Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy

Post-Guggenheim Developments

Natalia Grincheva

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351190251
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Études des musées

Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy traces the transformation of museums from publicly or privately funded heritage institutions into active players in the economic sector of culture. Exploring how this transformation reconfigured cultural diplomacy, the book argues that museums have become autonomous diplomatic players on the world stage.

The book offers a comparative analysis across a range of case studies in order to demonstrate that museums have gone global in the era of neoliberal globalisation. Grincheva focuses first on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which is well known for its bold revolutionising strategies of global expansion: museum franchising and global corporatisation. The book then goes on to explore how these strategies were adopted across museums around the world and analyses two cases of post-Guggenheim developments in China and Russia: the K11 Art Mall in Hong Kong and the International Network of Foundations of the State Hermitage Museum in Russia. These cases from more authoritarian political regimes evidence the emergence of alternative avenues of museum diplomacy that no longer depend on government commissions to serve immediate geo-political interests.

Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy will be a valuable resource for students, scholars and practitioners of contemporary museology and cultural diplomacy. Documenting new developments in museum diplomacy, the book will be particularly interesting to museum and heritage practitioners and policymakers involved in international exchanges or official programs of cultural diplomacy.

1 Cultural diplomacy of a different kind

This chapter places international museum activities within the current diplomacy literature. It applies a framework of non-state diplomacy and non-state legitimacy to the context of museums. It also establishes strong boundaries between cultural diplomacy and a wide range of terms that are frequently invoked in discussions about museum diplomacy, including cultural relations, nation branding and soft power. This distinction has proven useful in the context of the book. It helps to differentiate museums’ international engagements between those that we can confidently call cultural diplomacy and those that fall outside of diplomatic activities. The main goal of the chapter is to develop an analytical framework of museum diplomacy with clearly defined characteristics and principles of operation. This framework guides the development of key arguments throughout the following case studies.

Cultural diplomacy received status as an official state activity in the midst of the Cold War between the United States (U.S.) and the Soviet Union during the twentieth century. Initially, it was defined by the U.S. Department of State in 1959 as “the direct and enduring contact between people of different nations […] to help create a better climate of international trust and understanding in which official relations can operate” (U.S. Department of State 1969, iv). Since then, cultural diplomacy has been mainly employed as a form of strategic cross-cultural communication between countries. While it has always relied on people-to-people exchanges to establish bridges of mutual trust, the design of programs and funding matters have remained a prerogative of national governments (Schneider 2003).

However, an era of expanding globalisation and rapid technological progress has increased global mobility and the circulation of capital, labour and information. This new, complex international climate has progressively challenged traditional models of diplomatic communication. In the past, these were closed, predicted and controlled by official diplomats. Now, international communication is becoming more transparent and more exposed to global publics (Hocking et al. 2012; Melissen 2005). The classical model of bilateral relations between states has been replaced by a new diplomacy. This diplomacy is based on poly-lateral communication among a wide range of actors leading to a growing dissolution of the absolute powers of nation states (Jora 2013, 46).

Since the 1990s, the state monopoly on diplomacy has been gradually declining. Instead, the field of international relations has seen the appearance of new, non-state actors who “have global interests and the will to make them felt on the world stage” (Kleiner 2008; La Porte 2012, 1; Melissen 2005; Potter 2002; Spiro 2013). Non-state actors can be defined as “non-sovereign entities that exercise significant economic, political, or social power and influence on the national or international levels” (La Porte 2012, 4). Non-state diplomacy is based on these actors’ capabilities as opposed to diplomacy of status. In many cases, non-state actors do not have legal status to represent their states. However, they can acquire diplomatic capabilities and sources of legitimate representation that make them key actors in the field of diplomacy (Kelley 2014).

Based on a large body of diplomacy literature that explores sources of non-state legitimacy, three important components of actors’ capabilities stay recurrent across different scholars (Avant et al. 2010; Barnett and Finnemore 2005; Edwards 1999; Kelley 2010; La Porte 2012). They include (1) expertise, which refers to the strong global reputation of an organisation; (2) credibility, or the ability of an organisation to establish long-term trustful relationships with global audiences; and (3) resources and alliances, which point to an institutional capacity to generate funding for its global activities. The following sections apply these capabilities to contemporary museums in order to define these institutions as legitimate actors of cultural diplomacy. This definition helps to unfold the main arguments of the book, which sees museums in the twenty-first century as economically viable players with recognised cultural expertise and credibility in the eyes of the foreign publics to lead cultural diplomacy activities.

