American Italian Heritage Association and Museum

Historic Building Celebrates 100 Years from Italian Immigrants to Italian Americans.....We recently held our Open House Celebration on Thursday, April 14th, from 12:00 to 2:00 pm, for the general public to view the architectural details of this historic building and learn about the Italian American experience.

They have arrived,four Sicilian Puppets,circa 1909
now featured in our Folk Art Room

In case you missed it

Times Union News Paper Featured Story

The Albany Times Union published ad story about our museum on Sunday 09/19/2021

Italian American Museum's 25 years due to one man's dedication
Shrishti Mathew
Times Union Albany NY
Shrishti Mathew
Sep. 19, 2021

The American Italian Heritage Museum sits inside an old church building on Central Avenue in Colonie. Much like the people it represents, the building has blended into the scenery while still having a distinct identity of its own.

The credit for this goes to Philip DiNovo. A retired professor from SUNY Morrisville, he felt the need to record and preserve his Italian heritage for himself and for immigrants in the generations to come. With this in mind he started an association for Italian immigrants in 1979.

But as an educator, DiNovo soon realized that in order to illustrate and reinforce history, the Italian American community needed a museum as well. “As an educator, I knew it would be a great vehicle for education and records,” he said. “And that's proven to be true, because people come in and there's a lot of things that they're not aware of. For example, there are two signers of the Declaration of Independence (of Italian descent). I have three degrees and I never realized that until later in life.”

DiNovo discovered that Italian history in the United States was largely fragmented, that people did not know much beyond the histories of their own families. For example, the first Italians came to the U.S. in 1624, something he felt is not widely known.“And I think that many ethnic groups will say that they’ve been left out of the history books, and that their messages are not known by the public. So, we're blessed to have a museum,” he said.

DiNovo started the museum in 1985 in an old, empty convent building in Utica. He asked the pastor if he could use the building rent-free. The pastor agreed, providing that the museum paid all the maintenance costs for the building. The museum stayed in Utica for 13 years. But in 1998, when DiNovo retired, he saw that changes needed to be made for the museum to survive as a cultural institution. To begin with, the museum was costly to own and maintain, even without the rent. Moreover, the Capital Region had a larger Italian American population “I could see the writing on the wall that Albany would be a better place,” he said. “With it being the capital, and also the home to all the universities and colleges, and the heart, really, of upstate New York.”

But a new museum would cost money that DiNovo didn’t have and so he made the difficult decision to close the museum in Utica and move the exhibits into storage.

In 2004, DiNovo and his team purchased a building on Central Avenue that was once a Catholic church, Our Lady of Mercy, which incidentally was built by Italian immigrant laborers in 1922. It came with a crippling mortgage, but he persisted. “We bought three buildings,” he said. “It's a campus. It took us five years to (re)model the building, which was a real challenge, in order to meet all the requirements of the building codes and handicap accessibility.”

In 2009, the museum opened. It includes a Hall of History, two rooms which tell the story of Italian immigrants, one to honor Italian folk art and to exhibit old photos, music and arts rooms, an exhibit to honor veterans and a gift shop. Five years later came a cultural center on the building’s second floor. It includes an art gallery, a memorial chapel, a library and classrooms where Italian language courses and cooking classes are offered.

But despite humble beginnings and a rocky climb up, the institution has survived, becoming a testament and means to honor the Italian American journey. According to DiNovo, the museum has members from 45 states.

“We are not a local museum because we tell the story of immigration,” DiNovo said. “The purpose of the museum is to honor the Italians’ story and their contributions as Americans. We did that for the Italian community across the nation.”

In honor of the Italian immigrants who came to the United States of America, we are committed to record and preserve the contributions of our Italian Heritage and culture to our society through our newsletter, cultural programs, activities, exhibits, and outreach programs.