The award will be presented to Joseph Scelsa, founder and president of the Italian American Museum in New York, on Friday, October 18, at 6 p.m., at the Columbus Citizens Foundation headquarters in New York, as part of the promotional event “Basilicata: a wonderful land,” organized by Mondi Lucani in collaboration with the American foundation.

Of Italian descent, Scelsa is among the foremost experts on Italian-American issues; he teaches and lectures extensively related precisely to the Civil Rights of Italian-Americans. In 2001, he founded the Italian American Museum with the goal of “offering a true and real representation of Italian Americans, recounting the contribution they have made to the economy, culture and American society in general and the struggles they have faced for integration.”