Cities, Museums and Soft Power 194196303X, 9781941963036

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Cities, Museums and Soft Power

Cities, Museums and

Soft Power

Gail Dexter Lord and Ngaire Blankenberg Preface by Richard Florida

Copyright © 2015 Published by The AAM Press American Alliance of Museums Washington, DC Design: Susan v. Levine and Selena Robleto, AAM All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced for any purpose, with the exception of brief passages in the context of a critical review, without prior written permission of the publisher. Cities, museums and soft power / edited by Gail Dexter Lord , Ngaire Blankenberg ; preface by Richard Florida. pages cm ISBN 978-1-941963-03-6 (paperback) 1. Museums--Social aspects. 2. Museums--Economic aspects. 3. City and town life. I. Lord, Gail Dexter, 1946- II. Blankenberg, Ngaire. AM7.C563 2015 069--dc23 2015010421

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Cities, Museums and Soft Power

Contents Acknowledgements vii RICHARD FLORIDA Preface 1 GAIL DEXTER LORD

and NGAIRE BLANKENBERG

1. Introduction: Why Cities, Museums and Soft Power 5

JAVIER JIMENEZ

2. The Economics of Museums and Cities 29

FEDERICA OLIVARES

3. Museums in Public Diplomacy 49

BAILLIE CARD

4. London’s Knowledge Quarter: The Soft Power of Museums in the Knowledge Economy and Urban Development 59

GEGÊ LEME JOSEPH

5. Museums in the Age of Brazilian Soft Power 71

HAYFA MATAR

6. Museums as Signifiers in the Gulf 87

NGAIRE BLANKENBERG

7. When Soft Powers Collide 99

BATUL RAAJ MEHTA

8. Unearthing the Genius Loci of Museums in the Indian Subcontinent 117

ROBERT PUNKENHOFER

9. Cultural Nomads: Creative People on the Road 131

AN LAISHUN, PH.D

10. Cranking Up the Soft Power Engine of Chinese Museums 145

GAIL DEXTER LORD

and JOY BAILEY BRYANT

11. A Tale of Two Civil and Human Rights Cities 153

MOHAMED GAMAL RASHED 12. Cairo and Its Museums: From Multiculturalism to Leadership in Sustainable Development 165 LOURDES FERNÁNDEZ 13. Global and Local: Fairs and Biennials, Translation: Marina Ramirez Temporary Urbanism and Pop-Up Museums 175 GUIDO GUERZONI

14. The Museum Building Boom 187

NGAIRE BLANKENBERG

and GAIL DEXTER LORD

15. Thirty-two Ways for Museums to Activate Their Soft Power 201

Authors 241



Bibliography 245



Index 253

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Acknowledgements

W

e first wish to acknowledge the many museum professionals and city leaders who have inspired us with the potential for making both museums and cities better places for people. For reasons of time and space, we have been able to explore only some of the creative cultural projects that are animating the public realm, and we thank all those institutions that generously contributed vignettes of their projects. Our thanks go also to the authors who contributed chapters to this book. Their willingness to engage with the concept of the soft power of cities and museums gave us confidence to complete this project. By extending the concept of soft power from political theory to cultural and urban life, we hope that we are advancing cultural change. We thank the American Alliance of Museums for their commitment to this publishing project, especially President Ford Bell, COO Laura Lott and Creative Director Susan v. Levine. Our editor John Strand has demonstrated that his immense talents as a playwright have been essential in communicating the many voices in this book and in guiding two occasionally unruly authors through tight deadlines. We are grateful to Mira Ovanin, Michelle Selman and Sarah Hill for their research assistance. Thanks also to Barry Lord, whose inspiration is on every page, and to our many friends and colleagues who patiently answered our questions and shared our aspirations for a book that would help shape the future of museums as places of soft power. Thank you especially to Sula Blankenberg and Taib Blankenberg: when your eyes sparkle with understanding, questions trip out of your mouths, and you feel brave and strong in and for the world, that is when we know our museums and our cities are working. — Gail Dexter Lord and Ngaire Blankenberg

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Preface Richard Florida

A

lot has been written about the so-called Bilbao Effect. Hire a starchitect to build an eye-popping museum, the thinking goes, and your whole city will be magically transformed into a center of creative innovation. Would that it were so. But as the director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh once told me, “Great art is not made in museums.” An iconic museum is a nice thing for a city to have, but unless it plays a vital role in the community, it’s just another tourist attraction. The Warhol Museum, which I worked with when I was living in Pittsburgh, was deeply involved in place making and community building. Its satellite gallery, The Mattress Factory, had artists-in-residence programs and classes that drew in and engaged the people who lived in its North Side neighborhood; it is deservedly seen as a key element in the neighborhood’s revival and transformation. In Miami Beach, the New World Symphony, a performing center and school for promising young musicians, wallcasts performances in a public park on a 7,000-square-foot screen, so people from all over can stop and listen and participate. These are just two examples of the ways, as Gail Lord and Ngaire Blankenberg put it, that museums and the cities that house them can connect in “a soft power embrace.” It is very much a reciprocal relationship. There’s a recent study that shows how this effect works. A group of economists crunched the numbers and found that German cities that had built opera houses during the Baroque period outperformed cities that hadn’t during the Industrial Era and after, two centuries and more down the road. Why? Because the smart, cultivated people who enjoy being able to go to the opera, and more broadly who want to live in communities that actively support the opera—and all the musicians, singers, costumers, composers, set designers and the like who go along with them—are

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precisely the kinds of people who create and support the economic innovations that lead to growth. The same can be said of the people who make up the grassroots cultural communities that form around active museums. Arts and culture aren’t magic bullets, but they are strongly correlated with strong local economies. The Knight Foundation’s “Soul of the Community” study, an expanded version of a survey that I created with Gallup years ago, found that “three main qualities attach people to place: social offerings, such as entertainment venues and places to meet; openness (how welcoming a place is); and the area’s aesthetics (its physical beauty and green spaces).” Arts and museums are a critical part of that fabric. With contributions by 13 experts from 10 countries, Cities, Museums and Soft Power is a fascinating and important book that demonstrates what “sleeping giants” the world’s 80,000 museums are—as education centers, employers and, last but not least, magnets for creative industries and engines of economic development. Here’s hoping that this book helps awaken them.

Richard Florida is author of the international bestseller, The Rise of the Creative Class. He is director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Global Research Professor at New York University and co-founder and editor-at-large of The Atlantic’s CityLab.

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Cities, Museums and Soft Power

Introduction: Why Cities, Museums and Soft Power Gail Dexter Lord and Ngaire Blankenberg



5

NGAIRE BLANKENBERG

GAIL DEXTER LORD

My trip to Dubai this time is different. Rather than stay in one of the chilly, mega-brand hotels surrounded by building cranes, I’m in a small boutique art hotel in the Al-Fahidi Historical District, a historic Persian neighborhood that has recently been assigned a new Arabic name. This little network of shops and galleries is within the Historic District of Dubai, also called Khor Dubai, as part of a project to transform the ancient Khor (Arabic for creek) area to qualify for designation as a UNESCO world heritage site. In my new location, I do what I rarely do in Dubai. I walk outside. In the textile souk, the South Asian sales people first call out in French to entice me into their shops. “C’est jolie,” they say. “Entrez!” I am flattered that they think I am French, despite the decidedly unfashionable rivulets of sweat creeping down my back. They try to capture my attention. “Mary!” they call out. “Eveline!” “Shakira!” I can’t help laughing at these names, evidence of a growing globalization. “Ah, my friend—a beautiful pashmina. Silk. Come in. Just to look.” Dubai, like many cities around the world and particularly those in the global South, has undergone a remarkable transformation over the last 75 years. In the 1930s, it was a small village of about

