Gramsci and Americanism. The Prison Notebooks – Exhibition

Gramsci and Americanism. The Prison Notebooks

Exhibition curated by
Fondazione Gramsci

October 22–November 19, 2025

Opening October 22 | 6PM

For the first time in the U.S. a selection of Antonio Gramsci’s famous Prison Notebooks, alongside a collection of books and magazines that were instrumental in fueling and supporting the writing and researching activity of the Italian politician and philosopher during his imprisonment, from 1926 to 1934, when he was eventually released due to serious health conditions, leading to his demise in 1937.

Concurrently with the exhibition, Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU will host the international conference America in Gramsci / Gramsci in America, from October 24 to 25, with over twenty scholars from around the world in attendance. The conference, organized by David Forgacs (NYU) and Kate Crehan (City University of New York) will focus both on Gramsci’s writings about the U.S. and on the impact of his writings as a whole in the United States.

Between 2017 and today, Gramsci’s Notebooks have been exhibited rarely outside of Italy—in London, Paris, and Moscow—each time highlighting different aspects of the author’s ideas.

Gramsci managed to write in prison hundreds of letters and to fill 29 school exercise books with reflections on a wide range of subjects, from politics and history to philosophy, linguistics and literature, as well as four notebooks consisting of translations. Among the many themes, Gramsci took a recurrent interest in “Americanism” – American innovations in factory production and related forms of social organization – both in newspaper articles before his arrest in 1926 and in the Prison Notebook titled “Americanism and Fordism” (1934).

Alongside the Notebooks, the exhibition will display several books and magazines that were instrumental in fueling and supporting the writing and research activities from the prison. The display will also feature the documentary, Antonio Gramsci. La vita, gli scritti, le edizioni (28″), produced by the Fondazione Gramsci. It will also be possible to browse all 33 Prison Notebooks in digital format via a touchscreen.