Laura Mattioli, the president of CIMA, decided to open this space in SoHo to promote public appreciation and advance the study of modern and contemporary Italian art in the United States and internationally. Laura believes that twentieth century Italian art is too little known outside Italy, and that there is an extremely rigid structure of thinking in historiography.

In fact, from Impressionism onwards, the main and irrefutable idea is that everything started in Paris, from the French experience, while all that happened later in Europe is a derivation, a consequence. CIMA wants to question this forced and distorted reading of our past, creating new interrogatives. To accomplish this result, CIMA allows art historians and theorists who attend our center to spend a lengthy amuont of time in front of exhibited works. Indeed, the continuous and profound observation of a work allows the natural flow of reflections and questions.