The project is being carried out in collaboration with the Austral University and aims to digitalize the photographic archives housed in the Central Library of the university by the same name. It involves a collection of some 50,000 pieces which make up two major groups of material: the legacy of Julián Cáceres Freyre and a donation from the anthropologist Jehan Vellard. The photographs are of a vast range of subjects, from family snaps and portraits, to photos of trips through different countries, including pictures of small villages in the Argentine provinces showing daily life and culture, religious images, and stills of South American native peoples taken in the early 20th century as well as postcards. The Bunge y Born Foundation will be purchasing equipment to digitalize all the material so that it can be catalogued and preserved. This will ensure that anyone who is interested can consult it, be they researchers, scholars, university students and those from other institutions working in human sciences.

The Bunge y Born Foundation is contributing to the restoration work of the oldest church in Buenos Aires with a donation for the restoration of the ironwork handrails on the first floor of this historic building. The restoration of the side handrails in the aisles has taken over six months and they have already been put back into place.

Still to come is the restoration of the main set of railings which stands at the back at the opposite end from the altar, by the organ and the choir. This is the largest piece of work and it is only expected to be finished some time at the end of the year.

The project has been made possible by a General Conservation Plan financed by the World Monument Fund through the Bunge y Born Foundation which is managing the funds assigned to the project. The objective is to restore the stained glass windows in the Nuestra Señora de La Merced Basilisk, which dates from 1779.

The task involves dismantling the stained glass windows piece by piece, starting with the series of twelve that are in the dome and chancel. The pieces, darkened by the passage of time, cumulative soot and grime, will be washed with special detergents and finally reassembled on a new lead structure. The work started in May 2008 and is expected to take some nine months.

The initiative is being carried out in collaboration with the Espigas Foundation, which is running the project. The objective is to provide researchers, specialists, artists, critics and interested members of the public with easier access to the documentation stored by the Espigas Foundation. Furthermore, it will provide museums, private and public collections and cultural institutions with the information they need to document their heritage.

In 2008 there will be a further series of projects to expand the installations of the Documentation Center and its data base, as well as the offer of internships at universities to train students about the preservation, cataloguing and classification of documents at private and public libraries. Moreover, a research and editorial project will be published together with CEHIPE as co-author with the aim of publishing the book “El coleccionismo de Arte en Rosario. Colecciones, mercado y exhibiciones. 1900-1970” (Art collection in Rosario. Collections, market and exhibitions. 1900-1970).

The Bunge y Born Foundation is undertaking this Project with the Center of Historic Studies and Information Parque de España with the support of the Spanish International Cooperation Agency and the University of Harvard. The project provides funding subsidies for the microfilming of bibliographic and documentary material which are awarded at an annual public competition whose winners are selected by a jury made up of history researchers. Objectives: to promote the safeguard of historical documentation, based on the preservation of documentary information on microfilm, following the international standards of archive quality for the production and storage of the material stored; to offer organizations all over the country the opportunity to microfilm their collections of documentation; and to facilitate and support the task of both professionals and researchers.

The Leonor Hirsch Prize was set up by Octavio Caraballo and Claudia Caraballo de Quentin in memory of their mother, a great patron of the arts and in particular of contemporary classical music.

Leonor Hirsch (1915-1973) was always keenly aware of the latest national and international trends in music and actively promoted them, generating opportunities for audiences in this country to know them.

The contest, managed by the Bunge y Born Foundation, was open to creators of all nationalities without any age limit and the only condition was that the entry should consist of a work which had never been published or performed.

The objective was to promote contemporary creativity using electroacoustic music and images. There were a total of 57 entries from all parts of the world, involving an electroacoustic part and a visual component based on digital video.
The task of selecting the winner was given to a jury panel made up of Gerald Bennet, Francisco Kröpfl and Nina Colosi, after a performance of the three winning entries given at the Recoleta Cultural Center.

The Bunge y Born Foundation has been an actively-contributing benefactor of the Teatro Colón Foundation since 2006. It makes an important donation in aid of the different projects carried out at the Colón Theater on an annual basis.

The Bunge y Born Foundation awards scholarships for courses taught at the Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study. Over the last year, six grants have been awarded for the online course “Curatorship: administration, design and montage for exhibitions”, and fifteen grants for the course on “Argentine Art: new perspectives for analysis.” The latter is aimed at intermediate-level school teachers.