The Albany International Airport, in partnership with the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany, welcomes visitors to the Mario & Matilda Cuomo Pavilion, in recognition of Mario Cuomo’s defining contributions to and support of the New York State Writers Institute, and author and editor Matilda Cuomo’s decades of advocacy for youth mentoring programs including literacy for at-risk youth.
In 1984, Governor Mario M. Cuomo, a published author himself, and the New York State Legislature issued a mandate to the Writers Institute and its founder William Kennedy to provide “a milieu for established and aspiring writers to work together to increase the freedom of the artistic imagination.”
To meet that challenge, the Institute sponsors an array of programs that celebrate literature, writing, and performance, and demonstrate the importance of writers within the larger community through author visits and residencies, film screenings, panel discussions, staged readings, the Albany Book Festival, Albany Film Festival and writing workshops.
Mario and Matilda Cuomo embraced the notion that books, films, plays, and their creators provide portals through which the most personal or complex issues of human understanding can be explored, and their love of reading and writing became a cornerstone for their public service.
The Albany International Airport would like to thank the New York Writers Institute at the University at Albany for their partnership in presenting the Mario and Matilda Cuomo Pavilion, as well as SUNY Press and Grassroot Givers for their generous support.
The Mario and Matilda Cuomo Pavilion is located on the first floor of the Terminal, pre-checkpoint, across from the Information Desk, and is open during normal business hours.
Albany International Airport Art & Culture Program 