The Leonardo da Vinci Museum of North America hosted a live talk and Q&A event at the Pueblo City-County Library District Rawlings (Main) Branch recently.
The event was free to the public and took place Feb. 6. The stage featured three speakers, with Craig Eliot Cisney, vice president of the board for Southern Colorado Science Center, guiding the discussion with Sara Taglialagamba and Steph Rizzo.
Taglialagamba is the professor of history of renaissance science at the University of Urbino (Italy) and the editor-in-chief of the Leonardo Studies series. Rizzo is a part of the Artisans of Florence International.
Cisney thanked the many community leaders for their support of the museum. He is presenting to the Colorado Economic Development Commission to get approval of the location of the museum. The proposed location is the PBR Sports Performance Center along the Pueblo Riverwalk.
If approved, the Da Vinci museum will be the first of its kind in North America and hopes to open by fall of this year, bringing a cultural and educational impact to Pueblo.
However, Cisney reminded the audience at the Rawling’s Library that the evening’s event would not focus as much on the museum, but rather Leonardo da Vinci himself.
Taglialagamba began the talk by discussing Da Vinci’s childhood, describing him as a great observer of nature. He enjoyed watching birds fly, later studying their wings and bone structure. Rizzo added to the conversation about how Da Vinci can inspire us today.
“He was not only a scientist; he was an artist. Only the eye of the artist can understand nature,” Taglialagamba said.
The historians discussed Da Vinci’s many talents and studies, emphasizing he was more than the man who painted the Mona Lisa.
Da Vinci excelled in math, geometry, painting, sculpting and architecture. He was an inspiration to other influential scientists and artists and remains an inspiration today.
The room was filled with educators, students, local leaders, and community members who expressed their interest in Da Vinci and the proposed museum. One of those educators present was Chris Picicci, director of Italian studies at Colorado State University Pueblo.
Picicci has been involved in discussions about the museum with board chair of the Southern Colorado Science Center, Joe Arrigo. Picicci is excited about the museum’s potential to engage university faculty, staff and students with the Pueblo community and museum visitors.
According to Cisney, the event at the library was one of many to come in association with the museum and he was humbled to see the amount of support at the engaging talk.
“The talk and presentation was a source of pride for me as a representative of the Italian language and culture here in Pueblo. In a way, the presentation on Leonardo da Vinci honored the histories and stories of so many Italian immigrants and their eventual Italian American ancestors – it demonstrates that the native countries of so many of our immigrants have rich and fascinating cultures and cultural histories.
“Da Vinci represents Italian genius at its finest, his curiosity, imagination and freedom to do and be what he wanted, allowed him to observe the world in all its infinite beauty without inhibition; he had the privilege of not having to conform to fifteenth and sixteenth-century societal norms,” Picicci said.
