Three amazing museums, buying art and trickery

Our last day full day in Venice was spent separately, with Alex museumed out me itching to see more. I started early, taking a short walk to the Jewish ghetto area of Venice, close to our home base. I learned that over the course of WW2, over 200 Venetian Jewish people were taken away to camps and only eight returned after the war. The memorials in the ghetto were beautiful and somber. As I walked the square, three boys were playing, running across the square in glee, adding a welcome sound of innocence and joy. The Jewish Museum had intense security, more than any other place I'd been to on the trip so far. All items went through a scanner and each person was searched with a wand metal detector. I toured the exhibits on my own, reading about life in the ghetto pre and post war and seeing beautiful artifacts from many different time periods.

Afterwards, I went on yet another pharmacy hunt to secure more supplies for the endless cough and sore throat. I found one and as I headed towards it, I saw this tiny printmaker's shop with excellent art in the window, so after buying my lozenges, I headed back there, waited until the propieter showed up, and enjoyed an excellent art buying experience. She had many prints with Venetian themes, but not the over-the-top stuff sold on the streets. Her work was quiet and lovely and small, perfect for traveling with and perfect for our tiny home. I bout three items, so glad that I happened across her little shop.

Back at the flat, Alex and I enjoyed our standard breakfast of bread and cheese and prosciutto (Alex). I'm really going to miss the bakery and meat/cheese shop near our home. I've gotten to know the shopkeepers during the past week and can imagine living as a European, getting fresh food every day instead of going on huge grocery shopping trips.

More museuming was next on my list and the first stop had to be Peggy Guggenheim's home on the grand canal. She was a strong presence in Venice, influencing modern art and encouraging artists to come to the floating city. Her home is now a museum, filled with her collection of art and some of furniture and personal items. She is buried there along with the pets she had while living in the house. It's easy to imagine the life she lived while wandering the rooms of her home. I had lunch after a long visit, lingering in Peggy's garden and thinking about making art.

Next stop was a current artist's exhibit. Damien Hirst's 'Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable' was just that - unbelievable. Hirst filled two entire museums with artifacts from a shipwreck, from huge statues to tiny relics like earrings. There were hundreds of items, all jaw dropping and surreal and beautiful and strange. Of course, there never was a ship called the Unbelievable and all of the relics were created by Hirst, but still, he had photos of them being excavated from the ocean floor and restorations made alongside the 'originals'. If one had no idea that this was a current artist, it's possible to believe that the exhibit was a real catalog of recovered items. Well almost. He gives little signs that it's not real along the way, and the pieces are too similar and beautiful to have been in the ocean for 2000 years, and at the end, one of the relics is a replica of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse, in case you hadn't caught on earlier. It was some of the best art I've seen in a long time. Hirst wins the art game.

I took my vaporetto home (by the way, I've now seen a 2 line and heard rumors of a 3 line existing... there's more complexity to the lines than I previously thought, of course) and spent a lovely 35 minutes contemplating the merits of just staying on the boat for a couple of hours instead of going back to the flat, In the end I got off, mainly because it was rush hour and no time for a pleasure cruise.

Alex and I laid low in the evening, not even going out for dinner. I nursed the cough that mostly took a day off yesterday but is back today, though not as bossy. Alex read more books. I think he's has about 10 going at the same time right now. Don't know how he does it.