Terre Arti

At the Museo Correr you see a collection of art and objects donated to the city up to the 1800s. At one point, you enter a library lined with walnut bookcases and books and documents, originally from the Pisani Family palace at San Vidal, and (for me) featuring two large free standing globes, dating (I’m guessing) from the 17th century, or before. Maps show a lot of the way we, our cultures, view the world. The globes take my attention and I notice that one of them has the words ‘Terre Arti’ on one side, tipped down towards the floor. This immediately captures my attention. Is this an accidental conjunction fortuitously resulting from the fixed nature of the object in this setting? This is not ‘Terra Firma’ or ‘Terra Incognita,’ although, surely, 'Terre Arti' can be both of these. This is a location of lands for the arts, and where it is, I can’t quite tell. Ruminating on this, I decide that this ‘Terre Arti’ is a land of our own making, with its coastlines and nearby mountains. It’s a place where the arts make a landing, make themselves substantial while tucked into coves and crannies, bordered by ebbs and flows. Disillusionment comes easy in Venice. Going upstairs to the picture gallery I walk past icons and painted masterpieces looking worse for wear. A conservator would shake their head at the tape so obviously stuck over the unstable parts of numerous works. I guess in Venice, there is so much history, and so much decay, you just cannot conserve everything that might deserve it. Even the imperial rooms, through which you enter the museum ‘proper’ are, for an enthusiast, on the verge of unpresentable, and the word that comes to my mind is ‘boredom’ as I think of living in these rooms. And yet, you can’t write things off so quickly. Terre Arti always beckons.