Codacons, an Italian consumer group, filed a complaint against Christo’s Floating Piers, the artist’s three kilometer-long floating walkway connecting Northern Italy’s islands of Monte Isola and San Paolo to the mainland’s town of Sulzano opened on 18 June. The group deemed the work was ‘a waste of public resources’, Art Daily reports, and is asking for an investigation into how much taxpayers’ money has been spent on the project. Codacons claims the free attraction has caused disruptions on the national railways (an estimated record number of 270,000 visitors has been reported in the first five days), and that costs related to cleaning up after tens of thousands of visitors, and enforcing health and safety measures have made the installation too costly to maintain, ‘without bringing direct benefits to local entities and citizens’.
28 June 2016.
