This week we had the enormous pleasure of welcoming a true champion of experiential learning and member of the Syracuse Board of Trustees, Mike Venutolo (class of ’77), to the Villa Rossa.
Mike and his wife Kim, both of whom proudly come from blue-collar backgrounds, have made it their mission to preach the life-changing benefits of study abroad, strongly encouraging students to prepare themselves for the workforce by “getting their hands dirty.” The Venutolos spent 30 years working between the Gulf region and London, England, before shifting their focus to philanthropy work in the US by supporting Syracuse students to get hands-on experience at home and abroad.
Considering their longtime familiarity with Syracuse University’s premises in London, people have long assumed the Venutolos were also familiar with our program here in Italy. But they had never been. “Kim said to me it’s about time we visit Florence,” Mike laughed sheepishly as we welcomed them to the villa.
They told us about their experience bringing some 30 Syracuse students over the years to the Gulf region on a two-week engineering internship program that they spearheaded. “Students were surprised when we asked for their shoe size ahead of time,” explained Mike. “It was for the steel-toed boots they would be wearing while on the ground.” Kim laughed at the memory. “We were not going to be spending our time in some university lecture hall!” When they did visit a university in Saudi Arabia, KFUPM, Kim and two student interns were the first women to have ever stepped onto the premises.
Because of their backgrounds and passions, they appreciate the fact that there are still so many small businesses in Italy, including shops in which artisans continue to practice age-old trades and, significantly, pass on their manual, technical skills to new generations.
While Mike went abroad right after graduating from Syracuse with a civil engineering degree, Kim didn’t leave the US until she was 40 years old. “It changed who I was,” she said. And it turned her into an ardent advocate for study abroad. “It opens you up, you see everything differently.”
As one of the only “international” board members, Mike feels a responsibility to help Syracuse students experience the world. “Home will always be there,” Kim says to students. “And you might not get another chance like this.”
We hope this visit to Florence will not be their last.
Read more about the Venutolos’ philanthropy work for Syracuse here.
On Monday, February 24th, 2025, Syracuse University Florence and the Advancing Women Artists Foundation, promoted by Calliope Arts, hosted a Wikipedia Editing Marathon at the Villa Rossa. The event was open to graduate and undergraduate students and the focus was to edit existing Wikipedia articles and write new articles on Wikipedia concerning female artists who were members of the Accademia dell’Arte di Disegno in Florence.
Although the presence of these women artists has been recorded at some level, there is a lack of scholarship on many of them, even on basic databases like Wikipedia. These artists were members of the Accademia and received commissions, sometimes becoming very successful. Getting even minimal information on these women on Wikipedia opens a conversation about their presence and careers, even inspiring further research and interest by scholars. Advancing Women Artists (AWA) works on restoring artworks by female artists while also creating more scholarship on these women to establish their presence in the digital world.
During this event groups of Syracuse Florence staff and students worked on both creating new pages for female artists and expanding existing pages. The event began with a presentation on the current AWA restoration project, which centers around the female artist, Violante Beatrice Siries. Siries was an established portraitist in 18th-century Florence, even gaining patronage by members of the Medici family. She was taught by other artists in addition to attending the Accademia, and later, she taught other female artists.
Paintings done by Violante were discovered in a private Prior’s Chapel in the monastery of the Certosa di Firenze. One of these paintings depicts a post-Annunciation reading Madonna and the other a portrait of Saint Catherine. The paintings were placed here with a third painting depicting Saint Agnes that is being restored alongside the other two. Although originally attributed to Violante during the process of restoration, it has been discovered that the painting is not by Violante. Violante has been the subject of previous AWA restoration projects, and there was existing information including a Wikipedia page on her. However, there is always space to expand and improve.
After a brief editing tutorial, attending staff and students split into smaller groups and got to work. During the editing marathon, three groups of Syracuse students and faculty worked on collecting information for three different female artists into new and existing Wikipedia pages. This process involves taking information from a source and paraphrasing it into an article as opposed to directly quoting or writing one’s own thoughts and ideas. Everything on Wikipedia has to be tied back to a reputable source in an accurate way, which at times can be a tedious writing process. Through Wikipedia pages, writers can directly link other pages mentioned, for example, other artists, locations, and cultural and historical events. This connection pushes them as recommended to readers which will hopefully allow the public to become more knowledgeable on these often-overlooked female artists. With these articles, these artists do have a presence and even a better chance of additional research.
One group included members of the Italian and art history departments who worked with students on translating the Italian version of Violante Siries’ page onto the smaller English version of her Wikipedia page. This involved translating sentences and then cross-referencing sources to fit them into the English page. Frequently, Italian artists will have more information accessible in Italian sources, which leads to pages being written in Italian. Wikipedia publishes the page only in the language it is written. In this case, this meant Violante Siries had a much longer Italian Wikipedia page compared to her English page. While this ensures the information on each page will be clear as opposed to auto-translated, it can be limiting for readers.
