for his own blog so we followed him around as he took some snaps!
As we meandered along we came across a couple of other interesting art installations, one of which really appealed to us. Conversion. Recycle Group which runs until 22 November, is a project that relates the life of modern man and his need for gadgets, data transmission speed and constant data refreshing and compares it to a kind of new ‘religion’, set within a backdrop of the ancient church was very thought provoking – especially the huge Facebook crucifix and bas-relief apostles who appear to be worshiping their media!
Finally I wanted to take my son to the coolest bookshop in the world, which I had first stumbled on when I was Lost in Venice last year! Libreria Acqua Alta is literally piled high with books old and new, crammed into old boats and bath tubs and with a unique staircase built from books leading up to a view of the canal. You could spend quite a while here taking photos and enjoying the quirky charm!