My trip to Winnipeg this time is different. It is neither 25 degrees below zero, nor 30 degrees above, as on so many occasions over the past 14 years. It is a drizzling autumn day at “The Forks,” for thousands of years a historic meeting place for indigenous people on the banks of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers. Now it is a popular mixed-use leisure and cultural park with theaters, retail shops and space for festivals, concerts, skateboarding and pow-wows. Today is different because I’m not here just for meetings. I’m here to visit the world’s first national museum dedicated to human rights, on its first day open to the public. Today will change this city for decades to come. As home to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Winnipeg has decided to rebrand itself as “The City of Human Rights Education.” Even before it opened, the museum operated a successful summer school in human rights education for teachers from across Canada, broadcast a lecture series called “Fragile Freedoms,” featuring some of the world’s most famous human rights experts, and trained a remarkable 350 volunteers. The nearby University of Manitoba maintains the archives of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the official enquiry into 200 years of abuse suffered by Canada’s indigenous

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20,000 people, desperate to recover from the collapse of the pearl trade. Today the lure of gold brings almost 11 million people a year to the skypiercing high-rises along these reclaimed shores. Laborers and domestic workers chase work they can’t find at home, service workers and entrepreneurs look for new horizons, investors capitalize on the boom and the postboom. Consultants and advisors and tourists come for the air conditioned shopping, good hotels and great food at every price point. We all arrive through one of the world’s busiest and best airports to discover a city full of promise and optimism. I stroll through the perfume souk, the spice souk, the utensils souk, all active working markets, noisy with the loading and unloading of goods from Iran, South Korea and Singapore, the insistent sales pitches, the bargaining, the traffic. I reflect on what museums need to achieve for their clients, the government agencies and the varied residents of this burgeoning city-state. What could museums or a heritage district offer for Dubai’s permanent, temporary and transitory residents, many of whom either do not know about museums and heritage sites or think of them as places for “others” in distant countries? What good is a museum or heritage site in this city of gold, driven by

Introduction: Why Cities, Museums and Soft Power



people as governments colluded with churches to forcibly remove children from their families and place them in faraway “residential schools” with the stated purpose “to kill the Indian in the child.” Becoming the Human Rights Education City is a bold move and a challenging one: Winnipeg is also home to a large population of marginalized aboriginal people. The museum looks as if a giant space ship has landed. As I enter with hundreds of proud and excited people, we are dazzled by the architecture, which takes us on a one-kilometer human rights journey along alabaster ramps. At each exhibition zone, friendly docents explain the history of human rights, indigenous perspectives, the Holocaust and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. People here assume I’m another visitor from Winnipeg, not the consultant from Toronto who for the past 14 years helped plan this museum. I reflect on my Aunt Millie who lived in Winnipeg. She was the founder of the Nellie McClung Theatre Group, named for a famous suffragette. I remember my father’s stories of how cold he felt selling newspapers at the corner of “Portage and Main,” the crossroads of two economies—bootlegging liquor to the US during Prohibition and the Winnipeg Grain Exchange.

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Visitors outside the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art. Museums exercise their soft power by offering socially inclusive spaces to an increasingly diverse public. Photo © Javier Tles 2004.

development and aspiration, where history is for some just another word for outdated, while for others it is so deeply personal and familial that it has no place in the public realm? Power. Funny enough, it is the same for both the city and its residents. A museum here can confer power on the city’s residents, and power on the city’s government, at home and internationally. Museums empower. Museums are power. Soft power.

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After many decades in decline, Winnipeg has transformed itself into a regional center for the knowledge economy, with universities, insurance firms, medical research, and a thriving arts and theater scene. Now it’s part of an international network of cities that feature museums of conscience, collecting the stories behind human rights. Winnipeg and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights are now ready to exercise their soft power.

Cities, Museums and Soft Power

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useums and cities throughout the world are connecting in a soft power embrace. Soft power is a concept that emerged a quarter century ago to describe international relations based not on military nor economic might, but on influence. Soft power is the ability to influence behavior using persuasion, attraction or agenda setting. Where the resources of “hard power” are tangible—force and finance— soft power resources are intangibles, such as ideas, knowledge, values and culture. Networks and connectivity enable soft power to spread its influence farther and deeper via Web-based networks and networks of cities. And where there are cities, there are museums. Political scientist Joseph Nye, who first formulated the term in 1990, recently explained how soft power has increased dramatically in the 21st century as the Information Revolution helped to distribute information of all kinds worldwide.1 In 2000 there were 5 million websites in the world; today there are more than 1 billion, and more than a third of the global population is online. As a result, more people participate in international conversations that were once the exclusive domain of states and corporations that had the economic and military power to exercise control. Today information can be launched, exchanged and turned into action more quickly, less expensively, and among more people and organizations than ever before in the history of humankind.2 Monocle Magazine and the UK-based Institute of Government have rated countries on their soft power since 2011, using metrics such as the number of embassies and cultural missions, tourists per year, annual attendance at major art galleries, number-one albums internationally, number of foreign correspondents, UNESCO world heritage sites, think tanks, universities in the top 200, foreign students, restaurants with Michelin stars and even the number of footballers playing abroad in the world’s best leagues.3 When aggregated, these indicators are thought to predict how influential a country might be in persuading others to agree with it. The British Council identifies the link between soft power and culture in its 2013 report, Influence and Attraction: Culture and the Race for Soft Power in the 21st Century.4 Its focus, like Monocle’s, is on civil society institutions, such as broadcasting and educational institutions, NGOs, businesses, foundations and trusts, and creative individuals—philanthropists, artists, sports personalities and performers. “Cultural contact had originally been elite-to-elite (through royal courts and

Introduction: Why Cities, Museums and Soft Power



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ambassadors), then additionally elite-to-many (via broadcasting and cinema), and now was entering a phase of people-to-people (through travel, migration and the Internet).5 Michele Acuto, senior lecturer in global networks and diplomacy at University College, London, argues that not only national governments but also cities exercise effective soft power through international cultural relations and cultural diplomacy, especially in the environment, migration and quality of life.6 Nye points out that the most effective soft power is generated by civil society rather than government and large corporations, which are the traditional backers of “hard power.” When governments try to generate influence, it is often perceived as propaganda.7 These twin characteristics of soft power—the rise of cities and the role of civil society —are pushing museums from the margins toward the center of soft power. In the not-too-distant past, museums and the arts were mainly impacted by hard power, which is where their funding and governance originated. National governments of all types and large private corporations were the main patrons. They exercised influence, both directly and indirectly, on what museums displayed and collected and how they presented their material. During the Cold War, for example, the CIA, in its propaganda war against communism at home and abroad,8 secretly financed abstract expressionist exhibitions to promote the superiority of American freedom and creativity. In the more distant past, museums were repositories for war trophies, whether acquired from internal wars of aggression against indigenous people or other marginalized religious and ethnic communities, or from external conflicts and colonial conquest. In the museum setting, these trophies became objects of curiosity, displayed to communicate ideas about power and the hierarchy of “civilizations,” so that there would be no doubt about the justice of “our empire” or the superiority of “our civilization.” The objects that had been gifts between rulers somehow validated the notion of high cultural achievement among civilizations that had diplomatic relations. Natural history museums established a scientific standard for displaying collections in a systematic way that would soon be employed by museums of anthropology and ethnography.9 Art museums organized their galleries by country and school, such as “Northern Renaissance” or “Italian School,” as though the political reality of ever-changing borders (and accompanying bloodshed) were somehow transcended by the glory of art. Whether we date museums from the cathedral vault or the princely

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schatzkammer, from the great 18th-century universal collections or from childhood memories of geological wonders and terrifying dinosaurs, museums have always been powerful public spaces where the leading ideas of the time were presented. These ideas were often defined by the museum’s dominant patrons,10 based on study of the objects that they collected and preserved. The ideas represented aren’t always good ideas. Sometimes they are very bad ideas indeed, like eugenics and imperialism and man’s “natural mastery” over nature. Nonetheless museums are places where ideas are openly presented and contested—and have been for hundreds of years. Now museums are in a process of transformation from government and private organizations to institutions of civil society. By civil society we mean the network of organizations that represent neither big government nor large corporations, but have their roots in the voluntary and nonprofit sectors—often referred to as the “third sector” of the economy. This transformation started in the United States, which has been highly innovative in creating and sustaining the voluntary, nonprofit sector. The voluntary sector has been the cultural ethos of American democracy from its earliest days. In the last 40 years, economic changes such as the increasing concentration of wealth in private hands have stimulated the growth of civil society institutions worldwide. According to economic and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin,11 the nonprofit economy is growing faster than the for-profit economy in many countries. More and more museums are being shifted from the governmental and corporate sectors to the nonprofit sector. This shift in patronage has led to new governance structures that reflect a plurality of voices and influences. As a consequence of their place in civil society, museums are finding themselves with new roles, responsibilities and expectations.12 As government financing decreases both proportionately and in absolute numbers, the museum sector has become more dependent on new forms of patronage from foundations, philanthropists, sponsorship and earned sources. This has resulted in a change from inward-looking, collection-focused institutions to outward-facing, donor- and visitor-focused ones. This generational change occurred in two stages, and this book proposes that they are about to undergo a third—becoming centers of soft power. The first stage was heralded by the American Association of Museums in 1992 when it released its landmark report, Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public

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Dimension of Museums.13 This led to a fundamental change in the museum profession: museums proclaimed their roles as educational institutions with a mandate to provide physical and intellectual access for the entire public. This expanded “museum idea” echoed the 1986 ICOM definition of museums as institutions “for the public benefit” and coincided with legislation in the US and many other countries guaranteeing equal access for persons with disabilities. Over several decades, museum educators were liberated from their gloomy basement classrooms to take a central role in teams identifying the main messages of an exhibition, editing and rewriting text panels, selecting artifacts and communicating with stakeholders. A new emphasis on evaluation accompanied this transformation. Museum educators, like their colleagues in schools, colleges and universities, were passionate about measuring their success in sharing knowledge. It was no longer enough for an exhibition to be “beautiful” or “original” or “steeped in research,” much to the discomfort of some curators and designers. Museums needed to be broadly educational and attract the full diversity of the public—whether or not these visitors had prior subject-matter expertise. The second transformation followed within a decade of Excellence and Equity. It can best be characterized as “Experience and Branding.” From within the museum sector, there was a strong impetus to expand and intensify the impact that museums were having on the public. Books like The Experience Economy14 argued that people were no longer buying products but rather experiences. Museum professionals knew that they provided experiences in their galleries and programs. Now these experiences needed to be enhanced and packaged—packaged through branding. The branding of museums started as an extension of the traditional strategic planning process (itself adapted from the corporate world) of communicating the mission of the museum. The brand, which is said to be the “promise of the product,” further reinforces the consumer character of the museum experience. And like a consumer brand, it helps people find the product, physically and virtually. Museums suddenly had a new importance in the city. They were contemporary landmarks. Not only brands in and of themselves, but also incorporated into the brand of the city. Museums were now seen as an integral part of the promise of their cities.

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In 2000, the opening of Tate Modern in London was seen as a triumph of branding. Tate became synonymous with London as the capital of “Cool Britannia.” This dynamic combination of experience and brand became the foundation for a consumer boom in museums, helping to overcome some of the marketing defects from which museums have suffered: for example, that the permanent collection will “always be there,” so there is no urgency to visit. The big experience—whether it is the “Rain Room”15 or “The Treasures of King Tut”16—is time bound. You need to consume it during the limited time it is there, in your city or on your screen. New technology and impressive architecture certainly intensified the experience. The remarkable success of the Guggenheim in Bilbao, inaugurated in 1997, proves that the experience of space and place can be more memorable than the exhibitions. The Guggenheim “brand” expresses the meaning of this museum—its sophistication and its relationship to the world of nonobjective art. The explosion17 in “experience architecture” highly influenced the brand of the museum and the brand of the city. In many cases, the experience of the building was the experience of the museum. When Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin opened in 2001, it was without exhibits—the building itself was the storyteller. Symbolic storytelling museum buildings continue to attract visitors and debate: Le musée du quai Branly (Paris 2006), Jean Nouvel’s metaphorical journey into the worlds of “the other”; the EMP Museum (Seattle 2000), which Frank Gehry shaped after Jimi Hendrix’s smashed electric guitar; the King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture (under construction in Dhahran) evokes the subterranean stones, the source of petroleum and gas that brought cultural change to Saudi Arabia. Experience architecture creates new landmarks, speaking even to those who never enter the building. The third stage in the generational transformation of museums is just beginning: the shift from sites of branded experience to places of soft power. The emerging soft power of museums responds to three social realities: competition among cities for talent, tourism and investment; the forces of globalization and information technology, resulting in new forms of citizenship; and the growing public participation of women.

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CITIES As of 2008, for the first time in human history, more than 50 percent of the world population lives in cities, and cities account for 80 percent of the global GDP. In wealthy countries, about 80 percent of the population already lives in cities—and city populations in the rest of the world are continuing to grow toward comparable levels. This means that enormous numbers of people are migrating to cities, between and within countries. Property costs are rising in cities worldwide. Cities are on the leading edge of managing the integration process, as new residents and old learn to live together. Cities throughout the world are evolving their own soft power to advocate for solutions to global issues affecting their residents. The C40 network of 69 megacities, for example—containing one-twelfth of the planet’s population18—shares information, develops policies and implements more than 8,000 action steps to combat climate change far beyond what national governments can do. The network of Cities of Migration and others share good ideas about how to manage integration.19 Khalid Koser contrasts the leading soft power role of cities to that of national governments: “You can find the entire spectrum of views within a few blocks in most cities. Cities have the venues and the community organizers. And whatever their perspectives on migration and migrants, city dwellers tend to be open to debate and exchange. While states are building walls, cities are building bridges. While states are launching patrol boats, cities are launching ideas. While states are unilateral, cities are transnational.”20 Cities use their soft power to compete in attracting talented workers, clean knowledge-based industries and high-spending tourists. The creative economy consists of science, engineering, research and development, technology-based industries, arts, music, culture, design, and the knowledge-based professions of health care, finance and law. One hundred years ago during the era of the industrial economy, fewer than 10 percent of the population was employed in this way. Today it is as high as 47 percent in Singapore, 46 percent in Amsterdam and 37 percent in Toronto.21 The economist Richard Florida has persuasively argued that creative workers gravitate to certain urban environments because the creative economy depends on access to people and ideas, not to land, natural resources or raw materials. Creative workers can and do move from place to place in pursuit of the best work environments. Florida identifies the characteristics of cities that support the creative

