Magazzino: a New Art Space Dedicated to Postwar and Contemporary Italian Art to Open in the Hudson Valley
Olnick Spanu, a private initiative founded by art advocates Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu, announces the launch of Magazzino, a new art space in the Hudson Valley devoted to Postwar and Contemporary Italian art.
Magazzino, meaning warehouse in Italian, will feature a rationalist 20,000 square-foot structure dedicated to select works from the Olnick Spanu Collection, temporary exhibitions, research and public programs. The new space and initiative will be led by Director Vittorio Calabrese. Located along the Hudson River in Cold Spring, New York, Magazzino is slated to open in 2017 and will be free and open to the public by appointment.
The new art space will house and draw from the Olnick Spanu Collection, one of the most expansive collections of Postwar Italian art in the U.S. In development since the 1990s, the collection is centered around works by conceptual and contemporary Italian artists, with a strong focus on the artists associated with the Arte Povera movement. While living in Rome, Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu began a lifelong exploration of the Arte Povera movement, a radically avant-garde and distinctly Italian conceptual art movement which emerged in the 1960s and has continued to influence generations of contemporary artists. Studying the movement in-depth, Nancy and Giorgio decided to devote their collecting exclusively to Italian art. In 2003, the couple established an artist residency program at their property in the Hudson Valley. For more than a decade, the founders have invited artists to create site-specific installations as part of the Olnick Spanu Art Program, contributing to the next generation and legacy of Italian contemporary art.
Featuring more than 400 works of Italian Art that range from the 1950s through the present, highlighted artists from the Olnick Spanu Collection include Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Gilberto Zorio. In addition, the Olnick Spanu Collection is also comprised of an extensive collection of Murano glass. The collection features more than 500 pieces of Murano glass from 1910–2010 and has been exhibited throughout the U.S., Europe and Canada.
