In April 2025 the Calandra Institute will mount an exhibit on the artistry of World War II Italian POWs in the United States. The exhibit will feature handcrafted objects, paintings, photographs, letters, newspapers, and other artifacts documenting creativity under captivity. During the war more than 51,000 Italian military personnel were held throughout the country, from Massachusetts to Hawaii. The curators, Laura E. Ruberto (Berkeley City College) and Joseph Sciorra (Calandra Institute), are looking for items, especially crafts and artwork, for possible inclusion in the exhibit. While the exhibit will focus on the United States, objects from other parts of the world concerning Italian POWs are also of interest. Such artwork may have been made while in a POW camp or after the war as a reflection of wartime captivity and experience. The exhibit is co-sponsored by the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute (Queens College, CUNY), the Australian Research Council, and the Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowships.
Please contact both Dr. Ruberto (lruberto@peralta.edu) and Dr. Sciorra (joseph.sciorra@qc.cuny.edu) directly with any leads, examples of artifacts, or questions.
Isabella Livorni, New York University
The name Rocco Scotellaro has become synonymous with Basilicata. In his work, however, the young writer, poet, and politician was interested in situating his home region within a transnational framework. In this talk, Isabella Livorni will analyze how Scotellaro conceived of the connections between Basilicata and other parts of the world in his poetry and creative writing—not only his analysis of his compatriots’ emigration, but also the potentially fruitful solidarity between Lucanian contadini and oppressed peoples elsewhere in the world.
In conjunction with the exhibition BASILICATË: A Celebration of Lucanian Culture in the World
Join us for a public presentation of the inspiration and preparation for the upcoming international exhibition Basilicate: A Celebration of Lucanian Culture in the World.
Tuesday, November 7, 2023, 6:00pm
Speakers about the scope and meaning of this multinational exhibition will include
Mimì Coviello
Centro dei Lucani nel Mondo Nino Calice
Joseph Rinaldi
Federazione Lucana d’America
Anthony Julian Tamburri, PhD
Dean and Distinguished Professor, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute
The exhibition will open in August 2024 in Genoa, Buenos Aires, New York, and Montevideo.
Architecture of Shame, the cultural organization curating the exhibition, is developing a variety of creative groups and events to bring increased awareness to the influence of Lucanians across the globe. Projects include: engaging communities to restore, through Rocco Scotellaro’s poems, their still-vital language; cooking workshops to highlight the transmission of Lucanian culinary traditions to new generations; the filming of rituals native to Lucania that are preserved and practiced in their adopted cities, rituals that have survived emigration and been perpetuated for dozens of years; and demonstrating, via photos of diasporic homes, the search for the Lucanity preserved in them.
The project, implemented by the Federation of Lucanians in Piedmont, is coordinated by the Nino Calice, of the Center of Lucanians in the World of the Basilicata Region. This exhibition will be presented across the globe with the help of the presidents and activists of the Associations of Lucanians in the World and, in the case of New York, with the support of the Craco Society and the Federation of Lucanians of America.
Curated by Joanne Mattera and Joseph Sciorra
Exhibition opening takes place on Wednesday, September 27, 2023, at 6pm.
The work of the twenty-one artists featured in this exhibit offers a richness of form, medium, subject matter, color, and style that is a delight and a revelation to behold. Connections to a discernable Italian art tradition—or for that matter to Italian American aesthetic practices more specifically—vary across the exhibition, ranging from the explicit to the suggestive to the nonexistent.
After the opening on September 27, the exhibition will be accessible during business hours, 9:00am to 5:00pm, Monday through Friday, and is located in the Galleria of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.
Image: Claudia DeMonte, Il Corno, 2013
