A Museum of Interaction
By RALPH GARDNER JR.
The museum is housed in a three-story building at the corner of Mulberry and Grand that was once the Banca Stabile, an institution that opened in 1885 and provided not only traditional banking services but also arranged steamship passage for immigrants and found them housing and even jobs once they arrived. The museum opened at its current location in 2008.
While a lot of money would undoubtedly go a long way toward bringing the Italian American Museum up to speed—Dr. Scelsa admitted that the recession threw the museum's fund-raising efforts a curve ball, and 7,000 items remain in storage—there's one arena where this quaint street-side institution may have more established institutions such as MoMA, the Met, and the Whitney beat hands-down: in terms of the holy grail of current museum design, interactivity. I don't mean talking exhibitions, video monitors or touch-screen computer displays (there's none of that), but in the almost continuous conversation between Dr. Scelsa and visitors to the museum who meander inside in ones and twos and share stories of their own families. I'd go so far as to say that the museum's main achievement thus far is to have created a space and an opportunity for Italian-Americans, like other established ethnic groups, to reminisce and honor their increasingly remote immigrant origins.
Frank D'Aversa, one such museum-goer, remembered his father's stories of arriving in the U.S. in the 1920s, living on Sullivan Street and sharing a bed with two other men; one slept while the other two were off at work. His father, a union organizer, taught his kids to respect the cops even as his head was being bashed in. “The police were used as strike breakers,” Mr. D'Aversa said. “He said, 'You don't push somebody and don't expect them to push you back.' He did not resent the fact. It was a whole different mindset.”
Dr. Scelsa doesn't deny the darker and more cinematically explored side of Italian-American immigrant culture. After all, the infamous Ravenite Social Club, the former headquarters of the Gambino crime family, is just up the street. “I'm not sure what it's become,” he said of the club. “I don't think you're going to find anything like that around here anymore. Giuliani did a good job making sure those days were over.”
Roy Baxter, the shop's owner, said he had no problem abiding by the museum's request as he affectionately regarded a black-and-white glossy of John Gotti. Long gone, one suspects the Dapper Don still draws tourists to the neighborhood—and to the Italian American Museum. “He's too good looking to be outside,” Mr. Baxter said.
