Amerigo Vespucci in Venice

The Amerigo Vespucci is a tall ship of the Marina Militare, named after the explorer Amerigo Vespucci. Its home port is Livorno, Italy, and it is in use as a school ship

ELLIOTT ERWITT: "Personal Best"

After the MEP in Paris, the Reina Sofia in Madrid and the ICP in New York, this anthological show, a tribute to the extraordinary career of the photoreporter, a member of the historic Magnum agency since 1953, arrives in Venice in the splendid early 20th century Venetian dwelling, now open again following protracted restoration. Around 140 photographs, witnessing a long career and the past six decades of history of our world and contemporary civilization, are on display in a selection under the direct curatorship of their author.

Few pictures on my archive are here and on Getty Images are here

Place	CASA DEI TRE OCI
Address	Giudecca 43
Boat stop	Linea 2 Actv Zitelle
Times	Opening hours: 10am - 7pm. Saturday 10am - 10pm.

Venice Biennale head ousted

If the Venice Biennale art exhibition now runs like a normal international event, with adequate toilets, refreshment points, marketing, press facilities and ticketing, and also manages to cover nearly 80% of its costs, it is almost entirely due to former banker Paolo Baratta, 72, chairman of the Biennale Foundation from 1998 to 2000, and from 2007 to last week.

Yesterday Baratta heard that his mandate would not be renewed and his successor would be a foodstuffs importer, Giulio Malgara, 73

I strongly believe it is the wrong choice...possibly the worst choice to be correct.

This appointment, which is reminiscent of the years before 1998 when the post was a prize allocated on the basis of party politics, was greeted with indignation by the mayor of Venice, Giorgio Orsoni, who immediately put out a statement saying: “I am convinced that Giulio Malgara is an unsuitable person to carry out the role of chairman of the Venice Biennale and that it would be a mistake to confirm him in this position. It would interrupt a vital and fruitful process that needs to be seen through to the end.” Former mayor Massimo Cacciari said: “As long as cultural appointments in this rotten system are in the hands of the political lobbies, it will go on being like this.”

The Guardian alredy commente: "Back to Earth, or Venice, with a bump. Silvio Berlusconi is trying to replace Paolo Baratta, head of the Venice Biennale, with his friend Giulio Malgara, a 73-year-old businessman whose greatest cultural achievement to date is bringing Gatorade to Italy."

Just Numbers......

$1.2 trillion: How much Americans spend annually on goods and services they don’t absolutely need.This Easter weekend, Americans will spend a lot of money on items such as marshmallow peeps, plush bunnies and fake hay, begging a question: How much does the U.S. economy depend on purchases of goods and services people don’t absolutely need?

As it turns out, quite a lot. A non-scientific study of Commerce Department data suggests that in February, U.S. consumers spent an annualized $1.2 trillion on non-essential stuff including pleasure boats, jewelry, booze, gambling and candy. That’s 11.2% of total consumer spending, up from 9.3% a decade earlier and only 4% in 1959, adjusted for inflation. In February, spending on non-essential stuff was up an inflation-adjusted 3.3% from a year earlier, compared to 2.4% for essential stuff such as food, housing and medicine.

To be sure, different people can have different ideas of what should be considered essential. Still, the estimate is probably low. It doesn’t, for example, account for the added cost of certain luxury items such as superfast cars and big houses.

Related articles

• Number of the Week: Americans Buy More Stuff They Don?t Need (blogs.wsj.com)