Behind the Paintings: Invisible Worlds of Artistry. A musical night with Anna Lomax and David Marker
May 04, 2022, 06:00 PM - 07:00 PM
This presentation, led by anthropologist Anna Lomax Wood and David Marker, will illustrate the musical heritage of the people that are the subjects of many of the paintings featured in Staging Injustice: Italian Art 1880-1917. Farmers, emigrants, rice weeders, sulphur miners, and factory workers all had distinct and complex musical cultures that ethnomusicology has studied and preserved through important campaigns of field recordings, such as the one completed by Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella in 1954, and the work of ethnomusicologists to study and preserve this intangible cultural heritage continues to this day.
The event will showcase select recordings from Alan Lomax’s archive, contemporary recordings by David Marker, and a concert featuring original traditional instruments.
Reserve your tickets HERE!
Anna Lomax Wood is an anthropologist and public folklorist. She is the President of the Association for Cultural Equity (ACE), established in 1985 by her father, legendary musicologist Alan Lomax. In 1996, when Alan Lomax was disabled by a stroke, Wood took responsibility for overseeing his archive, housed at Hunter College, and implementing his unfinished projects, most notably the production, which she undertook in 1997 with Jeffry Greenberg, of the Alan Lomax Collection on Rounder Records. It is a suite of more than 100 CD’s in ten series, of music recorded by Alan Lomax in the deep South, the Bahamas, the Caribbean, the British Isles, Ireland, Spain and Italy. Upon her father’s death in 2002, ACE worked with the Library of Congress to preserve, restore, digitize, and transfer Alan Lomax’s original recordings, photographs, and videos to the Library’s American Folklife Center, In 2005, Wood and Mr. Greenberg produced an 8-CD box set issued on Rounder: Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax. In 2009, she produced the 10-CD, Alan Lomax in Haiti, issued by Harte Records.
David Marker is an ethnomusicology PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center who specializes in pastoral and peasant music of rural southern Italy. For the past fifteen years he has been vigorously documenting oral culture music traditions in southern Italy as well as learning and playing the zampogna, chitarra battente, organetto and other traditional Italian instruments. In 2010 he published a self-made documentary film, Zampogna: The Soul of Southern Italy, which chronicles bagpiping traditions in southern Italy (available on YouTube). Much of the impetus for his ethnographic documentation work is inspired by the careers of Alan and Anna Lomax and he is honored to have worked with Anna on several projects involving Italian music. He has family in both Sicily and Campania where he enjoys visiting friends and relatives during his field recording trips.
Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Christie’s.
Staging Injustice Study Days
April 29 - 30, 2022
April 30, 2022
CIMA hosts the international conference Staging Injustice Study Days on April 29-30. This event provides an opportunity for CIMA’s fellows to share their new research alongside other scholars.
The Study Days aim to investigate the major themes of CIMA’s current exhibition, Staging Injustice: Italian Art 1880-1917, curated by Giovanna Ginex, as well as to contribute to the general debate on Italian art of the period. The conference sessions were conceived by CIMA Fellows Camilla Froio, Eduardo De Maio, and Giorgio Motisi, following an open call for papers.
The conference will take place in a hybrid format: The first panel of each day will take place online, while the later panels will be in-person. In-person tickets include the opportunity to follow the online morning sessions at CIMA on our screens.
Friday April 29
2 PM. [VIA ZOOM] Chair: Camilla Froio – Italy at the Turn of the 20th Century
Sara Boezio, “End of the Century Social Tensions: Italy and the Challenges of Modernity”
Nicol Maria Mocchi, “Visual Models and Borrowed Imagery in Fin-de-siècle Italy”
Eduardo de Maio, “ ‘How Do You Feel about Socialism? Sympathetic, Adverse, or Indifferent?’ International Sources and Italian Socially Engaged Art, 1882-1914”
3:30 PM —Keynote Speech
Vivien Greene, “Arte per l’Umanità”
4:30 PM. [IN PERSON] Chair: Giorgio Motisi — Through the Lens of the Artists: Orientalism, Marginality, Colonialism and the Social Question
Camilla Froio, “Selling ‘the Orient’: Alberto Pasini’s Paintings in Gilded Age America”
Chiara Pazzaglia, “ ‘Era povero, nato dal popolo’. At the Origin of the Critical Myth of Vincenzo Gemito in the Early Twentieth Century”
Giulia Beatrice, “Ardengo Soffici’s Room of the Mannequins (1914): a Colonial Tale on the Eve of the War”
[VIA ZOOM] Annadea Salvatore, “ ‘I Believe that the Mission of Art is Something More than that of the Florist or the Milliner’: the Figurative Reflection of Duilio Cambellotti Between Human Piety and Propaganda Effort”
Saturday, April 30
10 am. [VIA ZOOM] Chair: Eduardo de Maio —The Urban Scene: Rome, Milan, and Turin
Gloria Bell, “Sculpting Indigeneity in the Eternal City: Edmonia Lewis and Ferdinand Pettrich”
Sharon Hecker and Catherine Ramsey Portolano, “Milano Capitale Im-morale: the Prostitute as Literary and Artistic Symbol of Social Deviance”
Anna Maria Panzera and Emanuela Termine, “Turin 1910-1913. Early Feminist Movements and the Quest for Women Artists’ Professional Status”
1 pm. [IN PERSON] Chair: Camilla Froio— Microhistories of Justice and Injustice
Giorgio Motisi, “A Lexicon of Injustice: Rethinking Titles in Italian Socially Engaged Art”
Anna Aline Mehlman Dumont, “Un proprio lavoro: Women’s Textile Work Between Charity and Industry in Morbelli’s Vecchie Calzette”
[VIA ZOOM] Romy Golan, “Staging Equality in Postwar Italy”
4 pm. [IN PERSON] Chair: Giorgio Motisi— Perceptions of Gender and Subalternity in Italian Visual Culture
Sara Vitacca, “Working Bodies: Labor and Virility in Italian Visual Culture from the Early Twentieth Century”
Viviana Costagliola, “An Italian Gaze on the Southern Question. The Representation of Southern Italy in the Monthly Review of the Italian Touring Club (1895-1915)”
FINAL DISCUSSION
Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Christie’s.
Staging Injustice Film Series: Acciaio by Walter Rutmann
April 28, 2022, 6:00 PM - 7:10 PM
6:00 PM – 7:10 PM
An in-person screening of Walter Ruttmann’s “Acciaio” surrounded by works of Italian modern art!
The seventh film in our Staging Injustice Film Series, Acciaio (Steel, 1933) is directed by Walter Ruttmann and stars Piero Pastore, Isa Pola, and Vittorio Bellaccini.
Synopsis (adapted from wikipedia): Mario, a cyclist bersagliere, is discharged and returns to his job as a worker at the Terni steelworks, trusting to find and marry Gina, who was his girlfriend. But during his absence, Gina became infatuated with Pietro, also a worker. The film concentrates on this difficult situation.
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.
Tragedy at the Margins: Exploring Verismo in Opera
April 25, 2022, 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
An in-person lecture on 19th century opera composers turning their gaze to the social implications of injustice.
Opera has dealt with injustice and political conflict since its inception around 1600. It is towards the end of the nineteenth century, though, that composers – in conjunction with the blossoming of a new musical style traditionally known as Verismo – turn their gaze towards the social implications of injustice and to characters, who were normally left at the margins of the genre. If Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana (1890) – a tragedy about peasants in deep rural Sicily – is commonly considered the foundational example of “opera verista”, the ramifications of Verismo go well beyond artistic realism and naturalism. In fact, whereas numerous Verismo operas bring on stage dramatic situations that resonate with concurrent developments in literary and artistic realism, it is as a musical language that Verismo powerfully overrides previous operatic traditions. This talk will look at the ways in which social injustice and the representation of marginalized characters came to the fore in opera between 1890 and WWI, while also addressing the specificity of the operatic aesthetics vis-à-vis other mediums of artistic expression in the period.
General Admission: $15. Members and Students: Free.
About the lecturer:
Eugenio Refini (PhD, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 2010), is an Associate Professor of Italian Studies at New York University. Prior to joining NYU, he was a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Warwick (2010-2013) and he taught at Johns Hopkins University (2014-2019). His interests include reception, translation, and the intersections of music and literature, with a focus on vocal music and opera. Among his recent publications, the monograph The Vernacular Aristotle: Translation as Reception in Medieval and Renaissance Italy(Cambridge UP, 2020) and articles on Renaissance Quarterly, The Italianist, and Romance Quarterly. Refini’s next monograph, Staging the Soul: Allegorical Drama as Spiritual Practice in Baroque Italy, is forthcoming with Legenda (2022). He has received fellowships from Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti, the Bodleian Library, the Warburg Institute and he has recently been awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome for the academic year 2021–22. His current book project studies the reception of the myth of Ariadne across poetry and music from 1600 to 1900.
Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Christie’s.
Staging Injustice Film Series: I compagni by Mario Monicelli
April 15, 2022, 4:00 PM - 8:00 PM
4:00 PM – 8:00 PM
An in-person screening of Mario Monicelli’s “I compagni” surrounded by works of Italian modern art!
The sixth film in our Staging Injustice Film Series, I compagni (The Organizer, 1963) is directed by Mario Monicelli and stars Marcello Mastroianni, Renato Salvatori, and Gabriella Giorgelli.
Synopsis (via IMDB): The story of exploited textile factory workers in Turin, Italy at the turn of the century and their beginnings of their fight for better working conditions. Professor Sinigaglia (Marcello Mastroianni) is sent by (presumably) the Socialists to help them organize their strike and give form to their struggle.
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.
Preserving Italian Immigrant Music Making
April 14, 2022, 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
During the great wave of European emigration Italians brought a vibrant and varied array of music making to the United States: folk music in the form of domestic lullabies and Christmas bagpiping; artisan string trios and quartets; brass band symphonic marches; anarchist protest songs, and the ever-popular Neapolitan song. In New York City, small and large ethnic publishing houses produced sheet music for musical entertainment while mainstream US companies like Columbia and Victor recorded Italian immigrant performers as part of a branded “ethnic series.” Dr. Joseph Sciorra will discuss the lost world of Italian immigrant music making and how contemporary scholars, collectors, performers, and archival institutions are researching, reviving, and preserving this cultural legacy in the twenty-first century.
After the lecture, Dr. Sciorra will conduct an interview with Ernie Rossi, owner of E. Rossi & Co.
About the speaker:
Dr. Joseph Sciorra is the director for Academic and Cultural Programs at Queens College’s John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, a City University of New York research institute. As a folklorist, he has researched and published on religious practices, material culture, and popular music, among other topics. He is the author of Built with Faith: Italian American Imagination and Catholic Material Culture in New York City, and co-editor of Neapolitan Postcards: The Canzone Napoletana as Transnational Subject and the two-volume collection New Italian Migrations to the United States. Recently he has published on Italian Americans’ shifting and diverse relationships to Columbus commemorations, as well as the material culture of monuments, and memorials, and Italian migrations.
In collaboration with the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.
Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Christie’s.
Staging Injustice Film Series: Gli ultimi by Vito Pandolfi
April 07, 2022
An in-person screening of Vito Pandolfi’s “Gli ultimi” surrounded by works of Italian modern art!
The fifth film in our Staging Injustice Film Series, Gli Ultimi (The Last Ones, 1963) is directed by Vito Pandolfi and stars Adelfo Galli, Margherita Torino, and Lino Turoldo.
Synopsis (via IMDB): Checo, son of poor Friulian farmers, is a young boy different from the others because he is more intelligent, sensitive and gifted with imagination. The comrades isolate him and mock him, giving him the nickname of scarecrows, and Checo ends up identifying himself with that macabre scarecrow. One day, exasperated, he decided to flee to go to Venice, with the dream of becoming a painter. When he returned home, began a very difficult period of poverty and hunger for him and his family. Checo will end up reacting by destroying the scarecrow, the nightmare of his childhood, and beginning, as a man, to work with men.
THIS IS AN IN-PERSON SCREENING AT CIMA.
General Admission: $10
CIMA Members and Students with valid ID: $5
In collaboration with:
Public Programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Christie’s.
Student Night at CIMA!
March 25, 2022
Join fellow students from all across the city for a night of Italian art, and light refreshments! This special evening event is open to all university students. Come join us for a guided tour of our current exhibition, Staging Injustice: Italian Art 1880-1917 and meet like-minded art lovers from different colleges and universities!
This is an in-person event. CIMA maintains extra cleaning practices in place as well as air sanitization. Guests are invited to familiarize themselves with CIMA’s COVID safety protocol prior to the event.
Limited capacity! RSVP here!
Public Programming at CIMA is made possible through the generous support of Christie’s.
Staging Injustice Film Series: Bronte by Florestano Vancini
March 24, 2022
An in-person screening of Florestano Vancini’s “Bronte” surrounded by works of Italian modern art!
The fourth film in our Staging Injustice Film Series, Bronte: cronaca di un massacro che i libri di storia non hanno raccontato (Liberty, 1972) is directed by Florestano Vancini and stars Ivo Garrani, Mariano Rigillo, and Ilija Dzuvalekovski.
Synopsis (adapted from IMDB):Mid-19th century Sicily is still a quasi-feudal society, where a destitute farmer and his child can be brutally beaten for collecting dead wood on the landlord’s property. Politically, Sicily is part of a large Southern Italian kingdom. The much more prosperous and advanced Northern regions are fighting to bring about the union of the whole Italian peninsula under the Savoy royal family, originally governing only the Region of Piedmont and the Island of Sardinia. Garibaldi with a thousand volunteers invades Sicily intending to bring Southern Italy under the Savoy rule. The Sicilian peasants view Garibaldi as the liberator from the tyranny of the landed ruling class rather than the idealistic patriot who wants to bring about Italy’s unification. When the news of his imminent arrival reach the village of Bronte, the peasants revolt, looting the landowners houses and warehouses and killing the most hated member of the ruling class. When Garibaldi’s lieutenant arrives to formally occupy the town, he is appalled by the violence. Fearing also that similar lawlessness may spread to neighboring villages, he orders restitution of the looted property and the arrest of most of the adult male population. Moreover he demands a show-trial against five of the townspeople, to serve as a brutal example of the return of law and order.
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 through the generous support of Christie’s.
Staging Injustice Film Series: Riso amaro by Giuseppe De Santis
March 17, 2022
An in-person screening of Giuseppe De Santis’ “Riso amaro” surrounded by works of Italian modern art!
The third film in our Staging Injustice Film Series, Riso amaro (Bitter Rice, 1949) is directed by Giuseppe De Santis and stars Silvana Mangano, Vittorio Gassman, and Doris Dowling.
Synopsis (via IMDB):Francesca and Walter are two-bit criminals in Northern Italy, and, in an effort to avoid the police, Francesca joins a group of women rice workers. She meets the voluptuous peasant rice worker, Silvana, and the soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco. Walter follows her to the rice fields, and the four characters become involved in a complex plot involving robbery, love, and murder.
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.