Suffolk County will be home to a new Italian American Heritage Museum, officials announced Thursday, though they have yet to pick a location, set a budget, or lock in an opening date. The announcement comes as the county prepares to form a committee dedicated to tracking down a site for the project.
Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine said plainly that “Suffolk County will be home to an Italian American Heritage Museum,” according to Daily Voice. The announcement itself was light on specifics: there was no location, budget, or timetable announced alongside it, the outlet reported. Still, the project has momentum, with Newsday reporting that Romaine has announced plans to form a new committee tasked with finding a location for what would be the county's first Italian American museum.
No cost estimates are available yet for the project, per the same Newsday report, which also notes that officials hope to announce a location for the museum, an opening date, and initial exhibits by some point in 2027. That timeline remains an official hope rather than a confirmed plan, and plenty of details — including the committee's eventual makeup — are still unresolved.
A Partnership With Manhattan's Little Italy
The Suffolk museum will partner with the Italian American Museum in New York City, according to the Daily Voice report, drawing on the experience of an institution already running in the heart of Little Italy. That museum is a nonprofit cultural institution located at 151 Mulberry Street, and its founder and president is Joseph Scelsa, who the Daily Voice says will help plan the Suffolk County museum.
Newsday similarly reports that Suffolk will lean on Scelsa's expertise in forming its museum, and he's clearly enthusiastic about the undertaking. “It's about time,” Scelsa said, according to the Daily Voice's report. The Manhattan museum he leads opened its current facility on October 1, 2024, and has said it planned to debut a permanent exhibition called “The Italian American Experience” — featuring five interactive exhibits and thousands of artifacts — in the summer of 2025.
Why Suffolk, Why Now
The museum is meant to reflect the contributions of Suffolk County's largest ethnic group to the country and the region, the Daily Voice reports. That framing lines up with population figures showing Italian Americans make up a substantial share of Long Island. Italian Americans account for more than 20% of Long Island's population, per the Daily Voice, and are considered the largest ethnic group in Suffolk County itself.
The figures are compatible: the Daily Voice reports Suffolk is home to more than 300,000 Italian Americans according to U.S. census data, while Newsday puts the figure at more than 316,000 — which it describes as the largest Italian American population of any county in New York. Neighboring Nassau County, for comparison, has more than 200,000 Italian Americans, according to the Daily Voice.
For now, the project exists mostly as an announcement and a promise: a forthcoming committee, a partnership with an established Manhattan institution, and a county executive eager to put Suffolk's Italian American heritage on permanent display. The where, the when, and the how much are all still to be determined.