Another group included AWA art restorer and Syracuse alumnae Elizabeth Wicks. With this direct connection to past AWA projects, Wicks and her group were able to help make edits to other existing female artists’ pages, all of whom AWA has restored works for previously. The third group began the process of creating a new Wikipedia page for the artist Carlotta Lenzoni De’Medici. Although there was some existing information online, collecting the sources onto one Wikipedia page can make research easier in the future or possibly inspire new research into the life and career of the artist. The process of creating a new Wikipedia page is more complicated than editing an existing page and requires additional approval; as of March 2025, this page is still not live.
Although the event was only two short hours, the group was able to accomplish a lot. This is nowhere near the end of this project, and readers and historians should be aware that, although the presence of women artists was not always publicized, they existed. From the list of female artists that were members of the Accademia dell’Arte di Disegno, several do not have Wikipedia pages or easily accessible information. These were artists and teachers, and although not nearly as common as male artists, their presence needs to be recorded.
The Syracuse Florence community was especially festive this week to celebrate the end of the Carnival period, which concludes with Martedì Grasso (AKA Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday).
Christian traditions like this are strong here in the capital of the Catholic world. For the last few weekends, the streets and piazzas have been a colorful stage for Italian children in costume. Hallowe’en may be gaining in popularity here, but Carnevale remains the main festivity for which Italians dress up and masquerade.
To kick things off, Professor Eric Nicholson and his students performed “Long Live Carnival, Long Live Love” – scenes from the Commedia dell’Arte, an Italian theatrical art form whose origins are tied to the famous Venice Carnival.
Students from Prof. Falciai’s advanced Italian classOlivia Champeau and Maya Lewis
The next day – Mardi Gras – our student services staff organized a mask-making station and a tasting of traditional carnival-related goodies in the Villa Rossa garden.
Giulia Ricciardi, our Student Experience Manager, had this to say about the day’s festivities:
This year the Carnival celebrations at SU Florence brought together tradition and a touch of creativity from both staff members and students. For Mardi Gras, staff members came to the Villa Rossa wearing Venetian masks, cowboy hats, and colorful outfits. As the festivity coincided with our weekly event Typical Tuesday, we offered carnival treats to our students, who seemed to really appreciate it as everything disappeared fast! Student Services also provided blank masks to decorate so students could fully immerse themselves in the spirit of Carnival. All of this took place in our Villa Rossa, decorated from top to bottom for the occasion! We all had fun!
Professor Victoria Bartels, who teaches Italian Arts from Antiquity to Michelangelo and Italian Renaissance Art, has published a chapter in the new collection Refashioning the Renaissance: Everyday Dress in Europe, 1500-1650, edited by Paula Hohti and issued by Manchester University Press.
Entitled “Dressed to kill: arms, armour and protective attire in Renaissance men’s middle- and lower-class dress,” her text discusses how this clothing expressed contemporary notions of masculinity and social status. With a focus on Florence and other Medici-governed territories and using the large data set of Italian inventories collected by the Refashioning the Renaissance project, Bartels examines how arms were legally regulated, their prevalence in the urban middle and lower classes, and the complicated practice of petitioning the state for weapon privileges.
Congratulations on the publication of your book! Could you please tell us how it came to be?
Thank you! The story was indirectly inspired by my time in Florence. I found the city, aesthetically, to be greatly influential for the kind of setting I wanted to work with. Whereas the story itself, and the emotional arc the main character undergoes, came more from a personal crisis I experienced in late 2020. I initially wrote it to grapple with what I was going through and to figure out what I was feeling, but then as I revised it and got feedback from others, it grew into something much bigger.
Alexandra (left) with Professor Molly Bourne at the Graduate Symposium
Did your experience in our art history grad program impact the book’s content?
Definitely! While the book is high fantasy, and therefore not set in our world, I based the world off of late 15th century Italy, which was something I studied a lot during the grad program. We would read and discuss so many historical anecdotes in our seminars that I became inspired to do something creative with all the information I’d taken in. I still have quite a few books that I used for my classes, and so I took to re-reading those while revising for further inspiration.
Do art historians have an advantage in tackling fiction writing?
I certainly think so–there is something interesting about our discipline in that we are at once dealing with an inherently creative subject matter (art), yet examining it analytically. I think many who are drawn to this field initially are due to an attraction to beauty and appreciation for the art itself. It then requires a fine balance to utilize both that aesthetic appreciation and a distanced analysis for a sound argument in a paper. Fiction writing requires a similar approach. You must first have a genuine love for the story you’re telling–and a certain amount of creativity to go along with it–but then you need to be able to step back and look at it critically in order to revise and edit it.
Alexandra (center) with fellow grads in 2019
Any advice for budding student writers?
Write, write, write. I’ve heard it said often that you shouldn’t publish the first book you write, and I think it’s true. Of Constellations and Clockwork was the ninth novel I wrote, and in hindsight, I’m glad none of the previous ones were published. It takes multiple books to understand what kind of things you like to write, what works, and to figure out what makes a story uniquely “yours,” compared to other works out there. Read widely in your genre and outside it, and read craft books, but don’t be afraid to bend the rules a bit too.