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economy as “the Three Ts”22—talent, tolerance and technology. He has developed measures for these qualities so that cities and countries can be compared. Talent is measured in terms of the percentage of the population with a bachelor’s degree or more and the number of research scientists per 1,000 workers. Tolerance is evaluated in terms of the openness of a community and the degree to which it has modern values, welcomes gay people, and upholds diversity and self-expression. Technology is measured in terms of research and development expenditure as a percentage of GDP and the number of high-tech patents achieved. As the principal custodians of human capital, cities experience the immediate benefits of a healthy, happy, productive and sustainably growing population. Conversely cities suffer the consequences of poverty, marginalization, pollution, inequality and unemployment. Cities are addressing urban challenges by mobilizing networks, including universities and colleges, cultural institutions and museums, government agencies, private sector organizations and individual citizens using their soft power to change behavior or to come up with innovative solutions. Cities are magnets for civil society organizations in a myriad of fields, such as health care, poverty reduction, environment, democracy and the arts. The new and expanded museums built in the last 17 years are mainly located in cities: 44 percent in cities of 1.5 million people or more and 20 percent in smaller cities with populations between 200,000 and 1.5 million.23 A recent study estimates that the entire nonprofit sector makes up 5 percent of the GDP in economically advanced countries.24 Formerly referred to as “the third sector,” it is now being described as the social commons where people generate “the goodwill that allows society to cohere as a cultural entity.”25 Prominent museum associations are asking how museums, which are now more than ever civil society institutions, can contribute to this social commons. The Museum Association in the UK launched a campaign on July 1, 2013, called “Museums Change Lives,” promoting the impact of museums on “individuals, communities, society and the environment.”26 The American Alliance of Museums themed its 2015 Annual Meeting “The Social Value of Museums.” Tourism could well be the fourth “T” of Richard Florida’s Three Ts of the creative economy because cities attract visitors, including tourists, visiting friends and relatives and students. Many of these visitors immerse themselves in the city’s values as expressed in the city brand—tours, festivals, events, shopping, museums,

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theater, sights and sounds and contact with citizens. The impressive European Union program “European Capitals of Culture,” begun in 1985, has effectively promoted both major and minor cities as urban experiences and has stimulated urban regeneration, including many new museums. With over a billion tourists annually worldwide, tourism has become a significant economic, social and cultural force. Tourism is being harnessed to address a number of issues, from the environment to development goals. The United Nations Environment Program, for example, has identified tourism as one of the 10 economic sectors “best able to contribute to the transition to a sustainable and inclusive green economy.”27 The World Tourism Organization, another UN body, builds on the critical economic role that tourism plays in developing countries to promote responsible and sustainable tourism and further the values of poverty reduction, gender equality, environmental sustainability and cross-cultural understanding.28 Museums are particularly suited for tourism. Unlike many other cultural forms in the city, they are open throughout the year, offer facilities for group tours and enable an instant overview of a new culture and city for a wide range of travelers.

TRANS-LOCAL URBAN CITIZENSHIP The very idea of citizenship derives from the city and the special status that was conferred on city dwellers. Today citizenship is a matter for national governments and involves issues of sovereignty. And perhaps paradoxically, not all citi-zens (city dwellers) are equal. A global city is a place where the services essential to the work of globalization congregate: the lawyers, accountants, management consultants, hedge-fund managers and the like—those who are needed to operate international corporations. Renowned sociologist Saskia Sassen29 points out three “structural facts” about global cities: they concentrate wealth among owners, partners and professionals associated with the global firms; they are increasingly disconnected from their region and country; they are also home to a large marginalized population that does not benefit from the financial activities of the big firms. Global cities are unequal and growing more so every day. They are in fact two cities: one experienced by its elite in fenced-off, privatized spaces; and another experienced by the service workers, industrial work force, unemployed, children and youth whose sense of belonging or home is fragile and easily taken away. Museums are increasingly funded by

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the elites even as they turn their programming toward the others. While global cities are at the forefront of technology and development, often creating new nodes of power, the structured inequality of contemporary global cities is surprisingly similar to the postcolonial city. One impact of colonialism on cities was to formalize inequality by turning “natives” into migrants and foreigners. This legacy is exacerbated today by the forces of globalization and the growth of sprawling “informal settlements” with their islands of gated communities and villas.30 For Sassen, this tension can be seen in all global cities, not just those with a colonial past. “It’s about conflicts—between a financial machine for super-profits and an older, modest profit-making economy, and between disadvantaged communities and the forces of gentrification and policing to ‘cleanse’ the city.” 31 It is a battle to lay claim to the city itself. Within this space of marginalization, Sassen points to new forms of identification and citizenship based on a “trans-local” identification.32 All labor (and not only the creative class) is mobile. Most major cities are home to a number of immigrants, labor migrants and others who are part of equally complex, transnational networks. It may seem invisible and powerless, but this labor class is also developing new forms of power and influence through trade and soft power. Many urban foreign workers send significant percentages of their earnings “back home.” This remittance economy represents a net development benefit that the United Nations calculates as more significant than international aid.33 Globalization is experienced on an intensely local level through immigration and trade. Diasporic networks endure because of travel and communication. The information revolution has given the marginalized the means to network and consolidate individual agency, creating new forms of global citizenship.34 Public libraries are creating spaces for people to exercise agency through information technology. It is no coincidence that Toronto, which welcomes 125,000 immigrants a year, also has the top performing public library system in North America. Toronto’s library system, like so many others, exemplifies the “sharing economy” and the social commons: everyone has access to information in an uplifting space where people can build a shared sense of identity and trust. Most library systems are civil society institutions that are city or county funded and governed by local citizens with support from foundations and friends organizations. Museums are studying libraries to learn from their experience.

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WOMEN AT A TIPPING POINT Women make up nearly two-thirds of service workers,35 60 percent of university campuses, 60 percent of students in courses related to the cultural sector (UK)36 and more than half the creative class. Women also participate more on social media than men.37 While women continue to be underrepresented in spheres of political power,38 they continue to flock to civil society, voluntary and philanthropic organizations and online participation. Women have a better chance of being in a leadership role in the social commons39 than they do in the political realm, although the glass ceiling here is also thick and bruising. Women have been relatively successful in the social and cultural commons, including city government, compared to national and state-level political processes and in corporations.40 Museums in particular offer women an important role in the public realm that they may not have otherwise. Women exercising their power in the social commons is not a new phenomenon. In the US after the Revolutionary War, women were prevented from participating in most aspects of public life. Upper-class women who wanted to contribute to society started benevolence societies with mostly humanitarian aims—health care, temperance and abolition of slavery. Although not allowed to make public speeches or chair meetings, women worked at setting up the organizational structures and raising funds for these new civil society organizations.41 Eventually, however, women were barred from many of the institutions they founded, except for those in the realm of culture and the arts, which were regarded as properly “ladylike.” New museums benefited from their skills in organization and public service, whether in art museums, or history museums, which transformed from all-male clubs to community-focused, historic preservation societies under the leadership mainly of women.42 In the MENA (Middle East North Africa) region today, women are playing an active role in founding, curating, supporting and staffing many of the new museums whose roles many of their founders see as primarily educational.43 Museums are seen as places of safety and exclusivity that empower women through employment and the sale of women’s museum-related publications, art and craft reinterpretations of collections and exhibits of objects relating to women.44 Museums are regarded as acceptable for women, whereas other spheres of public participation may not be.

