In January of 1980, moving in New York from Rome, Sandro Dernini with Luigi Ballerini, director of the NYU Italian Studies Program, conceived the new Center for Italian Contemporary Culture of New York University. The Center's activities started in the fall 1980 with a multidisciplinary program, called The Artist in the First Person, presented as an “open window” for contemporary Italian artists to be directly in contact with NYU theatre, cinema, dance, visual arts departments as well as with the New York art community...