The Picture Book Reimagined: Bruno Munari and His Creative Legacy
November 15, 2022, 06:00 PM - 07:00 PM
General Admission Ticket: $15; Members & Students: Free
Bruno Munari propelled the children’s picture book in startling new directions, introducing sculptural and toy-like elements to the printed page designed to unleash a child’s imagination as never before. In this illustrated talk offered in conjunction with the exhibition Bruno Munari: The Child Within, historian Leonard S. Marcus will trace the world-wide impact of this beguiling innovator’s ground-breaking books on the work of picture book artists Leo Lionni, Eric Carle, Květa Pacovská, David A. Carter, Katsumi Komagata, and others.
Leonard S. Marcus is the world’s preeminent writer on children’s books and the people who make them. He is the author of award-winning biographies, histories, and studies including Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon; Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom; Helen Oxenbury: A Life in Illustration; Randolph Caldecott: The Man Who Could Not Stop Drawing; The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth; You Can’t Say That!, an in-depth look censorship and the literature for young people; and (forthcoming) Pictured Worlds, an international history of the illustrated children’s book. Leonard is a founding trustee of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and was the curator of the New York Public Library’s landmark exhibition The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter. A frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, he teaches at the School of Visual Arts and lectures about his work across the world.
Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Tiro a Segno Foundation.
Downtown Culture Walk
October 29, 2022, 12:00 PM - 06:00 PM
General Admission: Free (suggested donation: $10) – No reservation required
As a member of the SoHo Arts Network (SAN), CIMA is pleased to present its Fall 2022 program: Downtown Culture Walk, a self-guided walking tour highlighting the non-profit art spaces in SoHo and surrounding neighborhoods. SAN seeks to further growth of the arts through collaborative public programs set to explore the neighborhoods’ rich cultural histories.
On October 29, members of SAN will open their doors from 12 to 6pm for Downtown Culture Walk, inviting participants to discover and enjoy our creative community. Walkthroughs, open hours, and other programming will be offered throughout the day for free or reduced admission.
Participating SAN members include apexart; CIMA – Center for Italian Modern Art; Grey Art Gallery, New York University; Judd Foundation; Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art; The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation; Soho Photo Gallery; Swiss Institute; The Drawing Center, and The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation.
More information, including a map of all participating organizations and programming schedule, is available HERE.
Art in America is the media partner for Downtown Culture Walk.
About the SoHo Arts Network
The SoHo Arts Network (SAN) is a working network of non-profit art spaces in and around SoHo. Founded in 2014 by a small group of non-profit arts organizations, the network celebrates the rich history of our unique creative community and collectively shares our distinct cultural contributions with neighborhoods residents and visitors.
LOOKING FOR MUNARI: A talk by Paola Antonelli
October 25, 2022, 06:00 PM - 07:00 PM
General Admission Ticket: $15; Members & Students: Free
In conjunction with CIMA’s fall exhibition Bruno Munari: The Child Within, CIMA will host a talk by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her talk will be a disquisition on how traces of Munari’s witty, unique, unprejudiced approach to art and design can be found in the work of contemporary designers from all over the world.
Paola Antonelli is The Museum of Modern Art’s Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture & Design, as well as MoMA’s founding Director of Research & Development. Her work investigates design in all its forms, from architecture to video games, often expanding its reach to include overlooked objects and practices. Her exhibitions, lectures, projects, and writings contemplate design’s interaction with other fields (from technology and biology to popular culture) and with life – that of individuals, communities, and all species and things. A pasionaria of design, Paola has been named one of the 25 most incisive design visionaries in the world by TIME magazine, has earned the Design Mind Smithsonian Institutions National Design Award, has been inducted in the US Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, and has received the AIGA and the London Design Medal, and the German Design Award, among other accolades. Her goal is to promote design’s understanding until its positive influence on the world is universally acknowledged and put to good use.
A small refreshment will be served.
Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Tiro a Segno Foundation.
Art, ecology and the alchemy of projections: Giuliana Bruno presents her new book with Cecilia Alemani
October 20, 2022, 06:00 PM - 07:00 PM
General Admission Ticket: $15; Members & Students: Free
On the occasion of the publication of Professor Bruno’s new book, Atmospheres of Projection, CIMA will host a conversation between its author and the curator Cecilia Alemani on art, ecology and the alchemy of projections.
Giuliana Bruno’s latest book explores the histories of projection and atmosphere in visual culture and their continued importance to contemporary artists who are reinventing the projective imagination with atmospheric thinking and the use of elemental media. Atmospheres of Projection: Environmentality in Art and Screen Media traverses psychoanalysis, environmental philosophy, architecture, the history of science as well as visual art and moving image culture to see how projective mechanisms and their environments have developed over time. In so doing, she gives new life to the alchemic possibilities of transformative projective atmospheres. Showing how their “environmentality” produces sites of exchange and relationality, this book binds art to the ecology of atmosphere.
“Bruno’s extraordinary book is a capital redefinition of the boundaries between art, reality, and ecology. . . . It shows us that art is always atmospheric projection: transporting the real out of its proper place that image with the world instead of separating it from it. To make art is always to traverse the cosmos, to make atmosphere with it. Art, then, is the first form of ecological construction of the world.”
—Emanuele Coccia, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
Giuliana Bruno is Emmet Blakeney Gleason Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. She is internationally known for her research on the intersections of the visual arts, architecture, film, and media. Her seminal book Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (Verso, 2002, 2017) provided new directions for visual studies, and won the Kraszna-Krausz Award for “the world’s best book on the moving image.” In Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media (Chicago, 2014), she revisited the concept of materiality in contemporary art. Other books include Streetwalking on a Ruined Map (Princeton, 1993), winner of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies book award, and Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Arts (Chicago, 2007). Atmospheres of Projection: Environmentality in Art and Screen Media has just been published by the University of Chicago Press. Professor Bruno has contributed to numerous monographs on contemporary artists. She has written for the Whitney Museum’s show Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2017 as well as exhibition catalogues of the Venice Biennale, the Museo Reina Sofia, the Guggenheim Museum, LACMA, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). She is featured in Visual Culture Studies: Interviews with Key Thinkers (Sage, 2008) as one of the most influential intellectuals working today in visual studies.
Cecilia Alemani is an Italian curator based in New York. Currently, she is the Artistic Director of the 59th International Art Exhibition (2022) in Venice. Since 2011, she has been the Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, the public art program presented by the High Line in New York. In 2018, Alemani served as Artistic Director of the inaugural edition of Art Basel Cities: Buenos Aires. In 2017, she curated the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Tiro a Segno Foundation.
‘Bruno Munari: The Child Within’ Opening Lecture by Curator Steven Guarnaccia
October 07, 2022, 18:00 PM - 19:00 PM
General admission: $15. Members and Students: Free
Join us for the first curator talk to explore the work of the protean multidisciplinary Italian 20th century designer Bruno Munari through the lens of his innovative books for children.
Many of the experiments that Munari conducted with light, transparency, pierced surfaces and paper mechanics, that eventually resulted in some of his most iconic design objects, were first explored in the commercial and experimental books that he made for children. Munari was also an indefatigable teacher, in books, essays, workshops and lectures, and many of his children’s books may be seen as giving corporeal form to his lessons.
In this talk, Bruno Munari: The Child Within‘s curator Steven Guarnaccia will create a dialogue between the various areas of Munari’s creative practice and draw links among diverse areas of activity, including lighting and furniture design, collage, sculpture and various print technologies, including photography, xerography and book making, examples of which are at the center of the show.
Steven Guarnaccia will be in conversation with James Bradburne, Director of the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, and Pietro Corraini of Corraini Edizioni.
The event will be held in person at CIMA. Limited in-person seating available due to COVID-19 safety protocols.
About the curator: Steven Guarnaccia is an author and illustrator and Professor Emeritus of Parsons School of Design. He was formerly Op-Ed art director of the New York Times. His work has appeared in major magazines and newspapers including the New York Times and Rolling Stone and he has been a regular visual commentator for design publications including Abitare, Domus and Metropolitan Home. He has created murals for Disney and exhibition drawings for Achille Castiglioni: Design! at the Museum of Modern Art. He is the author of books on popular culture and design for Chronicle Books, including Black and White and A Stiff Drink and a Close Shave. He has designed watches for Swatch and greeting cards for the Museum of Modern Art, won awards from the AIGA, the Art Directors Club, and the Bologna Book Fair and has had one-man shows internationally. His children’s books include his fairy tales about design, Goldilocks and the Three Bears: A Tale Moderne, The Three Little Pigs: An Architectural Tale and Cinderella: A Fashionable Tale, all published by Corraini and Abrams. His latest book is Butterflies, Snails and Little Worms, about pasta names, published by RaumItalic. His exhibition, Fatherland, was shown at the Hamelin Gallery and has traveled to the East London Comic Arts Festival, the Barcelona FLIC festival, the Ministerium fuer Illustration/ Berlin, the Tabook Festival in the Czech Republic and to Yui Gallery, NY.
Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Tiro a Segno Foundation.
Homage to Sciascia: a presentation and talk
September 21, 2022, 06:00 PM - 07:00 PM
General Admission: Free
Reserve your tickets HERE!
On the occasion of the American celebration of the centenary of the birth of Italian author Leonardo Sciascia (1921-1989), CIMA will host a presentation of the Art Portfolio «Homage to Sciascia», edited by Francesco Izzo on behalf of Amici di Leonardo Sciascia. The art portfolio includes the first English text written by Sciascia and published in the United States in 1952, together with Portrait in Black, a lithograph from an original portrait by David Levine in a numbered, signed and limited edition.
Presented by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, the Comitato Nazionale Centenario Sciasciano, and the Associazione Amici di Leonardo Sciascia.
Chair: Nicola Lucchi (Director, CIMA)
Speakers: Francesco Izzo (Editor/CNCS), Valerio Cappozzo (President, Friends of Sciascia), Teresa Fiore (Montclair State University), David Leopold (David Levine Archives)
Francesco Izzo is the founder of the nonprofit association Friends of Leonardo Sciascia (www.amicisciascia.it), born in 1993 with the aim to foster the reading, research and discussions on the writer Leonardo Sciascia (1921-1989). After a 13-yr collaboration with the Milan-based publishing house La Vita Felice (resulting in the publication of 25 volumes devoted to Sciascia studies), he led the Association to engage in a fruitful partnership with one of Italy’s oldest and most relevant publishers, Leo S. Olschki (Florence). In 2011 he founded both the book series «Sciascia Scrittore Europeo» and the first international scholarly journal on Sciascia studies, «Todomodo», of which he is co-Editor-in-chief. From the early nineties he is the editor of the graphic art portfolio collection «Homage to Sciascia» (28 portfolios already published) and of the limited-edition catalogs of «Premio Leonardo Sciascia amateur d’estampes» (10 catalogs published in collaboration with the publishing house Il Girasole, Valverde). He also edited three books: Il diritto al caso (Palermo, Sellerio 1992); E Sciascia che ne dice? (Firenze, Olschki 2019); Cento anni di Sciascia in sei parole (Firenze, Olschki 2021). At present he is the Director of Operations of the National Committee for the Centenary of the Birth of Leonardo Sciascia (CNCS).
Valerio Cappozzo is an Associate Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Mississippi. His research focuses mainly on medieval and modern poetry. He has extensively published scholarly articles, edited books, and book chapters in these two fields. His monograph, titled The Medieval Dream Dictionary. The Somniale Danielis in Literary Manuscripts (Leo. S. Olschki Editore, Florence 2018), presents an edition of the widely circulated dream manual from the ninth century to 1550. He is also a co-author with Jacques Dalarun and Sean Field of A Female Apostle in Medieval Italy: The Life of Clare of Rimini, which is now in press for University of Pennsylvania Press. He has also edited volumes on Giorgio Bassani, on the Italian Risorgimento and on Carlo Michelstaedter, Storia e storiografia di Carlo Michelstaedter (University of Mississippi, 2017). He is the President of the Associazione Amici di Leonardo Sciascia, the vice-President of the American Boccaccio Association and co-Editor-in-Chief of the scholarly journal «Annali d’Italianistica».
Teresa Fiore is the Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies at Montclair State University. Prof. Fiore received her B.A. in Italy (University of Trieste) and her Ph.D. in the Literature Department at the University of California, San Diego (2002). The recipient of several fellowships, she has been Visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard University (2007), NYU (2008), and Rutgers University (2009). Between 2011 and 2017 she has been a Visiting Fellow at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at NYU. As of Fall 2017, she is member of the Seminar in Modern Italian Studies at Columbia University. Fiore is the author of Pre-Occupied Spaces: Remapping Italy’s Transnational Migrations and Colonial Legacies (Fordham University Press, May 2017). Fiore’s essays on issues of Italian migrations, space, and identity have appeared in Italian, English, and Spanish both in journals (Annali d’Italianistica, Diaspora, Bollettino d’italianistica, Zibaldone, El hilo de la fábula) and edited books such as the MLA volume Teaching Italian American Literature, Film, and Popular Culture (2010); The Cultures of Italian Migration: Diverse Trajectories and Discrete Perspectives (Fairleigh Dickinson, 2011); Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity (Palgrave, 2012 – in Italian translation, Le Monnier-Mondadori, 2014).
David Leopold is an author and curator who has organized exhibitions for institutions around the country including the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge, the James A. Michener Art Museum, and the Field Museum in Chicago. Internationally, he has curated shows for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Filmmuseum in Frankfurt and Berlin. He began to organize the David Levine Archive at the artist’s request in 2005 and continues to maintain it for the Levine family. He edited David Levine’s American Presidents (Fantagraphics) in 2008 and is currently working on a retrospective of Levine’s work in collaboration with Harry Katz, former curator of Prints and Photographs at the Library of Congress. Leopold organized the archive of Al Hirschfeld’s work for the artist and is now the Creative Director for the Al Hirschfeld Foundation, where he co-hosts The Hirschfeld Century Podcast. His book, The Hirschfeld Century: A Portrait of the Artist and His Age, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2015 has won universal acclaim. The Washington Post called it an “instant classic.” Amazon listed it as one of the “Top 100 Books of 2015.” His other books include To Stir, Inform, and Inflame: The Art of Tony Auth (Camino Books 2012), Irving Berlin’s Show Business: Broadway-Hollywood-America, (Harry N. Abrams, 2005); Hirschfeld’s Hollywood (Abrams, 2001). He has also authored monographs on underappreciated artists for various museums. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Guardian, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Pennsylvania Heritage. In September 2016, Leopold received the Joseph and Joan Cullman Award for Extraordinary Creativity at Lincoln Center in New York.
To view the full program of the American celebrations for the centenary of the birth of Leonardo Sciascia, CLICK HERE.
This event at CIMA is promoted and organized by:
Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Tiro a Segno Foundation.
Staging Injustice Film Series: Sacco e Vanzetti by Giuliano Montaldo
June 09, 2022, 6:00 PM - 8:05 PM
An in-person screening of Giuliano Montaldo’s “Sacco e Vanzetti” surrounded by works of Italian modern art!
The tenth and final film in our Staging Injustice Film Series, Sacco e Vanzetti (Sacco & Vanzetti, 1971) is directed by Giuliano Montaldo and stars Gian Maria Volonté, Riccardo Cucciolla, and Cyril Cusack.
The film will be introduced by Prof. Teresa Fiore, the Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies at Montclair State University.
Synopsis (via IMDB): Italian immigrant shoemaker Nicola Sacco (Riccardo Cucciolla) and fish peddler Bartolomeo Vanzetti (Gian Maria Volonté) live and work in 1920s Boston, and are known to have anarchist beliefs. When they are accused of robbing and killing two men at a shoe factory, the men’s political leanings are used as evidence in the trial against them. But defense attorney Fred Moore (Milo O’Shea) is convinced of their innocence, so he defends them in one of the most polarizing trials in U.S. history.
Prof. Teresa Fiore received her B.A. in Italy (University of Trieste) and her Ph.D. in the Literature Department at the University of California, San Diego (2002). The recipient of several fellowships, she has been Visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard University (2007), NYU (2008), and Rutgers University (2009). Between 2011 and 2017 she has been a Visiting Fellow at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at NYU. As of Fall 2017, she is member of the Seminar in Modern Italian Studies at Columbia University. Fiore is the author of Pre-Occupied Spaces: Remapping Italy’s Transnational Migrations and Colonial Legacies (Fordham University Press, May 2017). Fiore’s essays on issues of Italian migrations, space, and identity have appeared in Italian, English, and Spanish both in journals (Annali d’Italianistica, Diaspora, Bollettino d’italianistica, Zibaldone, El hilo de la fábula) and edited books such as the MLA volume Teaching Italian American Literature, Film, and Popular Culture (2010); The Cultures of Italian Migration: Diverse Trajectories and Discrete Perspectives (Fairleigh Dickinson, 2011); Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity (Palgrave, 2012 – in Italian translation, Le Monnier-Mondadori, 2014).
THIS IS AN IN-PERSON SCREENING AT CIMA.
General Admission: $10
CIMA Members and Students with valid ID: $5
Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Christie’s.
Multipli Forti: Italian Literary Fiction Festival
June 07, 2022, 10:30 AM - 23:00 PM
A transatlantic window on the major literary trends of Italian fiction of our time, told by the authors who have written and are writing it.
The first edition of the Italian Contemporary/Literary Fiction Festival will take place in New York City, from June 6-8, 2022. This literary celebration, thematically titled Multipli Forti: Voices from Contemporary Italian Literature is a transatlantic window on the major literary trends in contemporary Italian fiction, featuring a select group of luminary Italian writers.
For a full description of the event, click here.
PROGRAM AT CIMA ON JUNE 7, 2022
10:30 a.m. Carlo Lucarelli and Michela Murgia
with a video by Donatella Di Pietrantonio
RESPONSE BY: Minna Zallman Proctor and Giancarlo Lombardi
MODERATOR: Eugenio Refini (New York University)
in Italian (with translations)
3:00 p.m. Jonathan Bazzi and Walter Siti
with a video by Nadia Terranova
RESPONSE BY: Todd Portnowitz and Michael Frank
MODERATOR: Alessandro Giammei (Yale University)
in Italian (with translations)
6:00 p.m. Teresa Ciabatti, Valerio Magrelli, and Sandro Veronesi
RESPONSE BY: Jenny McPhee
MODERATOR: Monica Calabritto (City University of New York)
in Italian (with translations)
THIS EVENT IS FREE. Reserve your tickets HERE for June 7 at CIMA!
For the program of the other days of the Festival, click here for June 6 at the Italian Cultural Institute, and click here for June 8 at Rizzoli Bookstore.
Staging Injustice Film Series: Nuovomondo by Emanuele Crialese
May 26, 2022, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
An in-person screening of Emanuele Crialese’s “Nuovomondo” surrounded by works of Italian modern art!
The ninth film in our Staging Injustice Film Series, Nuovomondo (Golden Door, 2006) is directed by Emanuele Crialese and stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, Vincenzo Amato, and Vincent Schiavelli.
Synopsis (via IMDB): The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before she arrives to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.
The film will be introduced by Prof. Anthony Tamburri, Dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute of Queens College, CUNY and Distinguished Professor of European Languages and Literatures. He is co-founder and co-director of Bordighera Press; and past president of the Italian American Studies Association and of the American Association of Teachers of Italian. Concentrating on cinema, literature, and semiotics, he has authored numerous books in both English and Italian. His latest books include Re-reading Italian Americana: Specificities and Generalities on Literature and Criticism (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2014); Un biculturalismo negato: La scrittura “italiana” negli Stati Uniti (Franco Cesati Editore, 2018); Signing Italian/American Cinema: A More Focused Look (Ovunque Siamo Press, 2021); and The Columbus Affair: Imperatives for an Italian/American Agenda. (Casa Lago Press, 2021). He is executive producer and host of the Calandra Institute’s TV program, Italics, produced in collaboration with CUNY TV. He also writes a column for La Voce di New York, entitled “The Italian diaspora.”
THIS IS AN IN-PERSON SCREENING AT CIMA.
General Admission: $10
CIMA Members and Students with valid ID: $5
Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Christie’s.
In Scena! Italian Theater Festival: EXILE, by and with Alessandro Tampieri
May 16, 2022, 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
The New York City-based Kairos Italy Theater along with the Italy-based KIT Italia and NYU’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò present at the Center for Italian Modern Art EXILE, by and with Alessandro Tampieri, in Italian with English supertitles. The performance is part of Play It Again In Scena! A very special 2022 coming back edition of the annual Italian Theater Festival NY.
EXILE (CONFINO)
Written & Performed by Alessandro Tampieri
Running time: 60’
Produced in partnership with City of Bologna Cassero LGBTQI+ Center & Centro di Documentazione Flavia Madaschi
Special mention at Premio Antonio Caldarella for contemporary dramaturgy
A story inspired by real events and told in 18 scenes about the life of Angelo P., who is arrested and exiled from Italy under Fascism for being gay. Angelo is a fictional character who is a symbol for homosexual persecution everywhere.
An actor, director and author, Alessandro Tampieri graduated in Philosophy and trained in Theater in Italy, Ireland and the United States. He worked on projects such as “Discesa agli Inferi”, “Animenude”, “Shakespeare in Death” for Bologna Musei and the ASCE European Significant Cemeteries network. He directed “Torri” for Friends of the Johns Hopkins University, Bologna Estate; he wrote and directed the Chamber Opera project “The Masters of the Opera” for Teatro 1763 / Perspective and curated the cultural Festivals “La parola alle donne” and “Orizzonti migranti in viaggio da Dante alla Costituzione”. As a dramaturg, he collaborated with the show “for Frida” for Infinity Dance Theater in New York City. He was a lecturer at the regional institution ERT Emilia Romagna Teatro. He is currently working on the human specific project “MetROzero”.
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