Thursday, April 19 at 6:30 pm. Co-presented with the Italian Cultural Center Minneapolis/St Paul. MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ART - 2400 Third Avenue South - Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404. Presenter: Patricia Fortini Brown

Thoughts of Venice conjure up a city surrounded by water, as depicted in Jacopo de Barbari’s woodcut map of 1500, one of Mia’s treasures. Yet, before the modern era, the city had no source of freshwater except from rains or brought by barges. This talk addresses how Venetians rose to the challenge by creating a unique genre of public art—the Venetian wellhead—along with fountains that transformed urban spaces from the Terraferma to the Stato da Mar into gathering places of aesthetic delight.