The Société Imaginaire, through the Batuz Foundation, an international cultural institution, fosters collaboration among artists, writers, statesmen, diplomats, and other intellectuals from diverse cultures and societies in South America, Central Europe, and the United States. The collaboration leads to multi-layered projects with specific end results. Each project is an experiment in which conventional boundaries-geographic, cultural, disciplinary-are addressed. These experiments in international collaboration are applicable at many levels of education.

    The artist/writer portfolios are among the most tangible products of these collaborative efforts. Six portfolios, each with six pairs of complementary texts and images, contain works by writers and artists from different countries. Successive portfolios have built upon the experience of prior editions. Collectively, the successive portfolios constitute a sequential record of specific moments in the history of international collaborations. The momentum of the project is expected to produce new ideas and modes of collaboration.

    These portfolios are donated to the principal museums and libraries of modern and contemporary art in Central Europe, South America, and the United States, areas to which the foundation remains committed. In these repositories, the portfolios constitute not only the record of a noble experiment, but they are also works of art, collaboratively devised for a specific occasion by prominent poets, writers, graphic artists, painters, and sculptors, including Nobel and Poet Laureates, and statesmen.

    The portfolio project is also a collaboration between the Batuz Foundations and the private sector. Through supporting this pioneering project, individual contributors-corporations, agencies, and individuals-can demonstrate a commitment to international cultural collaboration; promotion of art, literature, and innovative education; support of national museums and collecting libraries; and dissemination to the viewing public.