Giovanna Melandri

Giovanna Melandri
Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities
In office 21 October 1998 – 11 June 2001
Prime Minister	Massimo D'Alema Giuliano Amato
Preceded by	Walter Veltroni
Succeeded by	Giuliano Urbani
Minister of Youth Policies and Sport
In office 17 May 2006 – 8 May 2008
Prime Minister	Romano Prodi
Succeeded by	Giorgia Meloni
Member of the Chamber of Deputies
In office 15 April 1994 – 14 March 2013
Personal details
Born	(1962-01-28) 28 January 1962 New York City, New York, U.S.
Nationality	Dual nationality (American and Italian)
Political party	PDS (1991–1998) DS (1998-2007) PD (since 2007)
Alma mater	Sapienza University of Rome
Profession	Politician, economist

Giovanna Melandri, (born 28 January 1962) is an Italian-American politician. She was an member in the Chamber of Deputies for 18 years (1994–2012), holding the positions of Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities (1998–2001) and Minister of Youth Policies and Sport (2006–2008). She was the president of MAXXI, the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts of Rome for ten years (2012–2022). She is also the chairwoman of the Human Foundation.

Early life and education

Melandri was born in New York City. She graduated cum laude in political economy at the Sapienza University of Rome.

Career

From 1983 to 1987, Melandri was a coordinator for the work group on industrial and technological politics at Montedison. An environmental activist since 1982, Giovanna Melandri was in charge of international relations for Legambiente (1988–1994). In that capacity, she attended the Bergen Conference on Sustainable Development in 1990 and was a member of the Italian delegation to the UN Rio summit in 1992. In 1991, she became a member of the national secretariat for Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), which in 1998 became known as the Democrats of the Left (DS). Melandri, who also holds U.S. citizenship, cast a vote for Barack Obama during the 2008 Democrats Abroad primary election. Between 1998 and 2001, Melandri was Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities in the centre-left coalition governments of Massimo D'Alema and Giuliano Amato. On 17 May 2006, she was named Minister for Youth Policies and Sport in the second Prodi government. In 2007, she joined the legal successor of the DS, the Democratic Party (PD). Having first been elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1994 with the PDS and DS, she was re-elected as a member of the PD in 2008 and 2013.

Institutional activities

Melandri was part of the leadership and executive board of the PDS/DS/PD from 1992 to 2013. In the Legislature XIX of Italy (1994–1996), she was sitting in the Foreign Affairs Committee and was president of the Committee for Human Rights. She also supervised works of Childhood Special Committee. She was an active promoter of the law against sexual violence, and she promoted the first establishment of the parliamentarian intergroup on bioethics, which she coordinated for two years. This group worked on cutting-edge issues, such as artificial reproduction, cloning, and living will.

In the Legislature XIII of Italy (1996–1998), before being appointed Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities, she was a member of the Culture Committee. She proposed several bills on adoptions, bioethics, assisted reproduction, and the prohibition of extradition to countries that practice the death penalty. Melandri also proposed bills on publishing, telecommunications, and public broadcasting. She represented Italy on the parliamentary delegation to the first World Forum on Television, which was organized by the United Nations in November 1997. From 1998 to 2001, she was appointed Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities. Under her responsibility, Italian cultural policies received the largest share of public funding ever (more than €3 billion) and the first measures of tax incentives for cultural investment. In those years, many cultural restoration sites were finalized thanks to the introduction of extraordinary sources of funding (lottery funds), and policies for contemporary art and architecture were initiated. A national bill establishing MAXXI was passed. In 1999, jointly with the then World Bank president James Wolfensohn and First Lady Hillary Clinton, she promoted in Florence the international forum "Culture Counts: Financing Resources and the Economics of Culture and Sustainable Development". She was invited in 2000 by the then Unites States president Bill Clinton as the European representative to the "White House Conference on Culture and Diplomacy".

In the Legislature XIX of Italy (2001–2006), Melandri was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and she was also a member of the Italian Parliamentary Delegation at the Council of Europe and at the Western European Union. She was also a member of the Parliamentary Supervisory Board on RAI, the national broadcasting TV. She proposed several bills on cinema, the promotion of books and reading, and the protection and promotion of cultural heritage. In the Legislature XV of Italy (2006–2008), she was appointed Minister for Youth Policies and Sport. In this capacity, she launched the programme "Young Ideas Change Italy" (Giovani idee cambiano l'Italia) in support of entrepreneurial ideas launched by people under 30; she also launched the agreement with the Associazione Bancaria Italiana for the programme "Let's Give Credit" (Diamogli credito); she established two new funds, a fund for youth policies, and a fund for sport for all. In agreement with Giuliano Amato, the then Minister of the Interior, she established the first Young Committee for Interreligious Dialogue. In 2005, she actively participated in the Alliance for Civilization promoted by the then Spanish and Turkish prime ministers (José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan). In the Legislature XVI of Italy (2008–2012), she was a member of the VII Committee on Culture, Education, and Science, and she was again a member of the Supervisory Board of the RAI.

Honors and awards

• Honorary Dame Commander of the Civil Division of the Order of the British Empire (16 October 2000)
• Officer of the Legion of Honour (France; 19 September 2003—returned in December 2020)

External links

• Media related to Giovanna Melandri at Wikimedia Commons