Public broadcaster Prasar Bharati and top Russian pay-tv programmer Digital Television Russia (DTR) have inked a pact for joint production and exchange of TV programs and related services. [...] This alliance will focus on high-quality production, marketing and distribution of content related to art, culture, trade & science, research and technology among others, it said.

In November 1999, Nancy Matthews arrived at Tehran airport at 3 o’clock in the morning. Susan Koscis followed directly behind her. Koscis had made the trip a few years earlier through an NGO called Search for Common Ground, when she organised a visit of American wrestlers. Nancy was now planning to find and bring Iranian artists back to the United States for an exhibition. Koscis and Nancy were cultural diplomats.

Sun Mu trained as an artist in North Korea, where he painted propaganda posters that glorified the country's ruling dynasty. He fled in 1998 to escape famine and since then has used the same artistic style he learned in his homeland to lampoon those leaders. "I Am Sun Mu," by LA-based filmmaker Adam Sjoberg, is the story of his life and work, told around the lead-up to his first exhibition in China in summer 2014. 

Iran is starting to use its soft power, agreeing last month to lend works from the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art’s (TMoCA) collection of international and Iranian art for an exhibition in Berlin next year. The show, a symbol of Iran’s rapprochement with the West, could travel beyond Berlin, a spokeswoman for the Tehran museum tells us. The exhibition will include works by international and Iranian artists.

Homeland […] has been subject to much criticism for its depictions of its Arab and Muslim characters. When, last summer, a group of Arab artists in Berlin were contacted by Homeland set designers to help make one of their sets […] look more authentic with Arabic anti-regime graffiti, they agree—but they splayed the walls with anti-Homeland graffiti instead, attempting, they said to “subvert” the show’s message.

In a new initiative, announced in London today, at the Leading Cultural Destination Awards, the SUN Program links with Leading Cultural Destinations and Lord Cultural Resources to establish a Soft Power Leaders Think Tank. [...]" The Soft Power Leaders Think Tank will help to deliver better understanding, governance, metrics and education through community lifestyle engagement.” 

With a dizzying flurry of oil paints, watercolors, silkscreen & monotype printing techniques, charcoal, and ink, artist Nelson Makamo captures the daily life of South African children as reflected in their charismatic faces. […]Makamo has exhibited in numerous group and solo shows in South Africa, France, Italy, the U.S., The Netherlands and Scotland over the last few years.