You Don’t Know What Arte Povera Is? They Can Change That

If you don’t know much about Arte Povera, the 1960sItalian avant-garde movement whose proponents created minimalist works using humble or organic materials, two New York collectors are hoping to change that.

Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu see it as nothing short of a mission to expose to the American public the works of the small group of Italian artists who exhibited together in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.

That mission is about to materialize, in a stark, outsized industrial building in Cold Spring, N.Y.—about 60 miles north of New York City—where they plan to exhibit about 400 works from their substantial collection when it opens next year.