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In the US and the UK, women are still underrepresented as directors in the major museums, although the disparity is mostly driven by the largest museums. For most museums, however, with budgets of less than $15 million, female directors on average earn $1.02 for every dollar that male directors earn. In addition, women compose about 63 percent of all professional and senior-level staff in the field, twice the average representation of men. The percentage may be even higher if one counts women who are currently serving as interim directors, consultants, and heads of professional associations and university museum studies programs. The American Alliance of Museums’ 2014 National Museum Salary Study showed that in the US, women outnumber men 2 to 1 in director positions of small museums, those with annual operating budgets up to $250,000. “The disparity decreases with budget size,” the study states, “and at museums with budgets at or above $1M, the ratio flips and men start to outnumber women. At museums with budgets over $3M, the ratio of female to male directors is 1 to 1.3.” Women directors earn only 71 cents for every dollar paid to male directors, the study showed, as calculated from the median in this field-wide survey.45 While there are still disparities between the genders in museums, notably among the most senior positions in major museums, on the whole, women are more powerful in museums than in other cultural industries where they represent less than half of the work force. Feminist journalist Sally Armstrong46 believes that women’s power is at a tipping point. She sees a growing soft power alliance between women of North and South and East and West for economic, social, cultural, religious and sexual equality. Women comprise the majority of museum workers but have still not achieved equality in the executive offices or in the boardroom. The power that women have is based in the social commons. Museums may open up a new front for feminism and soft power.

POWERFUL CITIES HAVE POWERFUL MUSEUMS Museums are beginning to understand themselves as networked civil society institutions with soft power that can enhance the importance of cities and empower their residents and visitors. Museums enhance the soft power of cities when they are signifiers of pride and distinctiveness; when they are anchors providing stability, memory, employment

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and a forum for exchanging ideas; and when they are nodes in an international cultural network promoting lasting relationships among and between cultural workers and civil society. Museums empower people when they are patrons for artists and thinkers; when they amplify civic discourse, accelerate cultural change, and contribute to cultural intelligence among the great diversity of city dwellers, visitors, policy makers and leaders. The very presence of museums signifies that a city is proud of its culture. As branding specialist Simon Anholt says: “If you are perceived to have culture—whatever that means—then you are perceived to have self-respect. Therefore you are worthy of respect.… So the cultural institutions are simply the means by which that is communicated and shared by other people.”47 The presence of museums as public and accessible places that display and preserve artifacts and works of art demonstrates confidence, even though there may be people who vehemently disagree with the approach. For example, two new national museums in Paris, the Musée du quai Branly (2006) and the Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration (2007), communicated confidence in France’s postcolonial relationships, even as these two museums drew criticism. The key factor in terms of soft power is for the museum to be open to debate and disagreement. The opening of the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg in 2001, with its tagline “Apartheid is where it belongs—in a museum,” signified that the city was ready to examine the trauma of its not so distant past. It is significant that this museum was created independent of government as a private-public partnership with a casino. Museums created in the apartheid era were racist and existed to justify a system that made the minority feel proud at the expense of the majority. These apartheidera museums reflected the hard power of the state and were not open to criticism or debate.

LANDMARKS OR PLACE MAKERS? We distinguish two very different roles for museums in the built environment of cities: as landmarks and as place makers. As a landmark, the museum building brands the city or the neighborhood. It signifies a level of cultural attainment (as in the new contemporary art museum in Aspen), innovation (such as the green roof of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco) or democracy (like the

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Constitution Center in Philadelphia). Often museum landmarks signify that a city possesses something unique and creative in the increasingly privatized urban public realm dominated by monotonous billboards and giant TV screens—the same shops, logos and images that define urban space the world over. Landmark buildings are attractive, and they attract developers to revive declining cities and influence tourists, residents and mobile workers to become cultural ambassadors and citizen diplomats to promote the city as a destination. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Pompidou Center Metz are good examples of landmark museums that have successfully helped renew cities in decline.48 In this era of power diffusion, museum buildings are more than landmarks. They are also cornerstones in successful place making. Place making refers to the interactions between people and place in the creation of social capital (the capacity of people working together to solve problems). Museums present beautiful, accessible and meaningful spaces in which communities and individuals can meet, exchange ideas and solve problems. Place making explains why museum space matters so much to so many today. Museum space is emphatically three-dimensional, punctuated by three-dimensional objects. It is a kinesthetic experience: our mere movement seems to change the space, and the place somehow changes us. Because this is an interpreted space—a place with assigned meanings—we may also be challenged to see things in a new way: to find our own way, figuratively, at least. Guido Guerzoni (page 187) analyzes the reasons for the museum explosion of the past 30 years and the impact on the soft power of cities. Not all landmarks and place makers are expensive permanent museum structures. Lourdes Fernández, in her essay on temporary cultural spaces (page 175), explores the phenomena of popup museums, biennials and festivals. A city’s anchor institutions are those that have proven to be sites of community sustainability, such as hospitals, universities, libraries, community centers, places of worship and museums. The value of anchor institutions is to preserve memory and to adapt the knowledge of the past to changing contexts. Anchor institutions accumulate a body of knowledge through the efforts of professional staff and engage with the public through exhibitions, websites, programs, and collaboration with artists and scientists. Members of the public are invited to contribute their memories and knowledge about collections and events through “crowd sourcing” or other means. These anchor institutions are challenged to develop new ways of

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organizing such knowledge, reflecting changes in the origins of knowledge and the ways in which it has been collected. Museums as anchor institutions exercise soft power based on community participation. Ngaire Blankenberg in her essay on page 99 describes how museums exist within an Internet-facilitated culture of stewardship in which transparency and the inclusion of multiple voices is critical to achieving soft power. Postcolonial city governments and patrons seek to distance themselves from the institutions of the past, seeing them as the source of outdated and harmful values. The vast majority of museums in the global South were established by colonial governments as symbols of their hard power. These museums have consequently been deprioritized by new governments formed after independence. In many developing countries, cities prefer to fund community-based arts or creative industries rather than museums. Lacking funding for cultural leaders, local governments often outsource arts administration, which results in the loss of institutional memory and weakens the city’s influence. The soft power of civil society stems from having a stable base from which to engage—meaning that people who have secure income and the opportunity to build certain skills are most likely to be able to advocate, mobilize and engage with others (government, private sector, community) in order to influence and change behavior. Batul Raaj Mehta (page 117) describes how Putna in the Indian province of Bihar reclaimed history, memory and influence by building a major new museum. Gegê Leme Joseph, in her analysis of Brazil’s museums (page 71), shows how museums are supporting the development of civil society. Even though a museum’s origins may be steeped in racism, colonialism and elitism, there is still value in the artifacts it holds and the opportunities it presents for reinterpretation—starting with whom it employs and how it operates. Without public museums, this institutional cultural memory is privatized and in danger of being forgotten. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg and the many civil rights museums and institutes in Atlanta have been designed with soft power in mind and are building networks with their cities, as Joy Bailey Bryant and Gail Dexter Lord describe on page 153. When it comes to soft power, museums are particularly strategic for international relations, whether as symbolic meeting places or as part of a network of

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relationships with other museums through loaning collections and exhibitions, as well as professional training and exchanges. Mohamed Gamal Rashed describes in his essay on page 165 how the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo will promote soft power in the form of intercultural understanding. Museums have always played a role in the soft power between nations. Objects were exchanged as diplomatic gifts and this practice continues to be a tool in international diplomacy, as Federica Olivares explores in her essay on page 49. What was once a process of exchange dominated by the political or corporate elite has expanded to include exchanges between the employees and associated cultural workers of museums. The International Council of Museums and the International Sites of Conscience are just two of the many professional organizations that bring museum workers together for conferences and professional training. As people speak to one another in a context of shared interest, they find ways of exchanging values, information and understanding. For women and others long excluded from political power, this is a particularly important way that leadership is developed and demonstrated. Soft power can also be contentious. Face-to-face contact among cultural workers is a critical way museums support the spread of ideas and values. Without the formality that marks moments of international cultural diplomacy, cultural workers are able to exchange viewpoints and ideas, and form alliances and networks that go beyond cities and nations. They become citizen diplomats. Robert Punkenhofer explores the role of creative workers and artists as cultural nomads in his essay on page 131. Whether internationally or within their cities, museums support and amplify the work and ideas of artists, scientists, historians, curators and thinkers—communities whose voices may not have had a platform previously. In their exhibitions, museums turn the creativity of individuals into a resource—for the economy (employment for artists), for identity (the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco) or for science (The Science Gallery in Dublin). In this role, museums are power converters, transforming creativity and knowledge into influence, encouraging us to see new perspectives and even to change our behavior.49 Encouraging human creativity often requires confidence building, skills training, human networks, civic participation, risk taking and intercultural understanding. Museums have great potential in each of these areas. Sociologist Robert Putnam50 has demonstrated that participation in cultural activities is one of the most effective

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means of creating a civil society in which people work together to solve problems and create knowledge. An open civil society is the necessary foundation for the creative economy.