Dr. David Broder, who teaches our Twentieth-Century Europe course, has published a New York Times comment piece on the recent turmoil in French politics.
It argues that Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National is exploiting not only conflict over immigration and national identity, but also a declining public faith in the country’s welfare model and promise of meritocracy.
Becoming couture is the first book to examine the history of the Italian fashion industry during the global transition brought about by the Second World War. It draws on a wide range of primary sources, some of them newly unearthed, to demonstrate that the Italian fashion industry in the Republican era continued to rely on business practices and professionals established during Fascism. Analyzing changes in promotional discourses and press coverage, the book traces the shift that occurred when manufacturers were encouraged to expand their exports of accessories to include sportswear, knitwear, and moda boutique. This ultimately led to the legitimization of Italian dressmaking as creatively independent of French influences and therefore worthy of the label ‘couture’.
In January, Professor Leonardo Lastilla, who teaches Vine to Table: Italian Wines in Context, presented his latest book, a novel called Il Piccolo Tour (The Little Tour), in three different venues: NessunDove bookstore and the city library in Empoli, and Caffé Letterario delle Murate in Florence.
Lastilla has also recently started a blog dedicated to his literary forays.
An Amazon reviewer calls Lastilla’s new book, “intense and refined,” “an unforgettable voyage through identity and reality.”
Professor Francesca Parotti, who teaches Sustainability in Civil and Environmental Systems at Syracuse Florence, has published a chapter in the book Il design nell’era della creativitàartificiale (Design in the Era of Artificial Creativity), edited by Simone Aliprandi and published by Ledizioni.
Her chapter “Gendered Codification: Bug or Feature?” explores the positive and negative relationships between Artificial Intelligence and the gender gap.
A free online version of the book is now available here.
Last summer, Terry Christovich Gay returned to the Villa Rossa with her husband to share with him a place that had a huge impact on her life. She decided to go into law because of the class that she took here with Professor Donald Meiklejohn. She went on to practice in New Orleans for 47 years.
The syllabus for Terry’s Philosophy of Law class including readings from Macchiavelli and Dante
Terry, who has two children, met her Tampa-born lawyer husband in New York. She had a Proustian moment when they walked into Room 13, our Aula Magna, during her tour of the campus. She was reminded of Professor John Clark Adams’ passion for opera, something he transmitted to countless Syracuse Florence students.
During the tour, Terry had a chance to see the Villa Rossa garden for the first time. Back in 1971, Countess Bona Gigliucci still occupied the top floor of the Villa Rossa, and the only outdoor space Syracuse students had access to was the public Piazza Savonarola out front.
Another difference is that students would stay with two different families over their semester in Florence, though Terry would have preferred to remain in just one. “We would take the bus home for lunch!” Back then, lunch was the most important meal of the day, and was always cooked by Italian host mamme.
“Florence has my heart,” Terry sighed wistfully as she walked around her old stomping ground. She said Florence is much the same today as it was when she studied here, except for the presence of so many tourists.
Another lasting impact of the program for Terry were the friendships she solidified. She and her girlfriends all attended Sweet Briar College back home in the States. “The four of us really became good friends in Florence even though we knew each other before. We all adored our time at Syracuse and had great experiences with our host families. We can’t believe it was such a long time ago!”
A particularly bonding experience for the girls was hitchhiking to the Island of Capri.
On the boat to Capri: “We are from left to right: Betsy Perry, Terry Christovich (me) and Deborah Ziegler. Our other Sweet Briar friend, Jane Potts, was taking the picture.”
She and Deborah Ziegler roomed together when they returned to Virginia and continued studying Italian. Like Terry, Deborah’s interest in law was also awakened in Prof. Meiklejohn’s class. “It has been a lot of fun to learn from Terry about her visit to Villa Rossa,” says Deborah. “Our Syracuse semester in Firenze was a pivotal and exceptional part of each of our lives, and it is heartwarming to know that the program is still thriving!”
From a recent Sweet Briar reunion
Terry’s parents also visited her while she was in Florence and Terry found a letter her dad wrote to her afterward.
I hope the Perruzis are all well and know you will give them our best. You are really lucky to have been quartered with such kind and intelligent people and in this regard I would only have to say, somewhat immodestly I fear, that the Perruzis are very lucky themselves!
At the right of being unduly philosophic, I might express a few thoughts about your situation in Florence. You have many great friends whose company I know you will continue to enjoy, and whose companionship in such a pleasant environment will be doubly pleasant to you. But there will also be times when you will be alone; in that loveliest of cities solitude can contribute to a really rewarding experience. Your Mom likes to kid me about my devotion to “tombstone elegies” but she would agree with me that the opportunity to be alone and have time to consider the beauty and artistry of so many things would be a very fulfilling and happy thing.
From the letter Terry’s dad wrote to her while she was in Florence
