Artistic Heritage of the Italian Cultural Center at Casa Italia---Stone Park (Chicago)

Some Highlights of the John Cadel Art Gallery and Savoia Vatican Exhibit in the Italian Cultural Center at Casa Italia

John Cadel’s”The Emigrants” is the signature painting in the art gallery which bears his name. Cadel taught at the Art Institute of Chicago and was a prolific book illustrator, writer, and teacher. John Bucci designed the Gallery and along with Father Feccia did all the manual labor to create the "white space" to show off the art.

This wood carved Madonna and Child is in the style and color of Siena artisans. Its exact origins are unknown but art appraisers judge it to be several hundred years old.

Contemporary Sculptor Domenico Mazzone of New York captures the spirit and determination of world-famous conduction Arturo Toscannini in this bronze bust acquired for the Italian Cultural Center by founder Fr. August Feccia in the 1970s.

This bust of Congressman Frank Annuzio was executed in bronze by Mario Spampinato. The Chicago Congressman was the strongest congressional supporter of Columbus Day as a Federal Holiday. For more than 30 years he was the voice of Chicago Italians in the US House of Representatives.

Another acquisition of Father Feccia, this porcelain-ceramic bust of Leonardo Da Vinci captures the wisdom and inventiveness of the original “Renaissance Man.” It was in the period of the 1400s and 1500s that Italy and then all of Europe was re-awakened to theart, science, and culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

The fabled Italian American artist Ralph Fasanella portrays here in a print an Italian Street Festival on the East Coast. Fasanella was a self taught artist who used a primitive (Grandma Moses) techniques to communicate the spirit of Italian American folk religion and the struggles of Italian millworkers for descent working conditions and union representation.

The murals that you see in the Italian Cultural Center are the work of Francesco Ribaudo. Hewas born in 1931 in Naples, Italy, the third of seven children of Bianca Sorrentino and Luigi Ribaudo, an accomplished artist who in turn had learned his trade at the side of his father, Benedetto. Despite his artist's inclination toward flamboyance and overstatement – and coolness toward the typical conservatism of the church – Francesco became a favorite of the Chicago archdiocese. His skills were in demand soon after his arrival in America and he was commissioned to do portraits of John Cardinal Cody, the mother of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin and many others.

World –renowned sculptor Virginio Ferrari grew up in Verona and moved to Chicago as a young man. For the past 40 years his works have graced our City as well as his native Verona. This metal sculpture is a moquette, or proposal, for a giant unrealized memorial to Mayor Richard J. Daley which was to have been erected in the lobby of the Daley Civic Center.

Perhaps the most prized possession of the Italian Cultural Center is the 1:100 miniature of Piazza San Pietro executed by the architectural model makers Attilio and Lucio Savoia. It took the father/son team 5 years to research and construct this perfect replica in their Roman studio in the late 1940s.

Casa Italia Library Fights to Preserve Italian AMERICAN Heritage

Casa Italia Library Fights to Preserve Italian AMERICAN Heritage


By Dominic Candeloro, Library Curator
It’s the day of the Fall Festival at Casa Italia and Robert Dini wanders into the Roselli Library in search of the oral history that his late father Umberto did in the Italians in Chicago Project thirty years ago. He’s directed to the actual tape and transcript and begins listening and reading along as interviewer Adria Bernardi begins the 80 minute interview. I see the nostalgic look on his face as he follows along intently and I realize again the importance of the work we are doing at the library and I am re-energized to continue the crusade “to preserve every stitch of evidence relating to the history of Italian Americans in Chicago“ in the Casa Italia Digital Archive.

This isn’t just ordinary collection and research. Italian American history and culture is at risk of being lost. Immigration to Chicago began in the 1880s and virtually ended in the 1980s. The passage of time, the dispersal of Italian neighborhoods, the demise of Italian Catholic Churches, intermarriage, and the loss of the language incurred by the stresses of World War II have squelched the transmission of the basics of the Italian American Experience to the younger generations. If our current initiatives are not successful, stories like the ones related by Umberto Dini in 1979, will be lost.

In fact, the library is in possession of about 300 tapes accumulated in the Italians in Chicago Project, the making of Gia Amella’s documentary “And They Came to Chicago,” UIC student interviews, radio interviews from “Ciao South Suburbia!” and Italian language tapes that I did in visits to major towns of origins of Chicago Italians in the early 1980’s. Many of the tapes are transcribed and we are beginning a project which will digitize all 300 into MP3 files that can be stored and played on computers. This will save these valuable documents from deteriorating as tapes dry up and crack. The library has recently acquired a high speed scanner and other computer peripherals to transfer audio and video cassettes to digital files. This ongoing project will make it possible for us to freely share our resources on the Internet and as CD discs and thumb drives. Among the unique materials that will be processed from our unpublished holdings are parish and neighborhood documents, my personal research files collected over 30 years, information on towns of origins, our growing photo collection, approximately 50 audio/video recordings by notable Italian American scholars, and 50 years of the Fra Noi (now on microfilm). If you are in possession of audio/videotapes and other materials that you would like to share with the archives, please contact us so that we might add your materials to our holdings.

The Oral History Collection and the archives are only one part of our comprehensive plan to preserve Italian AMERICAN culture on the local and national level. A generous grant from the Anthony Fornelli Family has made possible the recent purchase of thousands of books by and about Italians and their culture in the United States. The volunteer efforts of Jeanette Risatti Viehman (MA Italian Studies), Judy Kemp (Ph.D. Anthropology), Dan Niemiec (Italian American genealogist), Peggy Fox (Librarian at Fenton High School), Vincenzo De Vito(BS) , Maria Di Marco (MS) and Giuliano and Mariastella Gozzi have produced an online catalog of the holdings of our library available at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/ItalCulturalCenter. So far, they have logged in 5400 items and are working on thousands of additional entries for research files, photographs and other unique materials. I have appealed through the American Italian Historical Association to dozens of Italian American scholars and authors who have responded by donating numerous autographed copies of their books and articles. Researchers from around the world can navigate the website searching on author, title, and keyword tolocate books and media in the library. Though the books, as a rule, do not circulate, it is often possible to use photocopies and advanced technology to share relevant parts of the library’s collection by mail or Internet.


We have recently launched a campaign to “Immortalize YOUR Family,” requesting that all Chicago Italian Americans contribute family, club, and church photos (with as much identification as possible) to the library archives. Between our library and the Italian American Veterans Museum and Library (our sister institution at Casa Italia), we have thousands of historic photos to offer the public and we want to accumulate even more. Many of the digital photos will be loaded into 5 newly installed digital frames in the Italians in Chicago Photo Exhibit. Contributions can be made in person by contacting me at 847-951-9109, dropping off the materials at the Library on Mondays from 1-5pm, or by scanning them yourself (at 300dpi) and emailing them as attachments to me at Candeloro@CasaItaliaChicago.org

Updating the collection has made it possible for the Roselli Library to gain membership as a Special Library in the Metropolitan Library System, the alliance of hundreds of academic and public libraries in the south and western Chicago area. As a member, the Roselli Library is eligible to compete for grants from the Illinois State Library headed by Secretary of State, Jesse White.

To make our library better known to the community we have participated for the last five years in the Chicago Tribune’s Printers’ Row Book Fair. At the reopening of the library in June 2009, we brought in bestselling author Adriana Trigiani via video Skype and plans are afoot to host other famous Italian Americans in the same manner. We are reaching out nationally and internationally to scholars to offer our collection for use in their research. Local genealogists can take advantage of our local holdings while using free Wi-Fi connection to the Internet in the library. We also allow the liberal use of digital cameras to record library documents.

Currently the library is staffed on Mondays and by appointment. We are looking for additional volunteers and interns to expand the hours. Interested parties should email Candeloro@CasaItaliaChicago.org or phone the main office of Casa Italia at 708 345-5933.

Dominic Candeloro has been involved in Italian American studies in Chicago for the past 32 years, is a past president of the Italian Cultural Center and of the American Italian Historical Association, and the author of three books on Chicago Italians. He has recently agreed to produce a fourth photobook for Arcadia Publishing on Italian Immigrants to Chicago from 1945-2005

Candeloro Comments is Coming Soon!

I just discovered Blogging and I will start independent blogging soon.  My main interest is Italian American Studies but as I am reaching senior citizen status, I might just share some of my experience and my reading of history for whatever my comments might be worth.