Fondazione Azzurra

Please join Fondzione Azzurra for an afternoon at Home with Lucrezia Borgia and Obikà Mozzarella Bar as we taste mozzarella, sip prosecco and hear a talk given by author Diane Ghirardo about how the first woman entrepreneur brought buffalo mozzarella to northern Italy in the early 1500s.

Sunday, April 3, 2011 3-5pm .

At the home of Dante and Marcella Spinotti.

Tickets $100 ($75 is tax-deductible).

Ticket price includes: A tasting of Prosecco, Mozzarella and other delicacies, a copy of Duchesses Water Buffaloes and Female Entrepreneurship in Renaissance Ferrara by Diane Ghirardo and a coupon for Obikà Restaurant.

Address provided upon receipt of reservation.

Diane Ghirardo will discuss how duchesses Eleonora d’Aragona and Lucrezia Borgia of Ferrara, during the 15th and 16th centuries, raised Mediterranean water buffaloes and produced mozzarella cheese, a product normally associated with Lazio and Campania. The author will discuss both the water buffaloes and production of mozzarella within the context of their personal activities, and in particular, the entrepreneurial activities of Lucrezia in her land reclamation projects in the duchy of Ferrara. Lucrezia can be considered the first female capitalist entrepreneur in Italy, perhaps even in Europe.

The Fondazione Azzurra advances the cause of human dignity and expression through the exchange of culture – from art to cuisine- between Italy and Southern California.

See event page

Sunday, October 16, 2011
3-6 pm

This intimate salon at the home of Randi and Harlan Steinberger will investigate Italian “melodrama”—perhaps best known today through such composers as Verdi. Melodrama was a mirror of the cultural, historical and social context of Italy’s Risorgimento, in the period surrounding unification in 1851.

Italy had been characterized by linguistic and political division for centuries, and the theater served as a unifying activity—a hub of social and public life, and of cultural unity. The genre of opera contributed decisively to the Italian unification process.

Libiamo will feature a talk by Ignazio Terrasi, Music Assistant Conductor at LA Opera, introducing the history of Melodrama, the social and political context of opera, and a live vocal performance by Valentina Fleer (Soprano), Alexey Sayapin (Tenor), and Nino Sanikidze (Piano).

The evening will include aperitivo and a light buffet offered by Obikà Mozzarella Bar with the kind collaboration of Grom Gelato and diSaronno.

More information on the program and the performers

From November 10-15, a selection of new Italian films will be showing at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica -except for the screening of Terraferma at the Egyptian Theater on November 11.
(See full program below or go to www.cinemaitalianstyle.it“)

We would especially like to bring to your attention Mario Martone’s latest film, We Believed (Ci credevamo), scheduled on Sunday, November 13 at 7:30pm at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica.
This film chronicles an important moment in Italian history around 1860, that ended with the unification of Italy. Those of you present at our October 16th Libiamo Event will appreciate the connection between our salon and the topic of this film shedding further insight on that momentous time period.

We have a limited number of complimentary tickets available.
If you would like to reserve tickets through Fondazione Azzurra, please send an e-mail to info@fondazioneazzurra.org specifying the date, time, and title of the film you would like to see.
Limit 2 tickets per reservation.
Tickets are available on a first come basis.

Fowler Museum, February 26–July 29, 2012

From 1971 to 1994, Italian artist Alighiero Boetti (1940–1994) embarked on a series of projects with Afghan embroiderers, creating monumental pieces that would become some of the artist’s most iconic works.

Working first in Kabul in the 1970s and then in refugee camps in Pakistan after the 1979 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Afghan women embroidered works based on Boetti’s templates that include:  colorful grids of letters that spell out phrases (such as “Order and Disorder”); Mappe (maps), wall-sized world maps with countries filled-in with the colors and symbols of their flags; and Tutto (everything), large-scale works entirely filled with intricately embroidered shapes representing diverse objects—sunglasses, a Hindu goddess, a protractor, twins, and more.

The exhibition features twenty-nine  works by Boetti along with documentary photographs of the Afghan embroiderers taken in 1990 at Boetti’s request by Randi Malkin Steinberger, as well as examples of the traditional styles of embroidery that might have played a role in stimulating Boetti’s best known works.

Exhibition Credits
This exhibition is organized by the Fowler Museum in association with the Fondazione Azzurra and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura of Los Angeles, and is co-curated by Alma Ruiz, senior curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and specialist on the Arte Povera movement, and Christopher G. Bennett, Boetti scholar and Dean’s Post-doctoral Fellow in Art History at the University of Delaware.

Support for the exhibition comes from the Fowler’s Barbara and Joseph Goldenberg Fund and Shirley and Ralph Shapiro Director’s Discretionary Fund, an anonymous donor, and Suzanne and David Johnson. Funding for the publication is provided by the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation. Additional support for programming is provided by the Fondazione Azzurra, the Robert Lehman Foundation, the UCLA Dream Fund, and Manus, the support group of the Fowler Museum.

The Fondazione Azzurra organizes and supports arts exhibitions and initiatives that present and explore the culture of Italy; Order and Disorder illuminates Boetti’s work in a global context for new American Audiences.