Mega-ads in Venice must go, says new Minister of Culture
The money to pay for restoration work will have to be raised in other ways



VENICE. Italy's newly appointed minister of culture, Giancarlo Galan, has told La Nuova Venezia newspaper (29 March) that the mega-ads in St Mark's Square and down the Grand Canal must go.

Tourists should not be faced with such as horrible sight, and the advertisers themselves must be finding the ads are bad publicity, he said. The money to pay for the restoration that the advertisements are financing will have to be raised in other ways.

This decision follows on from a widely publicised campaign conducted last October by a British charity, in which a petition against the advertisements was sent to the then minister, signed by Anna Somers Cocks, chairman of Venice in Peril, the architect Lord Foster, and international museum directors Mark Jones of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Glenn Lowry of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Neil MacGregor of the British Museum, Lars Nittve, then of the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Mikhail Piotrovsky of the Hermitage, St Petersburg, Malcolm Rogers of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Martin Roth of Dresden State Museums.