This past Wednesday, Casa Italiana showcased pianist Konstantin Soukhovetski. He performed selections from Philip Glass’s The Hours score as well as his own solo piano arrangements of Strauss’s Capriccio and “Four Last Songs.” This concert featured the premiere of Soukhovetski’s arrangement of the final scene of Verdi’s La Traviata. Traviata obsessor Alexandra Svokos was, naturally, there. Soukhovetski is a […]

… and not with rigatoni alla arrabbiata. The Italic Institute of America filed suit Wednesday against Columbia’s Italian Academy (formerly housed in Casa Italiana) for failing to promote serious scholarship of Italian-American history and focusing instead on “stereotypical subsets of Italian-American culture,” according to the NY Post. The plaintiffs claim to be descendants of the people […]

Here’s yet another instance of some really important cultural things being totally free and right under our noses. The Silent Strength of Liu Xia is an exhibition at the Italian Academy of the work of house-arrested dissident Chinese photographer Liu Xia, wife of Nobel-winning poet Liu Xiaobo. Conor Skelding stepped inside. I’d never been inside Casa Italiana […]

Just kidding! This is a lecturehop, but it did involve mountains of Mario’s creations. Bwog’s favorite foodie, Brian Donahoe, was there. Thursday evening, Bwog passed through the ever-enticing yet forbidding door of Casa Italiana, and after making it past security and up an imposing marble staircase took a seat in the Italian Academy’s fabled ballroom […]

In honor of the newly appointed Du Family Professor of Chinese Culture, Wei Shang, a reception and faculty panel discussion was held Monday night in the lovely Casa Italiana. Global canapés expert Olivia Mann stopped by for the shrimp and cultural discourse. The night kicked off with Professor Shang asking several faculty members to present […]

On Wednesday night, Columbia’s Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture hosted Dr. Genshitsu Sen, the former Grand Master of the Urasenke school of the Japanese tea ceremony. Bwog, recognizing that there is such a thing as too much coffee, spent the evening in the audience at Casa Italiana, to learn about the Japanese tea ceremony, […]

Unsure of how to entertain your parents in New York this weekend? Bwog staffer Mariela Quintana suggests Casa Italiana, where you can put your Art Hum skills to use.  Between the dank Amsterdam overpass and SIPA’s bleak backside, stands the alabaster Casa Italiana, home of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America. With an […]

While you’re in Butler cramming — or simply shitfaced at 1020 — your university is actively engaging with that frightening specter beyond the 116th Street Gates: the wide, weird world. Below, Bwog presents some of the most recent (yet unheralded!) findings and goings on from the realm of science and technology to have occurred at Columbia over the last few […]

While prettying herself up for her launch party this evening (AT MONA on Amsterdam b/t 108 & 109), the Bwog has been pondering her place in history, especially as it related to the rise and fall of Fascism, which, it turns out, Columbia is not so far removed from. Casa Totalitarina By Jacob Jacobsonian One […]