Blinken Open Society Archives

Open Society Archives
Nyílt Társadalom Archívum
Location	Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
Established	1995
Other information
Director	István Rév
Website	www.osaarchivum.org

Blinken Open Society Archives (abbreviated as Blinken OSA) is an archival repository and laboratory that aims to explore new ways of assessing, contextualizing, presenting, and making use of archival documents both in a professional and a consciously activist way.^[1] It was founded by George Soros in 1995, and opened in 1996 as a department of the Central European University.^[2] Originally called simply Open Society Archives (OSA), in 2015 it was renamed Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives after receiving a major donation from the couple.^[3]

Its archival holdings relate to post-war European history, the Cold War, the history of the former Eastern Bloc, samizdat, the history of propaganda, human rights, and war crimes. Blinken OSA is also the archive of the global activities of the Open Society Foundations.

Blinken OSA also functions as a teaching and research department of the Central European University and offers MA and PhD courses on the theories and methods of archives, evidence, human rights, documentary cinema, twentieth century history, and the politics of the Cold War.^[4]

The institution is located in central Budapest, in the Goldberger House, which was originally built in 1911 as a textile warehouse, and later functioned in the 1980s as the "dollar shop" in Budapest, where goods could only be purchased with hard currency.^[5]

The building now also incorporates a gallery space, Galeria Centralis,^[6] which hosts Blinken OSA's public programs, exhibitions and conferences.