Press Release November 20, 2011

The Joseph Brodsky Fellowship Fund is very pleased to announce that the Brodsky Fund has received a major grant from the Prokhorov Foundation for 2011.

Irina Prokhorova, who administers the Foundation, has been a valued advisor to the Brodsky Fund from its beginnings. The fund is enormously proud and grateful to have had the opportunity to work with a person who has done so much to envision the future of the arts and scholarship in Russia, through her magazines, spearheaded by the central Novoye Literaturenoye Obozrenie, her publishing house, and her other endeavors. In addition to its Brodsky Fund grant, the Prokhorov Foundation has just embarked on a project to support the translation of Russian literature abroad (www.prokhorovfund.ru), kindred to the Brodsky Fund in spirit. Prokhorova has also just this year published with NLO an anthology of the work of Brodsky Fund writers and artists, edited by Claudia Scandura, «Рим совпал с представленьем о Риме…». The grant will support Brodsky Fund fellowships in literature and art.

The Joseph Brodsky Fellowship Fund had its beginnings in 1995, when Mr. 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. A number of poets and artists have now received three-month Brodsky Fellowships, funded largely by private donations from America and Europe and also by a seminal grant from the Trust for Mutual Understanding. It is the continuing support of Brodsky's friends and colleagues that makes the fellowships possible. Supporters hope in this way to fulfill Mr. Brodsky’s dream of bringing Russian culture together with the many other countries that find artistic sustenance in the ancient legacy of Rome.