POWER CONVERSION The capacity of museums to convert power is demonstrated in the ways they engage with and promote women in professional networks and forums of influence. These women, in turn, use their networks to influence and grow the cultural, social and political sectors. Museums are cultural accelerators. They convert the passive experience of change into the capacity to manage change. For example, displaying 300 years of transportation objects from the ox cart to the jet in a few hundred square meters of exhibition space intensifies our awareness of change. Similarly when visitors to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights learn about six genocides inflicted on people around the world, they are better able to understand the patterns that emerge and spot the danger signs in the society around us. Because artists express change in advance of its full impact on the rest of us, works of art are the ultimate cultural accelerators. Curiously museums are still seen by many as static places when in fact they are just the opposite. They are one of our society’s main adaptive strategies for managing change. We see this in countries in Africa and Asia that are undergoing massive change and are simultaneously building new museums at an astounding rate. Museums must preserve the past while also helping people adapt to the present and future. In China, as An Laishun writes on page 145, there is an explosion of new museums as that country adapts to some of the most rapid social change in human history. Museums provide deep, comparative knowledge. They help people understand how values and ways of living have changed over time, and why. A museum might show the progression of an artist’s style in a retrospective exhibition, reveal how the treatment of immigrants today is different from their treatment 100 years ago or track the technological changes in making music. The more we are able to view themes and events over time and geographically, the more we develop contextual intelligence—a valuable 21st-century skill that includes the ability to understand an environment in flux and act on it.51 Contextual

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intelligence is critical to exercising smart power—being able to judge which tools should be used with which people or institutions to bring about change. Museums empower city dwellers and visitors with contextual intelligence, enabling us to understand the past behavior and values of a society (albeit through the museum’s filter) and consider how to adapt our own behavior. Museums also promote social inclusion: for example, Canada’s Cultural Access Pass that grants new Canadian citizens free entry into museums for one year, or New York City’s new municipal identification card that provides documentation for new immigrants while admitting them into participating museums for free or Brazil’s culture coupons developed to provide the nation’s poor with access to culture, from movies and books to museums. In highly competitive, fast-changing cities, museums have emerged as a vital resource for developing contextual intelligence and cross-cultural skills. All museums have the potential to exercise soft power. But not all museums will choose that role. In chapter 2 we suggest how museums can use their soft power to help meet the rapidly evolving needs of cities.

ENDNOTES 1. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “The Information Revolution and Power,” in Soft Power Revisited: A Current History Anthology, (Amazon Digital Editions, 2014). 2. Ibid. 3. Monocle, January 2014. 4. British Council, 2013 5. Ibid., 3 6. Michele Acuto, Global Cities, Governance and Diplomacy: The Urban Link (London: Routledge, 2013). 7. Nye, Soft Power Revisited. 8. Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: The New Press, 2013). 9. See Batul Raj Mehta’s essay in this book, “Unearthing the Genius Loci of Museums in the Indian Subcontinent.” 10. For more on the impact of patronage on museums and culture, see Barry Lord and Gail Dexter Lord, Artists, Patrons and the Public: Why Culture Changes (Lanham, MD.: Alta Mira Press, 2010). 11. Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (Basinstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 17. In the US, Canada, Japan, France, Belgium, Australia, the Czech Republic and New Zealand, the nonprofit sector makes up on average 5 percent of the GDP, equal to the construction industry and nearly equal to the GDP of banks, insurance companies and financial services.

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12. Essay 2 explores the implications of this direction for the soft power of museums in more detail. 13. American Alliance of Museums, Washington, DC., 1992. 14 B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2011). 15. “Rain Room/EXPO 1” at MoMA, New York, 2013, http://random-international.com/ exhibitions/rain-room-expo-1-at-moma/. 16. “Treasures of Tutankhamun,” international touring exhibition, 1972–1981. Among the most successful museum exhibitions of all time, in terms of revenue and audience numbers. 17. This explosion is brilliantly analyzed by Guido Guerzoni in Museums on the Map 1995–2012 (Turino: Allemandi, 2014) . 18. C40 cities, http://www.c40.org. 19. citiesofmigration.ca. 20. Khalid Koser and John Salt, “The Geography of Highly Skilled International Migration,” International Journal of Population Geography 3, no. 4 (1997): 285-303. 21. Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 270. 22. Richard Florida and Irene Tinagli, Europe in the Creative Age, Carnegie Mellon Software Industry Center and DEMOS (February 2004). 23. Guerzoni, Museums on the Map, 35. 24. Rifkin, Zero Marginal Cost Society, 7. 25. Ibid., 17. 26. http://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-change-lives. 27 http://media.unwto.org/press-release/2014-11-06/harnessing-power-one-billiontour.ists-sustainable-future. 28. http://www.unwto.org/tourism&mdgsezine. 29. Sakia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). 30. http://radicalantipode.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/book-review_delgado-onpieterse-and-simone.pdf 31. “Artisans for Incorporation: An Interview with Saskia Sassen,” http://www.citsee.eu/ interview/%E2%80%98artisans-incorporation%E2%80%99-interview-saskia-sassen. 32. http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/Poverty%20Reduction/Inclusive%20 development/Towards%20Human%20Resilience/Towards_SustainingMDGProgress_Ch4. pdf. 33. Florida, Rise of the Creative Class, 55. 34. Equality in Higher Education: Statistical Report 2011 (London: Equality Challenge Unit). 35. Pew research study, http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/383521infographic-battle-of-the-social-sexes.jpg. 36. http://www.unwomen.org/~/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/ publications/2014/wmnmap14_en%20pdf.ashx.

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37. Ibid. 38. file:///C:/Users/ngaire/Documents/Museums,%20Cities%20and%20Soft%20Power/ Research/Sex-and-Power-2013-FINALv2.-pdf.pdf. 39. Marjorie Schwarzer, “Women in the Temple: Gender and Leadership in Museums,” in Gender, Sexuality and Museums: A Routledge Reader (London: Routledge, 2010). 40. Ibid., 3. 41. “Museums, Women and Empowerment in the MENA Countries,” Carol Malt. Article first published online Nov. 28, 2007, DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0033.2007.00624.x. 42. Ibid. 43. http://aam-us.org/about-us/media-room/2014/2014-salary-survey. 44. Sally Armstrong, Ascent of Women (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2013). 45. http://monocle.com/film/Edits/museums-as-soft-power/: Simon Anholt, Independent policy advisor  http://www.simonanholt.com. 46. Mohamed Gamal Rashed in his essay in this book details the urban development that is expected in Cairo as a result of building the Grand Egyptian Museum. 47. Nye, Soft Power Revisited. 48. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2000). 49. “Contextual intelligence, the ability to understand an evolving environment and capitalize on trends, will become a crucial skill in enabling leaders to convert power resources into successful strategies.” (Nye, Soft Power Revisited, 15).