Museums as diplomacy experts

Expertise of non-state actors refers to a specialised professional knowledge on issues of global public concern. It also draws on the efficiency of these actors in implementing international projects (Reinalda and Verbeek 2001, 150). To establish expertise on a global level, an organisation has to find a way to differentiate itself among a wide range of players. It can do this by excelling at its core competency such that, ideally, it is in high demand with a relatively low supply (Mitchell 2014, 82). Organisations with recognised expertise grow their global reputation by leading international programs while preserving their autonomy against other powerful stakeholders.

Expertise makes non-state actors competitive in the global environment, in some cases to such an extent that they outperform their national governments. In contrast to highly bureaucratic and slow government organisations, non-state actors are usually very dynamic. They are more adaptive and highly responsive to innovations and changes in an unpredictable international climate (Jora 2013, 36). These qualities make non-state actors powerful enough to intervene in complex diplomatic situations, when governments fail to act in a timely manner, to resolve difficult issues.

In the museum world, a good example is the leadership of Neil MacGregor, former Director of the British Museum. On behalf of the museum, MacGregor mediated high-level diplomatic situations to provide first aid to cultural institutions and communities in the midst of major international conflicts. For example, during the Iraq War, which started in 2003, when the U.S. and British allies invaded the country, it was the British Museum that saved Iraq’s main repository of national archaeological treasures from complete destruction. In the mass chaos of the raid, the Iraq National Museum was descended upon by looters and “gangs […] carrying away what they could and smashing what they could not” (Telegraph 2011). MacGregor telephoned the prime minister of Great Britain, who had U.S. tanks deployed in front of the museum to secure it. During the following week, British Museum curators travelled to Baghdad to help their Iraqi colleagues with conservation and preservation tasks and provided first aid to recover museum resources.

This case demonstrates the strong power of the British Museum to directly intervene in official diplomatic relations among countries in a complex international context. It also points to the ability of the museum to fill the gap in the diplomatic climate that occurs when government actors fail to work proactively. This ability draws on the cultural expertise of a museum that owns one of the world’s largest and most diverse collections, stretching across times and civilisations. This colonial heritage has always given the museum leverage and the power to position itself and act on the world stage as a cultural ambassador. The museum pursues its ambition to represent “the world under one roof” (MacGregor 2012, 39) by actively involving itself in contemporary cultural and geopolitical issues (Binns 2005). This diplomacy on the part of the British Museum is a strategic pathway for retaining its institutional legitimacy in the context of ongoing acrimonious debates that demand the return of the world’s greatest treasures, currently in the museum’s possession, to their homelands.

Obviously, this diplomacy is based on the institutional privilege as well, as it is a result of the museum’s imperial colonial legacy. Nevertheless, the cultural expertise of the British Museum as it outperforms government efforts in complex diplomatic situations is undeniable. Another good example of this is the 2005 blockbuster exhibition “Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia.” This exhibition aimed to mitigate political tension between the U.K. and Iran. While President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejected British offers of economic concessions in return for an end to nuclear activities, national institutions in Tehran loaned art treasures to the British Museum. This act of diplomacy aimed to tell meaningful stories about the Persian Empire during 550–330 BC under the Achaemenid Great Kings, in order to facilitate a better understanding of Iran culture, history and identity (Hoggard 2006). This case also demonstrates the strong reputation of the British Museum among its international colleagues to lead cross-cultural initiatives that address urgent diplomatic matters.

Museums earn their diplomatic expertise by employing cultural knowledge as a foundational means of communicating to, understanding and appreciating the other. This approach allows them to humanise complex issues in the international political environment and to project a high level of institutional credibility in the eyes of its foreign constituency.

Museums as institutions of trust

Credibility, as a significant source of diplomatic capabilities, is based on building strong connections and trustful relationships with a direct constituency. Non-state actors can leverage their legitimacy because they are able to exploit their mobility, flexibility and less centralised organisational structure to better communicate with the public (Kelley 2010, 289). Specifically, the dependence of non-state actors on public support impels them to excel at their communication strategies and improve the quality of their messaging (La Porte 2012). Non-state actors demonstrate strong advantages over more official diplomats because they usually establish closer ties with the public and thus can better serve the populations they claim to represent (Kelley 2014; Melissen 2006; Snow 2009). As a result, non-state actors often have greater credibility than governments “precisely because they have a better understanding of the citizens’ concerns and deal with them more effectively” (La Porte 2012, 10).

