"This year's Day of the Contemporary offers a unique opportunity to address complex and increasingly topical issues such as sustainability and climate change in a different way," said Italy's Ambassador to the United States, Mariangela Zappia.

"Italy's commitment to addressing these challenges and promoting more environmentally friendly practices is reflected in every sector of activity," said the Ambassador, "and it is occasions such as this review that provide a unique perspective, through the lens of contemporary art, for an open dialogue aimed at a shared vision of our future.

Beginning Oct. 8 and throughout the week to follow, the Italian Embassy and the network of U.S. Consulates and Institutes of Culture will join with a wide range of initiatives and events in the 18th edition of Giornata del Contemporaneo, an event promoted by the Associazione Musei d'Arte Contemporanea Italiani (AMACI) with the support of the Ministry of Culture.

The choice of this year's main theme, Ecology, aims to encourage a discussion on the concept of environmental sustainability to raise awareness of the need to rethink the art system from the perspective of the climate crisis.

In Washington, the Italian Cultural Institute and the Italian Embassy present "4 ELEMENTS," a project for videomapping and piano in collaboration with Italian artists from Imaginarium Studio, Francesca Pasquinucci and Davide Giannoni, and award-winning pianist Sun Hee You. Combining the music of Chopin, Casella, Liszt, Debussy, Vacchi and Hyung-Ki Joo with the sounds of gravitational waves captured by VIRGO and granted by EGO European Gravitational Observatory, "4 ELEMENTS" is dreamlike and enchanted journey, rich in legendary anecdotes and references to science and philosophy. Music and images guide to the discovery of the connections between the four elements (fire, water, air, earth) and the human being, to offer the audience artistic food for thought on the fundamental theme of the loss of environmental consciousness. The event will be followed by the projection of a videomapping created specifically for the Embassy's exterior facade, accompanied by an original musical composition by Giannoni.

The Italian Institute of New York, in collaboration with Magazzino Italian Art and in partnership with Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU, is hosting until Nov. 25 "Margherita Raso: Vizio di Forma," the Italian artist's first exhibition in the United States curated by Chiara Mannarino. Raso's works are inspired by women's craftsmanship, and in particular by weaving, which - from Penelope to Leopardi's Silvia - has connoted the female function, also acquiring magical-sacral connotations. Margherita Raso reflects on the theme of sustainability and urges a rethinking of the social and temporal model that tends to erase that high craftsmanship, enhancing and elevating it to an art form beyond its functional uses, in a world that ensures the sustainability of a dimension that is both human and natural as opposed to the absolute dominance of technology. Curator Mannarino conducts a series of guided tours of the site-specific installation on Oct. 13.

The Consulate General in Chicago together with the Italian Cultural Institute launched a series of lectures on the theme "Voices of Nature. Ecology and Nature in Italian Arts," featuring Prof. Giovanni Aloi of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an author and curator specializing in the representation of nature in modern and contemporary art, and the director of Andreco Studio, Andrea Conte, who is engaged in research on the relationship between art, science and environmental issues.

The Consulate General of Italy in Philadelphia is organizing a lecture on Giuseppe Penone's exhibition "River of Forms: Giuseppe Penone's Drawings," open to the public until Feb. 26, 2023 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. On Oct. 13, Dr. Greer Pagano, professor, art historian and independent curator, gives a lecture titled "Drawing us together: a consideration of Giuseppe Penone's exhibition River of Forms," in which she delves into the great Italian artist's innovative work on the theme of the relationship between man and nature.

The Los Angeles Institute of Culture on Oct. 14 inaugurates a site-specific installation by Maria Cristina Finucci, an Italian artist and architect globally recognized for the creation and presentation of the work "Garbage Patch State" at UNESCO headquarters in Paris in 2013 to artistically denounce the problem of plastic in the seas. In Los Angeles, the artist creates a fluorescent installation titled "How about the 8%?" to raise the issue of detergent pollution in the oceans that, in the most fortunate cases, are declared 92 percent organic. By recreating a water surface, a call for help from the oceans appears in the dark with the words "HELP." The opening will be accompanied by a conversation between the artist and Marisa Caichiolo, an artist herself and founder of Building Bridges Art Exchange and curator of DIVERSEartLA.

The Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco and the Consulate General are organizing a special guided tour on Oct. 12 at the Italian American Museum's contemporary art exhibition "ContemporaneARTE," featuring works by such masters as D'Orazio, Chia, Mimmo Paladino and Enrico Baj.