The Prix Blumenthal was a grant or stipend awarded through the philanthropy of Florence Meyer Blumenthal (1875–1930) – and the foundation she created, Fondation franco-américaine Florence Blumenthal – to discover young French artists, aid them financially, and in the process draw the United States and France closer together through the arts.

Henri-Louis Bergson was a French philosopher, who was influential in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, especially during the first half of the 20th century until the Second World War, but also after 1966 when Gilles Deleuze published Le Bergsonisme. Bergson is known for his arguments that processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality.