I am writing this on Friday, the last official day of the Venice program, from the David Rosand library. I think this is a fitting place from which to be posting for the last time since Rosand embodies everything that I have grown to love so much in the past few weeks.
He was an art historian and dedicated his life to the conservation of Venice; when he died in 2014, his entire collection of art books was brought to the offices of Save Venice, an conservation organization that he headed which does most of the major restorations of Venetian art. The library is warm and inviting, and as I do research on Tintoretto’s Crucifixion for my final paper, I feel so lucky to be able to read Rosand’s margin notes.
In addition to his scholarship and conservation work, Rosand was a professor at Columbia. He was actually the thesis advisor of the two Art in Venice professors here, Carolina Wamsler and Johanna Fassl, and they talk about what a phenomenal, dedicated teacher he was!
I think that all the teachers here, and how genuinely wonderful learning from them has been, is one of the many things that makes saying goodbye so hard. I can’t believe that I got to spend the past six weeks exploring Venice with a fantastic teacher and a tiny group of 7 other students (equally passionate about the subject material and now really good friends)!
I am sad that the program is ending, but in that ever-cliched way, so I’m happy it happened!!
I still haven’t processed this experience enough to know how it will impact my life but I imagine in a very profound way. I want to incorporate art history into my major, continue studying Italian, and hopefully live in Italy at some point in the future! I want to learn about conservation/restoration and its cultural/political implications. I also want to continue to look at things the way I learned how to here. I think that studying art history is as much about learning to look as it is learning about art. At the beginning of most Art in Venice classes we were told to “take an inventory” of the building or painting or sculpture we were studying. That meant standing for 10-15 minutes and trying to really see what was in front of us. During exams Carolina told that the answer was always in front of us; in the paintings projected on the screen. I love the idea that finding answers really means learning how to look for them.
I believe one of the ways to pay this experience forward is to share what I learned in Venice and to transmit my love of this city to others. I am going to begin that in a very small way when my mom and sister arrive tomorrow! I can’t wait to show them everything!
As I said, I’m not yet sure how this experience will effect me but I do know Venice has given me a lot to think about. Though it is a magical art-filled city, the amount of casual racism and nativism I’ve witnessed here has been staggering. Just because Venice is a living museum, it isn’t exempt from Italy’s broader socio-political moment. I want to better understand how a country ravaged by fascism in the not distant past now has a borderline fascist government. And I want to understand how the hordes of international tourists who stream through Venice contribute to this mentality. Maybe I can contribute to efforts to change this mindset because Italy can’t survive without the diverse population that a globalized world implies. Venice proves that — its tiny population of 50,000 is shrinking practically daily and the antiquated idea of who gets to be Italian, in addition to being racist, is incompatible with the modern European economy. In addition, Venice is a physical representation of the environmental calamities of the 21st century. Maybe there is a way that I could participate in efforts to ameliorate that in the future.
Essentially what I learned from being here, is another cliche: everything is connected. You can’t separate Venice today from its history or its inhabitants or its environment or its politics or its art or its future.
I know that this isn’t the end of my relationship with Venice and I can’t wait to see what happens next!
There were so many pictures I could have posted but I decided to go with a picture of San Giorgio Majore. I pass this church (by visionary architect Andrea Palladio!) on the vaporetto every single morning and evening and its spectacular beauty has never failed to stun me.
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