Architectural Record: Magazzino Italian Art Debuts Robert Olnick Pavilion in New York’s Hudson Valley

The quaint riverfront village of Cold Spring, New York, is not immediately synonymous with one of the largest private collections of modern and contemporary Italian art in North America. But in this Hudson Valley community, located roughly 50 miles north of New York City and shrouded by the forested peaks of Storm King Mountain and Breakneck Ridge, the museum and research center Magazzino Italian Art has steadily developed a robust curatorial and research program dedicated to just that. This week, Magazzino—Italian for “warehouse”—opens the Robert Olnick Pavilion, the second standalone structure on the nonprofit venture’s growing 10-acre hillside campus.

The museum was founded in 2017 by collectors Nancy Olnick, scion of a prominent New York real estate family, and her Sardinia-born husband Giorgio Spanu. The two have amassed a vast collection over the last few decades, namely works of Arte Povera—the Italian artistic movement of the 1960s and ‘70s that heralded everyday materials in contrast to the blind commercialism of the postwar years. The new Robert Olnick Pavilion is designed by Spanish architects Alberto Campo Baeza and Miguel Quismondo; the latter has collaborated with Olnick and Spanu over the last 20-odd years as a full-time design advisor and led the way on Magazzino’s main museum building half a decade ago. Baeza designed the couple’s home in the nearby town of Garrison in 2008.