Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy

I’ll admit I’m a little bit late to discovering Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy, a six-part CNN Original Series focusing on travel and food, which had its premiere last February. Recently, it’s come to HBO Max and I immediately got hooked.

Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy follows the Academy Award-nominated actor, who travels around Italy to explore the regional culture, cuisine and history of this boot-shaped southern European country with its lengthy Mediterranean Sea coastline that has left its powerful mark on Western culture and food. The series received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including one for Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series, and has been renewed for a second season.

In the first season, filmed both in 2019 and during the Covid-19 pandemic that hit Italy in 2020, Tucci explores Naples and the Amalfi Coast, Rome, Bologna, Milan, Tuscany, and Sicily. Each has a particular theme and all of them are well-written and produced as well as nicely paced. Tucci is stylish and entertaining, both as a storyteller and as a conversationalist – and we learn he’s quite comfortable performing in the kitchen, too. His parents are both of Italian descent, and had roots in Calabria. He spent part of his youth living in Florence, so it’s not surprising that the episode about Tuscany feels like a big family homecoming.

After watching all six episodes of Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy over the past week, it’s easy to make comparisons to Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, which set the standard for fusing food and travel. However, as Tucci admitted in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, “The show that we are doing is distinctly different than his: I am not nearly as adventurous as Tony was, not nearly. Or as brave. But what he did is open the doors to all of us who were interested in food, and travel, to explore in our own ways. … He was an extraordinary writer, a nice person, and a great explorer of the human condition through food.”

While not all of the culinary discoveries Tucci introduces us to are new – and many of them come back to traditional Italian cuisine that focuses on pasta and cheese – the way in which he presents them, filled with his warmth and charisma lighting up the screen, makes this series an enjoyable experience. In Naples, it’s the search for the freshest mozzarella and the best San Marzano tomatoes. In Bologna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of the country, it’s about exploring prosciutto de Parma. In Rome, it’s all about enjoying the creamy carbonara. In Sicily, it’s learning about the hospitality.

Each episode is peppered with equal parts cuisine and culture and how Italy’s colorful history ties them all together – and it’s all captured in living color. It’s what I found very charming and entertaining. Of course, what’s not to love about Italian cuisine as well as hearing the Italian language spoken so eloquently and passionately?

Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy is a smart and endearing series that is revealing about the universal human condition – and how good food and conversation can unite us – and it made me yearn for more after watching each of the six episodes with great interest. May it whet your appetite, too.

Photos: Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy CNN and HBO Max websites.

In America: Remember

Last Saturday on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between 15th and 17th Streets NW, I witnessed a sea of white flags representing the largest participatory art project in a quarter of a century.

In America: Remember, artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg makes tangible the human toll that COVID-19 has taken on our country. The billboard off to one corner has a stark figure posted on it: 700,327. It represents the number of persons in the U.S. who have died of COVID-19. There’s a planted white flag for each of them. 

As I walked around the massive installation located near the Washington Monument – a memorial garden if you will – that went up on September 17 and concluded on Sunday,  I couldn’t help but notice many of them had personalized printed messages. Each represented a real person who died from COVID-19. It’s a reminder of the human cost of this still-ongoing pandemic – all the while as the death toll increases daily and as thousands of Americans continue to refuse to get the free and safe vaccination that could prevent them from becoming part of the death toll – from becoming a statistic.

In my research for writing this post, I learned that it took 150 landscapers three days to install America: Remember, which began with 670,032 flags and represented the largest public participatory art installation on the National Mall since the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt was shown there in full in 1996.

The white flags are spaced 10 inches apart and spread over 20 acres of grass in 60-foot grids. There are nearly four miles of grassy paths to walk along. 

As someone wrote about the installation: “It helps make tangible the sheer scale of loss that is otherwise unfathomable.”

On Saturday, I saw many people walking quietly about the installation, some taking photographs, a few stopping to read some of the many messages. While there were benches to sit and reflect on throughout, I noticed that a few chose to sit on the ground, perhaps to better connect with a lost friend or family member. 

One of the messages I happened upon summed things simply: 

“Hope you’re in a better place brother. Love, Family”

In an interview for artnet.com, Firstenberg, 62, a social practice artist from Washington, D.C., explained what drove her to create In America: Remember.

“The National Mall is the greatest stage, and to have the opportunity to call attention to such a tragedy was something I felt I had to do. Words aren’t working any longer,” she said. 

“Words are falling on unlistening ears. It really is incumbent on visual artists to help translate and reflect back to society what is happening in the hope that things will improve, because art can effect positive change.”

Note: Because many across the country will be unable to visit this exhibition in person, the artist teamed with Esri, Inc. to present In America: Remember in the digital sphere concurrently at InAmericaFlags.org. At this website, people across the country will be able to view flags and join in honoring loved ones lost to COVID-19.

Photos: Michael Dickens © 2021.