A revealing exhibition about Columbia’s Casa Italiana—the neo-Renaissance palazzo on Amsterdam Avenue, now home to the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies—and the dawn of Italian studies at Columbia, starting with Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s witty librettist.

Silk, silver, and parchment relics, oil paintings and forgotten letters: the displays will illustrate the complex and often controversial moments in the Casa’s history, highlighting figures such as the talented but equivocal Giuseppe Prezzolini and Columbia’s president Nicholas M. Butler, as well as students and community members—both Italian and Italian-American.

Read about this exhibition in the Columbia "Record" newspaper.

Chief curator: Barbara Faedda

Developed by the Italian Academy

Co-sponsored by Columbia University's Office of the Provost and Department of Italian

Learn more: read the new Columbia University Press book, From Da Ponte to the Casa Italiana: A Brief History of Italian Studies at Columbia University (by Barbara Faedda).