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The Economics of Museums and Cities Javier Jimenez



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FROM ECONOMIC POWER TO SOFT POWER: THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF CITIES Never before has the city been as powerful as it is today. Urban centers are becoming larger and denser. Cities generate more than 80 percent of the global GDP. Many cities have a larger economy than entire regions and even countries. In the US, metro New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are among the top 25 economies in the world. New York City’s economy surpasses those of Spain, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Sweden and Argentina.1 Some cities have larger economies than the state in which they are contained. Metropolitan Washington, DC, sometimes referred to as the National Capital Region, has a larger economy than the neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia, which are part of the metro region. This trend is probably irreversible. Global economic growth is driven mainly by cities, not countries. In China, between 12 and 24 new cities are being built every year to house the vast rural population that is migrating to urban areas. By 2025, as much as 35 percent of world economic growth will be generated by the top 100 cities alone.2 Citizenship and economic power are becoming more and more concentrated in key urban areas that have an increased capacity to influence people’s lives more decisively than many national and supranational governments. A hierarchy of world, national and regional cities has emerged, and as a result, global dynamics have changed. Cities are now at the epicenter of soft power. The accelerated urbanization and globalization trends that we are witnessing represent an opportunity for cities. But these also entail challenges that occur at the local level and need to be addressed through urban planning. As we argue in this essay, museums are an essential component of cities. Museums have the capacity to improve the livability, economic potential and global influence of cities.

MUSEUMS ARE BECOMING CENTRAL TO URBAN PLANNING EFFORTS Postindustrial and globalizing trends are elevating the importance of cultural experiences within the city. In the past, museums have been marginal to urban planning. But now they are slowly moving toward the center as cities try to shape their cultural assets in a way that will make them more competitive, influential and appealing in the new urban context. Many older cities and neighborhoods are struggling with the transition to an

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information-based economy as manufacturing industries decline, unemployment rises, and the demand for new types of services and skills grows. Attracting the world’s top talent, and lobbying for the leading firms in innovation and creativity that are driving the new knowledge economy, have become priorities for cities that wish to remain competitive on a global scale. In this context, policy makers understand that museums are important urban and economic agents that can help cities succeed in this transition. Furthermore, as part of the urban ecosystem, museums complement other institutions of the city, creating new historical, artistic, social, educational, entrepreneurial and economic dynamics. Museums are no longer static and conservative institutions. They are an integral component of the city´s future. Many museums are breaking barriers between disciplines to interact and explore new partnerships with other urban agents, ultimately leading to new ideas and increasing the city’s competitive edge. Museums are increasingly transversal in urban life, intersecting and influencing social and economic trends. Museums should no longer be circumscribed only to the preservation of heritage if cities want to realize their full potential. Culture and museums are most effective when placed at the very core of urban planning. But which are those museum impacts that can be leveraged through urban cultural planning, and how can they be measured and validated? In the next section we present some of the more relevant museum impacts on the city, ranging from the economic to the social, from the cultural to the political.

ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF MUSEUMS ON THE CITY Museums are among the most valuable, prestigious and frequented assets of cities. According to the American Alliance of Museums (AAM),3 museums directly contribute $21 billion to the US economy each year and support 400,000 jobs. This represents more jobs than computer programming or civil engineering generate.4 Almost twice as many people visit museums in the United States each year (around 850 million) as attend all major sporting events and theme parks combined. Some of the most visited attractions on earth are museums, including the Forbidden City in Beijing (15.3 million visitors annually), the Louvre Museum in Paris (9.2 million visits) and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC (8 million visits).5

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Berlin’s Museumsinsel (Museum Island). Cities are now at the epicenter of soft power. By 2025, as much as 35 percent of world economic growth will be generated by the top 100 cities. Photo: Creative Commons.

But not all museum impacts are as evident as dollars and visitor figures. Some are more easily measurable than others. As Bille and Schulze6 suggest, museums have short-run and long-run effects on the city. Short-run effects are quantitative and tangible: employment, tourism, expenditure, fiscal income and real estate value, among others. Long-run effects are qualitative or intangible and include soft power notions such as place making, educational enlightenment, creative networking, branding, heritage preservation and international influence. All of these effects contribute to the soft power of the city.

SHORT-RUN EFFECTS OF MUSEUMS Short-run effects are those related to increases in economic activity directly or indirectly attributable to a museum. As such, they are quantitative and more easily measurable than long-run effects. When people are attracted to a particular neighborhood or city because they want to visit a museum there, their economic

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activity is an aggregated value that the museum generates for the local economy. This includes any money that visitors spend inside the museum on ticketing, shop, events, food services, etc. But it also includes spending on related goods and services outside the museum—food, beverage, accommodations, transport or shopping. All the consumption that takes place as a result of a museum visit is additional activity that would not have taken place in that area had not the museum been there. There is often a related increase in employment, too. Of course, it is hard to prove what number of people actually go to a particular neighborhood or city primarily because they want to visit a museum, and not for other reasons. For these purposes, one has to rely on tourism office statistics that show a large percentage of tourists primarily motivated by a particular museum or cultural asset. This is much harder to quantify in the case of residents from other neighborhoods in the same city unless captured by a specific survey. Another challenge is that people might go to an area of a city to visit not one but several attractions or sites concentrated there, such as historic districts or cultural clusters. In those cases, the economic impact would have to be divided among the different

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cultural attractions. Despite these challenges, scholars have been able to devise methodologies to measure short-run effects of museums. Total short-run effects are the sum of three types: direct effects, induced effects and indirect effects.

DIRECT EFFECTS: INCREASED EMPLOYMENT AND SPENDING The direct effects are the income and employment generated by the museum itself. Direct employment includes all the museum personnel, permanent and temporary, as well as contractors, such as cleaning and security services. People tend to forget that museums are organizations run by people and that they are very labor intensive. Large museums can employ hundreds and even thousands of people. The Louvre in Paris employs more than 2,000 permanent staff, while the Metropolitan Museum in New York employs more than 2,500. Geffre (2004)7 estimated that in France, every 10,000 visitors create on average one direct job in the museum on a permanent basis and 0.15 on a temporary basis. Visitors’ expenditures inside the museum are also direct effects. Nowadays museums are much more than just a place to store and display their permanent collections. They are public spaces where visitors can relax and interact with other people and participate in public programs—even exercise their creativity. Museums have learned that the more sophisticated the visitor services they offer, the longer visitors are likely to stay within their premises (and consume), and the more likely they are to return (and consume again). The capacity and willingness of museums to generate their own income varies greatly, depending on the institutional philosophy, the type of museum and its governance model. Public museums that rely almost entirely on government funding have little incentive to expand services such as events, retail or food services, and thus have a modest capacity to generate income. On the other hand, private or semiprivate institutions can maximize earned revenue through more aggressive strategies that may include charging admission, marketing museum memberships, providing retail stores with specialized merchandise and outsourcing food operations to high-end chefs who offer visitors a gourmet experience. The more money visitors spend inside the museum, the more revenue the museum generates and the less it depends on support from government, foundations or donors.

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INDUCED AND INDIRECT EFFECTS The induced effects are the employment and income generated as a result of museum visitors’ spending on city services outside the museum. This ranges from the neighborhood to the whole city and includes benefits to providers of transportation, food and drink, accommodations, shopping, information and tourism services, and so on. Indirect effects are associated with both the direct and the induced effects, as they refer to the fiscal impact on the local and regional economy. Indirect effects are harder to intuit, as they are calculated by applying multipliers that factor in variables such as tax rates, the marginal propensity to consume, the marginal propensity to import and zoning issues, among others. For the purpose of this essay we will highlight very briefly what we consider the four most relevant nondirect impacts of museums: job creation in the area and increases in tourism, income and real estate value.

