‘Anna Mahler: Notes on Stone’; ‘About Sol’; ‘Mahler & LeWitt Studios’: three documentaries, a U.S. premiere

December 01, 2022, 06:00 PM - 07:30 PM

General Admission Ticket: $15; Members & Students: Free

Join us for the US premiere of three recently commissioned documentaries exploring the lives of Anna Mahler and Sol LeWitt, as well as the artist residency program their work has inspired in Spoleto, Italy, at the Mahler & LeWitt Studios.

Introduced by CIMA director Nicola Lucchi, guests are also invited to visit the current CIMA exhibition ‘Bruno Munari: The Child Within’.

Light refreshments will be served!

Anna Mahler: Notes on Stone (23mins), narrated by her daughter Marina Mahler, is the first documentary to closely consider the life and work of stone sculptor Anna Mahler, daughter of Gustav and Alma. Before reaching Spoleto, where she would live and work from the late 1960s, the film evokes the unique cultural milieu in which she grew up – among her mentors were Oskar Kokoshka and Giorgio de Chirico. The film then follows Anna from war torn Vienna, to London and Los Angeles, where she taught at UCLA and made her most monumental work ‘The Tower of Masks’.

About Sol (23 mins) is an intimate portrait of Sol LeWitt, documenting his life and work with a particular focus on the time he spent in Spoleto. It centers on an interview with his wife Carol, who shares a string of intimate memories beginning with their departure from New York, to a new family life in Spoleto. It explores Sol’s work through his friendships with the artists and people of the town. Conversations with Adam Weinberg (Director, Whitney Museum of American Art) and Marco Tonelli (Director, Palazzo Collicola Arti Visive) explain the relevance of the great Italian painters to LeWitt’s practice – Giotto, Piero della Francesca, frà Filippo Lippi – artists who at first sight seem distant from conceptual art and minimalism.

Mahler & LeWitt Studios (12 mins) is a short film with Guy Robertson (curator and founding director, with Eva LeWitt) telling the story of the program of residencies and special projects which take place each year, for five months, around the former studios of Anna Mahler and Sol LeWitt in Spoleto. The program welcomes and provides opportunities for curators, writers and artists of all disciplines, from across the world. In Spoleto they find an ideal space to reflect and create new work.

The production of the documentary films stems from the desire of Maria Teresa Venturini Fendi, President of the Carla Fendi Foundation, to make a contribution to the important activity of the Mahler & LeWitt Studios. The films are intended to give context to the lives and work of Anna Mahler and Sol LeWitt in Spoleto, sharing their stories with new audiences, and to celebrate the significant opportunities, offered in their names, to a new generation of artists, writers and curators.

The Carla Fendi Foundation promotes and creates artistic events, restorations, social projects, science and research. Since forming in 2007, the Foundation has collaborated with the Festival dei Due Mondi, Spoleto, becoming its Main Partner in 2012. Among its projects in Spoleto, the Foundation organises the annual Premio Carla Fendi – in 2021 Marina Mahler and Carol LeWitt were recipients of the prize for their services to culture in Spoleto. They donated their prize money to the Mahler & LeWitt Studios and it will fund a series of cultural collaborations between the Carla Fendi Foundation and the studios. fondazionecarlafendi.it

Gabriele Gianni (b.1978) is an Italian director and artist. For the Carla Fendi Foundation he has also created: A Sense of Wonder, about the life of the British scientist Stephen Hawking, and Ecce Robot, on artificial intelligence, robotics, and the thinking of British scientist Alan Turing. He is co-director, with Davide Barletti, of Nothing Wrong, about the search for the meaning of Time through the stories and  eyes of three hundred children during the year of the pandemic. The film was screened at Biografilm 22, and at Annecy Cinéma Italien. In 2022 he created Reality? an augmented reality installation located in the renaissance church of Santa Maria della Manna d’Oro in Spoleto, Italy. Produced by Carla Fendi Foundation, it investigates illusory space in consciousness. gabrielegianni.com

Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Tiro a Segno Foundation.

A gala honoring Micky Wolfson, Jr.

November 29, 2022, 07:00 PM - 10:00 PM

A BENEFIT DINNER IN SUPPORT OF CIMA’S INTERNATIONAL FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

honoring

Mitchell (Micky) Wolfson, Jr.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2022, 7PM

Mattioli Residence: 421 Broome Street, NYC

CELEBRATING FRIENDSHIP, FUELING THE FUTURE

Join us in honoring Mitchell (Micky) Wolfson, Jr., steadfast friend to CIMA and esteemed collector and founder of The Wolfsonian-FIU and the Wolfsoniana, iconic museums in Miami Beach, Florida and Genova Nervi, Italy. Micky’s unparalleled perspective challenges assumptions, pushes disciplinary boundaries, and deepens appreciation of modern art and objects. Help us salute his eye for innovation and toast his generosity of spirit.

Our tribute to Micky will provide vital fuel for CIMA’s International Fellowship Program, which grants extended study opportunities at CIMA for promising international students at pivotal moments in their academic ascent. Join us for a night illuminating the beauty of Italian modern art that advances understanding and forges friendships across countries and generations.

Please find the reservation form HERE!

For more information and to RSVP, please email Mary Keating at keating@italianmodernart.org

Italian Divisionism: Gazes and Perspectives. A presentation and book signing with author Annie-Paule Quinsac

November 22, 2022, 06:00 PM - 07:00 PM

General Admission: $10; Members and Students: Free

RESERVE YOUR TICKETS HERE!

In this in person event, professor Annie-Paule Quinsac will present her recently-published book, Divisionismo Italiano. Sguardi e prospettive 1880-1920 (Massetti Rodella Editori, 2022). The work is a revisitation of her seminal thesis “La peinture divisionniste italienne. Origines et premiers développements 1880-1895“, discussed at the Sorbonne in 1968 and published in 1972.

Using a transversal approach, Quinsac analyses the sociopolitical, historical, and ideological context that characterized Italian divisionism, from Segantini’s Avemaria a trasbordo (1886, the first Divisionist work), through the Symbolism of the 1890s, and up to the Futurist revolution, underscoring the ever-changing interpretations of critics through the present.

Artists considered: Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Vittore Grubicy de Dragon, Giovanni Segantini, Jean François Millet, Gaetano Previati, Angelo Morbelli, Plinio Nomellini, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Emilio Longoni, Attilio Pusterla, Carlo Fornara; Ernest Meissonier, Jules Breton, Alfred Roll, Jules Adler; Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini (and others merely used for the sake of comparison).

Copies of the book will be available for purchase.

Light refreshments will be served.

Annie-Paule Quinsac is Professor Emerita at University of South Carolina and an art critic. She received her Ph.D. from the Sorbonne, and taught the history of 19th-century art for 25 years. She is a leading scholar on the oeuvre of Giovanni Segantini, having published a catalogue raisonné of the artist (Electa, 1982, 2014-15) and a critical edition of his correspondence (Cattaneo Editore, 1985). She has curated many exhibitions, both in Italy and abroad, including Segantini. Il ritorno a Milano  (Palazzo Reale, Milan; 2014-15)

Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Tiro a Segno Foundation.

Arte Programmata: Freedom, Control, and the Computer in 1960s Italy. A book presentation with author Lindsay Caplan

November 18, 2022, 06:00 PM - 07:00 PM

General Admission Ticket: $15; Members & Students: Free

In conjunction with our current exhibition Bruno Munari: The Child Within, CIMA is hosting a talk by Prof. Lindsay Caplan about her recently published book, Arte Programmata: Freedom, Control, and the Computer in 1960s Italy.

In her book, Lindsay Caplan explores how in postwar Italy, a group of visionary artists— Bruno Munari among them — used emergent computer technologies as both tools of artistic production and a means to reconceptualize the dynamic interrelation between individual freedom and collectivity. Arte Programmata traces the multifaceted practices of these groundbreaking artists and their conviction that technology could provide the conditions for a liberated social life.

Prof. Caplan will be in conversation with CIMA Fellows Margaret Scarborough and Giulia Zompa.

Light refreshments will be served.

Copies fo the book will be available for purchase at a reduced price.

Lindsay Caplan is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at Brown University. Before joining Brown, she taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, Eugene Lang College, School of Visual Arts, Parsons, City University of New York, and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. She has received fellowships from The Center of the Humanities at The CUNY Graduate Center (2010-14) and the American Council for Learned Societies (2015-16). From 2010 to 2011, she was a Critical Studies participant in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Her writing has appeared in journals such as Grey Room, ARTMargins, e-flux, The Scholar and Feminist Online, and Art in America, as well as edited collections and exhibition catalogues. Her book Arte Programmata: Freedom, Control, and the Computer in 1960s Italy received a Millard Meiss Publication Grant from the College Art Association and was recently published by the University of Minnesota Press (October 2022).

Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Tiro a Segno Foundation.

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

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

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

RESERVE YOUR TICKETS HERE!

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

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.