Faculty violinist Daniel Sender was recently named a recipient of the Tulipán Foundation’s 2026 Art & Culture Award

Based in New York City, the Tulipán Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting and sharing Hungarian arts and culture through philanthropic initiatives and programming.

Prof. Sender’s award will support archival research at the Hungarian National Gallery, as well as performances by the Ragged Mountain Quartet (Daniel Sender, Benjamin Rous, Danielle Wiebe Burke, and Clara Lee Rous) in Budapest, New York City, and Charlottesville.

The project explores the musical life of Hungarian painter Róbert Berény. In addition to his achievements as a painter, Berény was a violinist and composer who maintained close friendships with some of Hungary’s most celebrated composers, including Béla Bartók and Leó Weiner. Although nearly all of Berény’s compositions are now lost or destroyed, this project will bring new attention to the manuscript of his unpublished string quartet.

The Ragged Mountain Quartet will present Berény’s quartet alongside string quartets by his close friends Bartók and Weiner, offering audiences a rare opportunity to encounter Berény’s work within the musical and artistic world he inhabited.

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