The Joseph Brodsky Fellowship Fund receives Blavatnik Family Foundation Grant

PRESS RELEASE JANUARY 10, 2018

 The Joseph Brodsky Fellowship Fund is very pleased to announce that the Brodsky Fund has received the third installment in a major multi-year grant from the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The grant supports an annual Brodsky fellow in each of the Fund’s two fields of art and poetry.

 The Blavatnik Family Foundation is a non-for-profit organization established by British-American businessman and philanthropist Len Blavatnik with the aim of supporting higher education, scientific research, and the arts. In 2016 the Foundation gave $25 million to Carnegie Hall, on whose board Mr. Blavatnik sits, in support of its artistic, educational, and digital initiatives. In 2017 he received a British knighthood for his services to philanthropy.

 The Joseph Brodsky Fellowship Fund had its beginnings in 1995, when the poet Joseph Brodsky approached the mayor of Rome to urge the creation of a Russian Academy in Rome. “Italy was a revelation to the Russians,” he wrote to the mayor, referring to Russia’s nineteenth-century tradition of artistic pilgrimage to Italy. “Now it can become the source of their renaissance.” A group of Mr. Brodsky’s friends assembled after his death to continue his effort, by sending Russian writers and artists to Rome for free periods of work and study. Thirty poets and artists have now received three-month Brodsky Fellowships, funded largely by private donations from America and Europe. It is the continuing support of Brodsky's friends and colleagues that makes the fellowships possible.

 The Brodsky and Blavatnik Foundations share a vision of supporting ongoing exploration and independence of thought and initiative in Russian intellectual enterprise. The Brodsky Foundation welcomes this opportunity to join in the distinguished legacy of the Blavatnik philanthropic endeavor.

For more information: info@josephbrodsky.org