In the twenty-first century, many governments have recognised the power of non-state credibility. For example, in the U.S., citizen or backyard diplomacy is well promoted by the State Department to encourage the non-profit art sector to take the lead in cross-cultural engagements and to serve as a diplomatic force on behalf of the country. “The American people are some of our nation’s best ambassadors,” former President George W. Bush used to say. “We must find ways to utilize their talents and skills more effectively […] and we need more of our citizens involved in our public diplomacy” (U.S. Department of State Archive 2005).

On the one hand, this government approach to backyard diplomacy is rather instrumental. It aims to capitalise on citizens’ ability to build trustful relationships with other countries in order to achieve foreign policy goals. On the other hand, it delegates power to the public sector, demonstrating that “informal diplomacy is becoming ever more important than formalized institutions” (Vezirgiannidou 2013, 636). However, an excessive guardianship of citizen diplomacy undermines its credibility and destroys a positive image of involved actors (Scott-Smith 2009, 52). Cultural exchanges motivated by direct government interests transform these initiatives into a form of government propaganda (Jenkins 2009).

Within the context of American museums, government involvement in cross-cultural activities has always been a matter of controversy. A good example is the Museum Connect Program (2007–2017), funded by the U.S. government and administered by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) to implement museum diplomacy across countries. Through this program, American museums receive government awards of up to $100,000 to work in collaboration with foreign museum partners. These partnerships aimed to celebrate “art, history, cultural preservation and science exchanges,” bringing people together to foster greater understanding (U.S. Department of State 2012).

In 2007, when the program was first opened, National Public Radio immediately questioned its credibility, interrogating whether American museums really “want to be used to promote foreign policy,” building on “the Marshall Plan” (Blair 2007). Lee Rosenbaum, who writes for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, criticised the program: “cultural ties can assuredly improve relations between countries, but not when they are conceived as an instrument of political propaganda. AAM has done a dis-service to its members by signing up for this dubious government-curated enterprise” (Rosenbaum 2007).

This civil society discourse around government practices in cultural diplomacy not only proves academic claims in favour of the power of non-state credibility but also reveals that museums are expected to act autonomously from the control of the national government. The credibility of museums as non-state actors of diplomacy rests on their reputation for serving up arts and culture rather than promoting national ideologies. However, to pursue their institutional cultural missions, museums need to secure funding for their global activities. To stay independent from political influence, non-state actors need to build their own resources and alliances, ensuring they can sustain their operations in the international context.

Museums in the global economic sector of culture

Diversified sources of income from multiple stakeholders can minimise and even eliminate the economic dependency of organisations on national governments (Mitchell 2014). Private or corporate donors help non-profit institutions, including museums, to build autonomy from strong political pressure and direct control of the government.

Private museum diplomacy, though, is not new, particularly in the U.S., where most museums were founded by wealthy philanthropists (Arndt 2005). In comparison to European museums, established under the auspice of government forces, U.S. museums have grown from the ground up, created by individuals and families to celebrate and commemorate personal legacies. The American public museum “is a monument to the powerful men who not only led the development of American finance capitalism, but also understood its cultural and ideological needs” (Duncan 1995, 70). Even in the context of the Cold War, private forces played a key role in sustaining museum diplomacy in the U.S.

For example, multiple shows of American Expressionism toured around the world under the strong leadership of its supporter and private philanthropist Nelson Rockefeller (Guilbaut 2005). Exclusively private sources, or “Rockefeller’s deep pockets overturned the gradualist thinking of the founders of cultural diplomacy” (Arndt 2005, 363). It was with Rockefeller’s support and help that the idea of a “museum without walls” came into reality. Since 1946, he has empowered many American museums to go international and engage more closely with their foreign counterparts through international exchange programs (Arndt 2005, 364).

Among more recent examples is the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art in New York (Goff 2013). It was established by Shelley and Donald Rubin to offer comprehensive programming on Himalayan art, culture and religion by making accessible their private collections. Without support from the governments of Bhutan or Nepal, the museum “promotes understanding, and inspires personal connections to the ideas, cultures, and art of Himalayan Asia” (RMA 2004). “Arguably, those governments would not be able to achieve what the Rubins have achieved, insulated from the politics of promoting national culture” (Goff 2013, 427). Rubin’s private philanthropy, with international vision and missions that create platforms for a cross-cultural dialogue and exchanges, establishes alternative avenues for museum diplomacy.

While private philanthropic support remains strong in the museum sector,...