Magazzino Italian Art Is Expanding in the Hudson Valley, and Other News

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Magazzino Italian Art Is Expanding in the Hudson Valley 

Magazzino Italian Art has quickly emerged as a steadfast champion of postwar and contemporary Italian art in the United States. Since Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu co-founded the museum in 2017, it has already outgrown its warehouse-like 20,000-square-foot building designed by Miguel Quismondo in the Hudson Valley. With sights set toward the future, Magazzino is breaking ground on another building on its campus to add 13,000 additional square feet of exhibition space, a library with 5,000 Italian art publications, and a room dedicated to decorative arts and ceramics. Quismondo and fellow Spanish architect Alberto Campo Baeza will collaborate on the new building, named the Robert Olnick Pavilion after Nancy’s father, which will have the same spirit as the main building. 

Notably, the new building will provide facilities for the institution to launch an education department in 2023. “One of the most exciting aspects of the expansion is the opening of our Department of Education—hosted in our multi-purpose room—along with an auditorium that will allow us to continue our public programs in the colder months,” museum director Vittorio Calabrese said in a statement. “We’re making an important investment in the town of Cold Spring, a community that welcomed us so warmly over five years ago, as well as investing in our audience and visitors throughout the Tri-State region.”

A Space-Themed Cafe for Australia’s Most Instagrammed Dessert

Black Star Pastry, the Australian confectionery whose Strawberry Watermelon Cake was designated “Australia’s most Instagrammed dessert,” has opened a space-themed cafe in China. The brand tapped the Shanghai firm Linehouse, which swathed the ground-floor interior in stainless steel shelving displaying thousands of meteorites and curving across the ceiling as “an exploration of gravity vs weightlessness.” The words “we are all just stardust” are scrawled on the edges of the tables as if gravity is pressuring the letters to drip off the surface. At night, patrons ascend the concrete terrazzo staircase to an exhibition-style dining space called the Black Star Gallery, home to works by four emerging artists curated by the company’s creative director Louis Li to create an imaginary futuristic habitat.

Citizens of Humanity celebrates its new Aspen boutique with a Haas Brothers capsule.

The Los Angeles denim label is celebrating its brand-new boutique in Aspen with a cartoonish collaboration with the Haas Brothers. The capsule collection, which marks the first iteration of Citizens of Humanity’s fleece collection, features a range of colorful unisex hoodies and sweatshirts emblazoned with goggle-clad foxes and trippy typography. “Niki and Simon [Haas] are incredibly talented artists, but who they are and what they stand for as people is what we admire most,” Jared Freedman, creative director of branding at Citizens of Humanity, tells Wallpaper. “We’re completely aligned in terms of how we want to contribute positively to the greater good and the world—and as a brand, that’s just as important to us as our products.”   

This week’s deadly Bronx apartment fire is bringing renewed scrutiny to space heaters. 

On Sunday morning, a five-alarm fire killed 17 residents in a Bronx high-rise apartment building. The New York City Fire Department officially linked the blaze to a faulty space heater that had likely been running for several days straight. According to the National Fire Prevention Association, space heaters are responsible for more than 300 fire-related deaths each year and accounted for 80 percent of heating-fire deaths between 2014 and 2018. The dangerous devices present a disproportionate risk to lower-income homes where heating alternatives are either malfunctioning or costly to install, and are used far more often in northern Manhattan and the Bronx. To prevent space heaters from causing further fire-related deaths, experts advise users to forgo extension cords and plug units directly into wall outlets, never sit them on a rug or carpet, and place them at least three feet from flammable items.

MVRDV unveils a proposal to transform an Armenian valley into a plant-filled paradise.

The Armenian nonprofit DAR Foundation for Regional Development and Competitiveness has tapped MVRDV to transform the Gagarin Valley into an ecologically diverse, self-sustaining land. As part of the Dutch firm’s scheme, the 84,000-acre valley will cultivate 10,000 new plant species and see 12,000 future-proof housing units rise on a patchwork of land parcels. “The area is named after Yuri Gagarin, who was the first human to orbit the earth; he saw the planet’s vulnerability, a house in need of extra care, as many other astronauts have since stressed,” says MVRDV founder Winy Maas said. “I share that concern: stimulating biodiversity, improving water management, and the ecosystem is of great importance for the future of the Gagarin Valley and the world.” Armenia aims for the valley, which is currently home to 11,000 residents, to become a full-fledged ecotourism destination by 2026. 

Late poet Maya Angelou becomes the first Black woman featured on the U.S. quarter.

Eight years after her death, Maya Angelou continues to blaze trails for Black women. The U.S. Mint announced that the late poet and civil rights activist would become the first Black woman to appear on the quarter. Her inclusion is part of the “American Women Quarters Program,” a four-year initiative that will mint coins featuring prominent women in U.S. history. Other honorees include astronaut Sally Ride, actress Anna May Wong, suffragist Nina Otero-Warren, and Cherokee Nation principal chief Wilma Mankiller. “Each 2022 quarter is designed to reflect the breadth and depth of accomplishments being celebrated throughout this historic coin program,” Mint deputy director Ventris C. Gibson says. “Maya Angelou, featured on the reverse of this first coin in the series, used words to inspire and uplift.” 

Levis will now produce its best-selling 501 style using liquified fibers from used jeans.

The issue of textile waste has become top of mind for the fashion industry, a $1.3 trillion behemoth that produces more than 100 billion garments every year. There’s no reliable way to recycle that waste, which mostly ends up in landfills. Seeking to minimize its impact, Levi’s has started manufacturing the 501 style using discarded jeans that have been chemically dissolved and transformed into an entirely new fabric by Renewcell. The Swedish company’s process involves shredding discarded textiles, dissolving them in chemicals, and stripping out non-cellulose contaminants. What’s left is a material called Circulose, which provides apparel manufacturers with a replacement for cotton and synthetic fibers.

Today’s attractive distractions:

Once shunned, cigarettes are being embraced by a younger nihilistic crowd.

This new book explores one of the UK’s most mysterious alien abductions.

We’re marveling at new footage of a weirdly wonderful psychedelic jellyfish.

Teens dread green text bubbles, putting Apple’s iMessage at an advantage.