What's Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's (METI), then, come up with as a solution? Jumpstarting international interest in its other endeavors, of course — fashion, design, anime. And to put a little umph in its appeal, they named their latest campaign Cool Japan.

The State Department’s Art in Embassies program...is one of the premier public-private partnership arts organizations in continuous operation in 180 countries worldwide...It plays an important role in U.S. public diplomacy through a culturally expansive mission that creates temporary exhibits and permanent collections, artist and cultural exchange programming, and publications, they added.

Miami collector Ella Fontanals-Cisneros...said she's planning to send around 85 pieces from her vast art collection to be exhibited in Havana's National Museum of Fine Arts in May. Collaborations between Cuban museums and collectors from the Miami diaspora are rare, but Ms. Fontanals-Cisneros said she wanted to "build bridges" with Cuba's art lovers and give them a chance to see "art they rarely have access to."

Nothing could act as a better reminder that culture is a marketing tool, as well as an organic process that grows from the ground upwards. With contributions from a host of famous names, the climax of the Cultural Olympiad aims to prove once and for all that London, not New York, not Paris, really is the arts capital of the world.

The event in Tehran will be held during 25-29 January 2012 during which “Gun-en Artists group” shows around 50 pieces of its members' artistic works including paintings, pictures, dolls and textiles. The embassy is also going to hold exhibitions of photographs and children’s paintings of Japan’s disaster-stricken areas of March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

...Celebration of US-China Friendship...in Atlanta, Georgia. The show, co-sponsored by the Chinese Consulate General in Houston and the city of Atlanta, "is a wonderful example of the cultural and people-to-people exchanges necessary to build closer ties between the Chinese and American people," Carter said.

Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum (BM), flew to Saudi Arabia, his first visit to the heart of the Islamic world...Mr MacGregor and Venetia Porter, the BM’s keeper of Islamic art, spoke to the chairman of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities...