articles/Can Venice be saved

Can Venice be saved?

Anna Somers Cocks to discuss the biggest threats to the city at World Monument Fund lecture in New York

By The Art Newspaper. Web only
Published online: 01 February 2013

Anna Somers Cocks

Anna Somers Cocks, the chief executive of The Art Newspaper and chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund from 1999 to 2012, is giving the World Monument Fund’s Paul Mellon Lecture at 7pm in the Morgan Library, New York, on 12 February. Her topic is “Can Venice be saved?” and she will be talking about the implications of sea level rise, the vast cruise ships that sail through the city ever more frequently, the growing crowds of visitors and the absence of any coherent plan to tackle these issues.

Every year, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) holds a Paul Mellon Lecture thanks to the generosity of his Estate. This event features prominent art historians and heritage professionals describing treasured sites that have been the focus of the WMF’s activities in the field or strategic issues such as this year’s topic. Recent lectures have included Charles Dempsey on the Carracci ceiling in the Farnese Palace in Rome, Kent Weeks on the great discoveries in recent decades in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt and the tremendous conservation challenges to protect these sites as pressure to accommodate more tourists mounts, and Jonathan Foyle on the history and conservation of Stowe House in the UK.

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Comments

4 Feb 13
15:8 CET

AUGUSTUS FIRESTONE, BRISBANE

Over the years I have seen great success in allowing artists to use old building that either need to be restored or repaired. The greatest problem is finding money to restore these beautiful monuments and buildings to their original glory. The longer they are left to decay and be forgotten the greater the cost in the future. Venice is in a terrible cultural state of clutching on to old glories while it disintegrates around them. Venice is often talked about as a dying city and could do with a "call out to artists" to populate Venice and reinvigorate the arts and the art lovers.

4 Feb 13
15:5 CET

JOHN BRANDLER, BRENTWOOD

Venice MUST be saved for its amazing integrity. It was the worlds first theme park - ok the theme was sex - but a fantastic achieveent to build a city on wooden piles. Does the world want to preserve the Trump Tower or The Shard ? - I hope not - but Venice is a gem. a delight to the sences. Showing humans are more than cave dwellers happy to live in anything if so long as they make money . Make the Bankers pay to preserve Venice !

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Comments

Venice MUST be saved for its amazing integrity. It was the worlds first theme park - ok the theme was sex - but a fantastic achieveent to build a...

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