This week on The Italian Radio Hour: Exploring Magazzino Italian Art, the only museum and Research Center dedicated to advancing scholarship and public appreciation of postwar and contemporary Italian art in the United States. The museum was founded by Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu with the mission to share works of the group of Italian artists who exhibited together in the late 1960s and early 1970s, affiliated with the art movement of Arte Povera, with American audiences.Magazzino opened to the public on June 28, 2017, with an exhibition dedicated to the influence and legacy of Margherita Stein, a late Italian dealer associated with artists active in Arte Povera circles and beyond. The museum is FREE and OPEN to the public. Magazzino, which means "warehouse" in Italian, consists of an old farmers’ warehouse (later turned into a dairy distribution center and then a computer factory) and a new building by Spanish architect Miguel Quismondo. The building includes a new exhibition space and a 5,000-volume library, making up the core of the Research Center, opened in 2018.Magazzino Italian Art is located in Cold Spring, New York, within the Town of Philipstown on U.S. Route 9, on the former Cyberchron site.
