Italian Art Magazinethe museum and research center in Cold Spring, New York, opened Welcome to New York!, a show-investigation by Michelangelo Pistoletto to celebrate the artist’s 90th birthday. Additionally, the museum unveiled a permanent land exhibit, terzo paradisewhich came to fruition after 20 years of patiently waiting for circumstances that matched the conceptual work ethic and reflected the decades-long relationship between the artist and Magazzino founders Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu.
terzo paradise (Third Paradise) is a manifesto that takes the form of an infinity symbol with an additional circle in its center. The circles at opposite ends represent the natural and the man-made, with the central sphere balancing the two and symbolizing rebirth and a sustainable future. Olnick and Spanu became the ambassadors of terzo paradise shortly after its conception in 2003, and Magazzino followed in 2017but they hadn’t found the right moment to give him physical form.
While excavating the foundations of a new building inaugurated in September, the team discovered several uniform boulders, each measuring one meter in circumference. Magazzino then learned that the site had once been a quarry. “I knew we had to keep the rocks,” Spanu said. “They had been used in road construction many years ago, so their goal was to create a new future. It struck me, because it is one of the messages of Pistoletto terzo paradiseas well as why we were digging in the first place – to create a new building.
When they found enough boulders, the room was built on a slope into the hillside above Magazzino so visitors could see it from the ground. “The stones represent the natural, and the way they were found through human intervention and excavation is artificial,” says Spanu. “The third circle, what makes it Terzo paradise, is a rebirth, just like our new building is a rebirth, but there’s no rebirth without birth, and that’s what you see inside the museum, the backstory of how we are arrived here today with Pistoletto.”
Installation view of Michelangelo Pistoletto Terzo paradiso (third paradise) In Welcome to New York! at Magazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring, New York. Photos by Marco Anelli / Tommaso Sacconi. Courtesy of Italian Magazzino Art.
This story is told throughout Welcome to New York!. In the lobby is the 2007 wall sculpture Stracci Italiani (Italian rags), which is made of rags to look like an Italian flag. Pistoletto created the work for the Olnick Spanu Art Program, the couple’s artist residency which ran from 2005 to 2015 and was their first foray into introducing Italian art to northern Italy. New York State. The title of the exhibition, Welcome to New York!is borrowed from a sculpture exhibited in 1979 which is a nod to this international exchange and presents a flow of colored rags under a crown resembling that of the Statue of Liberty.
Also marking an intercultural vision is Sfera di giornali (sphere of newspapers), a large ball made of newspapers. Part of a series, the first sphere was created in 1966 to raise awareness of the working conditions of metalworkers in Turin and was later rolled around the city. Olnick and Spanu bought a version of the work made in 1996 to support the Festival dei Due Mondi, the international cultural event in Spoleto and abroad that was created to connect the two sides of the Atlantic. When Magazzino was founded, Pistoletto asked Olnick and Spanu to save the newspapers advertising the museum to create another version of Sfera di giornali.
“I said ‘Michelangelo, nobody talks about Magazzino’,” Spanu says. “But he told me, ‘They will’, and he was right. He created a new play from these announcements and re-enacted Turin’s performance on the streets of Cold Spring and the whole community joined in.
Reflecting the couple’s gift to Spoleto, Pistoletto donated this new version of Sfera di giornali at the Museum. The work is exhibited alongside several of the artist’s iconic works Quadri specchianti (mirror paintings) which feature glued and screen-printed life-size cutouts, including one with an image of the sphere.
“Pistoletto represents many chapters of Magazzino and we are honored to have him part of our next chapter along with the story of the new pavilion,” says Spanu. “We set up the show and terzo paradise a month ago, but we officially unveiled it on June 25th because it was Pistoletto’s 90th birthday, so I like to think we’re part of that chapter for him as well.
- Welcome to New York! is on view until early summer 2024, terzo paradise is permanently visible
