Grassi Palace — Attraction in Venice

If you have any interest in contemporary art, this should be the first place you check out. We’ve seen wonderful shows at this location of the Pinault Foundation Collection every time we are in town. It’s a stunningly restored grand building directly on the Grand Canal. Most names will be known to those who follow contemporary art but even if you’ve not heard of the artist/s exhibiting, a visit can still be very rewarding. At time of writing a large retrospective of Julie Mehretu is happening- she’s an Ethiopian-born US raised and educated multi-disciplinary artist. Her enormous pieces are very layered complex and playful. A past show of Luc Tuymans is still in our top ten best retrospectives we’ve ever seen. Don’t leave without finding the little animatronic mouse who has a whole lot to say and is smarter than your average mouse. He lives in a corner of the ground floor ( and there’s one at the other Pinault foundation location Punta Della Dogsna ) the top of Dorsoduro too. There is a cafe restaurant up a level from the ground floor with stellar views over the canal to a beautiful old palazzo called Ca Rezzonico opposite. Expect yo pay around €15-20 for entry, or buy a yearly membership which gets you into the other location, as well as shows in Paris, as well as newsletters, invitations...

Another beautiful modern art gallery from Francois Pinault. Buy a ticket for one and you can visit the other for free for a year. This is a beautiful space! A Venetian palazzo full of great art. I was here for Youssef Nabil and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Nabil has a great ethic, to capture the erotic power of Egypt. A video of 28 minutes of every kiss in Egyptian cinema is a flying start. There are stills of the goddesses of cinema: Deneuve, Ardant and Rosselini in an Egyptian style and possibly the best is "I saved a belly dancer", 12 minutes of Selma Hayek belly dancing. That's the top floor. Then you have a floor of cleverly curated Cartier-Bresson. The highlight here was Wim Wenders film. He filmed himself ruminating over Bresson's - quite hypnotic. And facilities are nice. Ground floor toilets. Cafe on the mezzanine and...

My wife and I had visited Palazzo Grassi twice before, and were looking forward to the Tatiana Trouve exhibition. Unfortunately the security guards ruined our visit. The day we visited was very quiet…perfect for viewing art. Upon entering the first gallery, a security guard appeared and stared at us…and I mean stared!!! Every time we moved to a new gallery space, the guard and her squeaky shoes followed…and stared at us. This quickly became uncomfortable and extremely annoying. We proceeded to the second floor and another guard started the same treatment. I asked her why she was stalking us, and she went into a verbal tirade repeating over and over that she was just doing job. We will never return to this institution!!! The next day we went to the Grassi’s sister museum, Punta della Dogna, and everything there...