The Friendship Ambassadors Foundation is a US-based operating foundation with extensive activities in Hungary, as well as other countries. The Foundation has promoted exchanges in the performing arts, has organized festivals and performances, and has in the last 25 years sponsored over 40,000 individuals on exchanges in 25 countries. In Hungary, it has organized the American Hungarian Music Days in Veszprém (1993), a similar event in 1994, a Sacred Music Symposium and Festival in Budapest (1994), and is planning for 1995 the third American- Hungarian Music Days in Veszprém, a Children's Choir Festival in Komló, and an exchange program with the Hungarian Dance Academy in Budapest. The Corvina Foundation's grant was for sending an arts management expert to the 1993 Veszprém Music Days to hold a workshop on arts management and prepare an assessment of the performing arts.
The Invisible College (Láthatatlan Kollégium) is in its third year of operations. Its purpose is to revive the tradition of elite education (in the humanities and social sciences) that had been suppressed under Communism. It provides an opportunity for the very best university students to pursue studies in unusual depth and to the full extent of their abilities. Students are admitted after rigorous entrance examinations. The Invisible College offers a limited number of courses and provides extensive special tutoring to students (as in the Oxford-Cambridge tradition). It admits annually about 20-25 students. It has a distinguished Board of Trustees and outstanding professors from various universities participate in its programs.
The Corvina Foundation's grant was to enable one of the very best of this elite group of students to spend a year at an American University.
The Magyar Képzőművészeti Főiskola(Hungarian College of Fine Arts) provides a regular curriculum in the representational arts, i.e., in painting, sculpture, graphic arts, and so on.
The Corvina Foundation's grant is for establishing three $1,000 prizes, one to be awarded annually for the next three years, for the most creative students graduating from the College. The prizes will be awarded on the basis of the College's faculty's evaluation of the creative potential and performance of the students.
The Budapest University of Economic Sciences is the premier academic institution in economics, management, and other social sciences in Hungary, and possibly in all of Central and Eastern Europe. It has maintained a significant academic potential even during the Communist regime and its faculty produced research output that was considered good and solid by Western standards even in the pre-1989 period. Its graduates are frequently admitted to graduate programs in economics in the US; two of its graduates were currently enrolled as of 1995 in the PhD program in economics at Princeton and one was enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Corvina Foundation's grant is towards the costs of a new business reference library at the University.
The foundation's grant is similar to the previous grant to the College and will allow one of its very best students to attend an American University for one year.
The grant is for conducting a one-week long course in Pécs, from June 24 to 28 on marketing the non-profit arts. The course will deal with mission, nonprofit structure and trusteeship, strategies for global involvement and development. It will also deal specifically with market research, fundraising, grant application writing, planning of special events, audience development, etc. The program is partially supported by the Hungarian Government and a contribution in kind is being made by Delta Airlines.
The foundation's grant is similar to the previous grants to the College and will allow one of its very best students to attend an American University for one year.
This organization is a small literary publisher; it publishes the wonderful literary magazine Liget, and occasionally books. The grant was a contribution towards its expenses.The website of Liget is accessible here.
The Dibner Institute is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and concerns itself with the history of science. The purpose of the grant was to enable a distinguished historian of science to undertake a fact-finding trip to the science and engineering library at the University of Miskolc and evaluate its holdings. This library, originally derived from the College of Engineering at Selmecbánya, in what is now Slovakia, is an outstanding collection of books on engineering and science from the 17th through 19th centuries and has considerable historical importance.
This was a second grant to permit this outstanding publisher to continue its work and specifically funded the publication of a literary anthology.
This grant enabled a Hungarian expert to participate in the Empire State Partnership Arts in Education conference.
The Budapest Review of Books (Budapesti Könyvszemle), modeled somewhat after the New York Review of Books, is an outstanding, high-quality publication that reviews books and publishes interpretative and analytical articles. The grant was a contribution towards its annual expenses.
FHHEF (Magyar Felsõoktatás Baráti Alapitvány) was founded in 1998 with the help of the US Treasury Department's Office of Technical Assistance, for the purpose of increasing the ability of higher educational institutions to raise money from non-governmental sources. There is very little private giving in Hungary and there has been no tradition in universities of alumni giving, development offices, and the like. FHHEF developed a sensible program of assisting universities to create alumni offices and development offices and it is to be hoped that, as a result of its activities, within a few years Hungarian universities will be able to command larger financial resources from the private sector.
The quality of this publication continues to be wonderful and we supported it with another contribution towards its annual expenses.
This grant was used for the publication of a wonderful book by the poet Dezső Tándori containing his reflections on poetry.
The quality of this publication continues to be wonderful and we supported it with another contribution towards its annual expenses.
This grant was used for the publication of a book of poetry by the poet Emilia Búth.
This institution, renamed recently from Magyar Képzőművészeti Főiskola(College of Fine Arts), has used the previous grant for giving $1,000 prizes each year to its most creative graduating student to such good advantage that it seemed important to renew the grant for another three years. One of the previous prize-winners, Zoltán Ötvös, has been recognized after his graduation by being awarded a scholarship to continue his studies in Marseille.
The quality of this publication continues to be wonderful and we supported it with another contribution towards its annual expenses.
