Seeking Solitude in Venice, by Michael Miller

The Piazza San Marco with Softcore Billboard. Photo Michael Miller 2010.

It's been some years since I've been in Venice, and I found the state of the Piazza S. Marco disturbing. I was appalled by the huge ads for clothing and champagne which dominated both the Piazza and the Piazzetta — now the subject of a formal protest published in the Art Newspaper ("Ads of Sighs,") The Art Newspaper,

 Friday, October 8, 2010), to which the mayor of Venice, Giorgio Orsoni, has given a reply worthy of Glen Beck: "If people want to see the building they should go home and look at a picture of it in a book." Shame! The Accademia is also encased in one of these ads. The more I saw of them the more detestable I found them. And they only bring in "€40,000 a month for three years to cover part of Doge’s Palace overlooking the lagoon and connecting with the Bridge of Sighs—less than two pages of advertising in a daily paper."
Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller