Today we had our wonderful private visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Since my first visit to the place in the late 1960's, when Peggy was very much alive, to when I visited as a student a year before her death until this morning, where we were greeted by Karole Vail, Peggy's grand daughter and the new, fabulous, dynamic director with a great history of working as a researcher, writer and curator, it has always been such a pleasure. It is such a privilege to be invited in for a visit without having to bother the public...the collection is a small series of rooms, and to have 28 students in there on top of the masses of public visitors would be pretty intolerable for everyone (The PGC is Venice's second-most visited destination after the Basilica of San Marco - where we visit privately!)
The brilliant Louisa Buck took half of the group around as numbers are slightly covid-restricted, and I gave the rest some of my usual waffle.
I left them to browse the collection and went to met up with a friend in San Marco. Whilst I waited for him I used my FAI membership (Italian version of National Trust) to take a restful half hour in the old Olivetti showroom that is a total GEM of design by Venice's genius of 20th century architecture, Carlo Scarpa. You can see his Japanese influence in his design
On Sunday I had gone to watch poor Venezia FC get hammered by Sassuolo...but it's all very pretty and as a Chelsea fan I don't really get all that upset!
