5x15: Five Leading Thinkers on the Unique Magic of Venice

Venice Background
Date and time
Location
1 Kensington Gore, South Kensington, London SW7 2AR
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Five cultural figures each deliver a fifteen-minute talk exploring Venice through art, literature, history and design. In support of Venice in Peril Fund’s Acqua Granda Appeal.

Martin Gayford
on Venice, the City of Pictures

Martin Gayford is an art critic, writer and curator. He is the author of Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud, A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney, How Painting Happens (and why it matters), Venice: City of Pictures and Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud, 1939 –1954, and acclaimed books on Van Gogh, Constable and Michaelangelo. His latest book, with Tracey Emin, is My Heart is This: Tracey Emin on Painting.


Sara Wheeler
on travel writer Jan Morris and her lifelong fascination with Venice

Sara Wheeler is an award-winning and internationally bestselling travel writer and biographer, and a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio; like Jan Morris, she has spent half her working life on the road. Her eleven books include Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica and Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard . She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a contributing editor of the Literary Review. Her latest book is Jan Morris: A Life.


Stephen Bayley
on architect and designer Carlo Scarpa

Stephen Bayley created London’s influential Design Museum (with Terence Conran.) Over nearly fifty years his books, journalism and exhibitions have changed the popular understanding of 'design.' His next book is a memoir, Analogue Epilogue: In Search of Lost Things. He is Chairman of The Royal Fine Art Commission Trust.