The ten-month festival dubbed "Extremely Hungary" is probably the grandest foreign cultural mission of Hungary designed to shape the country's image abroad through the arts, Istvan Hiller said.
In an outline of the events director of the Hungarian Cultural Centre in New York Laszlo Jakab Orsos said concerts, exhibitions, film-screenings, literary events and theatre performances will be organised in the US capital's National Gallery and the Library of Congress, as well as in New York's Lincoln Centre, the Jewish Museum and 92nd Street Y cultural centre.
The festival will open with a concert by the Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Ivan Fischer in New York's Carnegie Hall.
Programmes and events will be built around the two themes of the roots and the present of Hungarian contemporary art, and the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the political transition from communism.
The chief patrons of the festival are two Hungarian-born personalities living the US, businessman philanthropist George Soros and journalist Kati Marton.
The Hungarian culture ministry contributes 700 million forints (EUR 2.5m) to the festival to be matched with 500 million provided by US corporate and private sponsors.
