Venice the Contemporary Art Capital
The Punta della Dogana, or Customs Point, is a promontory at the entrance to St Mark's Basin, where the Grand Canal  meets the Giudecca Canal . The buildings of the Dogana di Mare (Sea Customs Post) were built in the late 17th century. French billionaire and leading art collector Francois Pinault has won a long-running battle with the Guggenheim Foundation to turn the Renaissance warehouse in into a contemporary art gallery. The restoration project of Punta della Dogana, which will host the permanent collection of the French entrepreneur , is assigned to Japanese architect Tadao Ando and includes a 4,290 square-meter area.
The new Punta della Dogana Contemporary Art Museum toghether with Palazzo Grassi on the same Canal - bought by Pinault 2 years ago - is going to become a prestigios center for conterporary art in Europe. The new space should be inaugurated in June 2009.
«The reuse of Punta della Dogana is a precise example of how the plan about a possible Venice, able to combine memory and innovation, is becoming a concrete reality».
(Massimo Cacciari, Major of Venice)
