“This is what I like, we are sitting here in my gallery in former East German ground, former Russian land and I now have visitors from all over the world and the theme is peace, togetherness, freedom, anti-racism. I feel when I have such tools and I have such guests here, like you, that my work makes sense.”

For those of us interested in cultural diplomacy, the Hajj exhibition is remarkable because it has been made possible by cooperation from Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Malaysia, Mali, and Qatar. Some of these nations often do not play well with others, so their loaning precious items to the British Museum is an important step toward participating in global cultural exchange.

There is good reason to think that, whatever happens as a part of these expressive or performative opportunities, cultural diplomacy as display and for the creation of an audience is in fact not the best route to intercultural dialogue.

For the students of diplomacy, the photographs detailing the early years of Asean are objects of nostalgia and politics. Established on August 8, 1967, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) was composed of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.

This post continues my preliminary discussion of the results of a survey I recently conducted, designed to invite practitioners of cultural diplomacy to reflect upon their own practice. Additional discussion of this survey can be found in my February 15th post.

After decades of being banned by the Kremlin and decried for "distorting the human body", Henry Moore's abstracts, once called degenerate here, are now on display inside the very stronghold of power...We all know this exhibition is not just about art, but about diplomacy.

"Deepening cultural exchanges with foreign countries, and promoting Chinese and foreign cultures to learn from each other" has been listed as one of the major tasks of the Chinese government in 2012, says the government work report delivered by Premier Wen Jiabao at the opening ceremony of the National People's Congress in Beijing.