This grant was used for the publication of a trilogy by two philosophers, Lajos András Kiss and Gábor Kovács, and by a literary historian, Iván Gyõrffy. Kiss' work is entitled "On the Trail of the Lost Conscience," which is a pun on Proust's "A la recherche du temps perdu." The second volume is on the history of thought and civilization and is entitled "The Chances of Obstinate Bona Fide." The third volume has an environmental slant and is entitled "Endgame."
Another grant was made to underwrite some of the operating expenses of the Review. It continues to be of the highest intellectual quality and publishes the works of the best Hungarian writers and thinkers. One recent issue highlighted philosophy and historical poetics and contained a review essay on Husserl's Cartesian Meditations. Another recent issue discussed the nature of totalitarian states and the problem of archeological excavation, documentation and conservation versus reconstruction. The latter was important enough to become the main subject of discussion at a presentation that took place at the Arts Exhibition Hall (Mücsarnok). The latest issue contains a review of the minutes of the round-table negotiations immediately preceding the first free elections in 1990.
The volume of poetry by Emilia Búth became so popular that it had to be reprinted.The volume by Iván Gyõrffy, Endgame, was published and contains an account of intellectual wanderings through Florida, South Africa, Armenia, Vietnam and other places. The two most recent issues of the journal Liget contain some wonderful poetry, reflections on Hungarian history, global governance and a sustainable future for the environment. The Foundation's most recent grant was for covering some of Liget's operating expenses.
Another grant was made to this wonderful periodical so that it could continue its creative work. Recent issues contain short stories, poetry, a short play, some interviews (one with a Hungarian professor of psychology and one with a member of the Corvina Board of Trustees), as well as an interesting article on Lewis Carroll.
Since our last grant to this institution it has been reclassified from a "College" to "University" status, which it well deserves. Two members of the Board of Trustees visited the institution during the summer of 2003 and met with the Rector (President) of the university and had the opportunity of visiting the exhibit of the art works created by students. The new grant renews the prize program and enlarges it by offering prizes to the two most creative graduating students each year. A significant change in the Corvina Foundation webpage is that we now display selected works by the prize winners over the past several years. To see examples of the art, click here.
The Stencil Cultural Foundation is the parent organization of an important intellectual periodical, Beszélõ. It publishes numerous political commentaries; recent articles have analyzed attitudes toward the European Union, human rights (an article by the important philosopher János Kis, corruption and similar subjects. But it also publishes articles on other subjects, such as sponsorship of art in the Graeco-Roma period, Voltaire, and numerous other topics. The Foundation's grant is for covering operating expenses.
The family library of the Rákóczi family had been housed at the Sárospatak Reformed College until the final months of World War II, when it was removed to Budapest, where it was seized by the Red Army and ultimately moved to the Nizhni Novgorod State Regional Universal Library. Very little has been done to date in assessing the content and significance of this collection. A historian at Saint Louis University is planning to undertake a detailed study of this library, which is potentially one of the most significant sources of information about literate culture in the Danube basin in the 17th century.
The Academy was founded in 1875, and since that time, has been extremely influential inproviding training in all aspects of musical preformance, composition and musicology. It has had a stellar faculty and outstanding directors throughout its history. The present grant is for the purpose of enabling five students to go abroad to compete in international competitions.
State financed ballet education and training started in 1937 at the Hungarian Royal Opera, and the predecessor current institution was founded in 1937. In its current form it has existed since 1983. It teaches classical ballet, folk dansing, modern dance, choreography, dance theory and related subjects. The grant is for the purpose of (1) allowing two students to come to the US to study and work with American choreographers, and (2) of partially defraying the health insurance and living expenses of Hungarian students from neighboring countries in which they are minorities.
Liget, a literary publisher supported by the Foundation several times in the past, has requested a grant to redesign its webpage, which will allow archiving of its content and online searches by author, title and keyword.
This is a new grant to Saint Louis University for the purpose of exploring the possibilities of some large-scale digitization, and to assess the need for conservation treatment of rare and perishable materials at the Sárospatak Library, housed at the State Regional Library in Nizhni Novgorod.
The present grant is for the purpose of enabling several students to go abroad to compete in international competitions and is similar to an earlier grant made to the University for this purpose.
The grant is for the purpose of partially defraying the health insurance and living expenses of Hungarian students from neighboring countries in which they are minorities, such as from Romania and Ukraine. A previous grant of this type was extremely helpful in allowing such students to study at the Academy. For an image of a student in performance, click here.
The present grant is for the purpose of enabling several students to go abroad to compete in international competitions and is similar to an earlier grant made to the University for this purpose.
The grant is for the purpose of partially defraying the health insurance and living expenses of Hungarian students from neighboring countries in which they are minorities, such as from Romania and Ukraine. Several previous grants of this type was extremely helpful in allowing such students to study at the Academy. For an image of students in performance, click here.
Our new grant renews the prize program under which two of the most creative graduating students receive substantial prizes each year, which allows them to devote themselves to creating art.
The present grant is to enable an investigation of the possible existence of rare library materials that may be found in the libraries of Uzhgorod (Ukraine), also called Ungvár in Hungarian. It is therefore similar in intent to the grant that enabled the identification and photographing of important materials from the Sárospatak College Library that were housed for many years in the State Regional Library of Nizhni Novgorod and have recently been returned to Hungary.