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Exclusive | NYC Italian American Museum opens after 20-year odyssey: Italians have never had a museum
It was a labor of amore.The new Italian American Museum — which swings its doors open to the public Monday at its sleek digs on 151 Mulberry St.in Little Italy — was an idea more than 20 years in the making, according to its founder Joseph V.
Scelsa.“Every group should have their culture recognized and seen by the public at large,” Scelsa told The Post.“Italians have never had a museum.”Scelsa — a longtime dean of the Calandra Institute, CUNY Queens College’s branch of Italian education, among other bona fides — said the Italian history exhibit he curated in 1999 for the New York Historical Society drew 100,000 people, making it one of the most successful exhibitions in the society’s history.
“I realized that you can reach more people in a museum than in the classroom,” he said.Hudson Valley resident Zoe Dunn brought her daughter Morgan, 20, to the museum on Columbus Day ahead of her semester abroad in Florence in the spring.“I thought she needed a little bit of history, a little bit of background to set the stage and get her in the mood for going,” Dunn, 53, said.Scelsa has long had a burning passion for spreading the history of his heritage — and was even invited to the White House this week for an event celebrating Italian Americans.Ironically, he had to decline to open the Big Apple museum on Columbus Day.But it was a lengthy road to opening, only recently made possible thanks to Gov.
Kathy Hochul, who pitched in a million bucks of state funds to complete the project.“Museums have a hard time borrowing money,” said Scelsa, who began raising funds for his idea in 2001.“It’s not something that banks like to do.”In 2008, he settled on a property in Little Italy, the bustling Manhattan neighborhood where millions of Italian immigrants first poured in during the turn of the century.“We bought three buildings from a family who had a bank on the corner of Grand and Mulberry that closed in 1931,” he said, referring to Banc...