MUSEUMS CREATE NEW JOBS IN THE AREA Geffre8 calculated the spin-offs of museum visits in job creation in the area and museum-related activities. He concluded that for every 10,000 visitors, or for every permanent job in the museum, the following indirect jobs are created: • 0.62 jobs in fields related to the museum’s activities, such as interior architecture, conservation and restoration. These are people who work as providers or contractors to the museum’s activities. • 3.84 induced jobs by intermediate consumption. • 2.59 jobs in the tourism sector. These include hotels, restaurants, tourist guides, information services and so on. In sum, every 10,000 visitors create 8.2 jobs in the local economy, 1.15 direct jobs in the museum and 7.05 indirect jobs in the area in related economic activities. This is, of course, an average estimate based on a survey in France, and the results may vary from city to city and country to country. Nevertheless the accuracy of the model has been tested by Plaza (2006)9 using fan alternative approach to the impact in job creation of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and the results proved to be surprisingly similar: 834 new jobs compared to 907. Another point of comparison is the estimate by Miguel Zugaza, director of the Madrid’s Prado, that “every

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1,000 visitors that come to the Prado generate one job in Madrid, symbolizing the economic fabric that surrounds the Prado.”10 This is equivalent to 10 direct and indirect jobs for every 10,000 visitors, slightly higher than Geffre´s reference. One could argue that any economic activity or cultural/tourist attraction that receives visitors—not necessarily a museum—has an economic impact on its surrounding area that can create direct and indirect jobs. Some activities may have the potential to generate more jobs than a museum. Of course, the primary function of museums is not to revitalize the economy of a city or lower its unemployment rates, but it helps to know that in addition to preserving unique collections and offering citizens a space for enlightenment and reflection, museums also generate a significant number of jobs that benefit the local economy. Bille and Schulze11 point out that museums seem to have a larger impact in the surrounding area than other types of cultural assets, such as theaters or concerts: “In general, theaters and concerts have a larger turnover than museums and galleries, but museums and galleries attract more day visitors than theaters and concerts. If we take into account … the fact that visitors at museums and galleries spend more money on shopping and on food and beverage consumption during their visit, we arrive at the conclusion that the economic effects are in general bigger for museums and galleries than for theaters and orchestras.”

MUSEUMS INCREASE TOURISM AND RETAIN CULTURAL TOURISTS Tourism has much to offer as a source of economic benefits. As Throsby12 (2006) indicates, tourism “creates many jobs if the multiplier effects work; visitors to hotels create a demand for souvenirs, restaurant services, boat and taxi rides, car services, furniture for hotels, food, etc. It is a potentially large foreign exchange earner. Furthermore, tourism raises the educational levels of the local population, encourages growth of a middle class (who will themselves become tourists) and promotes social mobility.” During the previous decade (2000–10), international tourism arrivals increased by 40 percent worldwide, surpassing 940 million arrivals in 2010. According to the World Tourism Organization, tourism will continue to expand at a fast pace, surpassing 1.6 billion arrivals by 2020, an additional 60 percent increase over this decade. Over half of all tourist trips worldwide are made for leisure, recreation or

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holiday purposes. These tourists are the most likely to visit cultural institutions while on a trip. They include the more specific groups of “cultural tourists,” those motivated wholly or in part by an interest in the historical, artistic, scientific, or lifestyle/heritage offerings of a community. “Creative tourists” are those who expect opportunities for personal or professional development while traveling, typically by interacting with the people who make up the area’s living culture. Cultural and creative tourists have a bigger economic impact on the local economy than other types of tourists, for two reasons: 1. T  hey spend more than other types of tourists, and more than locals. In the US, cultural tourists spent $994 per trip versus $611 by other types of tourists.13 In a city like Chicago, tourists attending an arts/cultural event spend an average of $15 more than residents ($46.26 versus $31.32).14 2. They stay longer in the city, increasing their indirect economic impact. In the US, the average length of stay by cultural tourists was 5.2 nights, versus 3.4 nights for other tourists.15 Cities have long understood that cultural vibrancy and a strong cultural brand are essential to becoming a global tourism destination. Many museums have been planned at the epicenter of ambitious urban renewal projects with the goal of positioning their city on the global scene and on international tourism circuits. This has happened successfully in cities such as Salford and Liverpool (UK), Bilbao (Spain), or more recently Marseille (France), Doha (Qatar) and still-developing Saadiyat Island (Abu Dhabi). These cities are competing more directly for tourism nightstays on the basis of their cultural and museum offerings. Tourists, by definition, are people from outside the city. Every dollar they spend is a hundred percent added value to the city’s economy. A cultural establishment such as a museum that attracts large numbers of tourists will have a much higher impact on the local economy than one that focuses only on the interests of residents. In other words, the more tourists attracted by a museum, the higher its economic impact on the city. Museums with the largest percentages of tourists among their visitors are the ones with the highest multiplying effects on the economy, whereas museums that are attended only by locals have very limited indirect effects (as well as limited direct effects if the museum is public, free and offers no visitor amenities).

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Should all museums focus on attracting tourists and disregard the local population? Of course not. Museums are social institutions. Museums need to find the balance between serving their local communities and attracting tourists. Price schemes and cultural programming need to cater to both types of visitors who may have very different needs and expectations. Some urban planners might differentiate between “neighborhood museums” that are targeted towards the needs of residents and have little economic impact but an important social mission, and “landmark museums” that invite thousands of tourists to visit the city and stay overnight but have a more commercial approach to content and services. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is referred to by many scholars of cultural economics, tourism, urban planning and museum management as the paradigm of the transformation of a city from a decaying industrial center to a cultural tourism destination. This is termed the “Bilbao Effect” and is applied (more unsuccessfully than successfully) to other cities all over the world. The advantage of Bilbao as a case study is that it allows an undistorted analysis of the impact of building a signature museum on the economic life of the city and on its tourism numbers. Before the Guggenheim Museum was built, the city of Bilbao received less than 100,000 overnight stays per year. That number has risen to over 800,000, of which, according to Plaza (2006),16 740,904 are directly attributable to the Guggenheim Museum. Not surprisingly, 90 percent of the museum’s visitors are not from the city of Bilbao, they are tourists. As much as 60 percent are foreign and would probably not have stayed in the city had it not been for the museum and the urban transformation that it inspired. Furthermore, according to J. del Castillo and S.N. Haarich (2004), the Guggenheim Museum brought immediate benefits to the sector dealing directly with tourists—hotels, restaurants, shops, tour operators, language schools—as well as to some related cultural and creative sectors, such as translation services, libraries, Internet booking, graphic arts, publishing and marketing.

MUSEUMS INCREASE INCOME Museums are not profitable institutions. They are social institutions with high fixed costs: maintenance of large buildings, care of delicate collections that require sophisticated environmental conditions, strict security measures and large numbers of personnel to manage visitors and ensure that operations are smoothly run.

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Virtually all museums rely on public funds or private contributions to cover their operating expenses. In my estimation based on museum business plans that I have worked on in Europe and the Middle East, some superperforming museums are able to cover as much as 70 percent of their operating expenses through earned income. But this is an exception. The vast majority rarely covers more than 25 percent on its own, especially outside North America.17 Because a majority of museums require public funding, it is valid to question the logic of allocating such funds to museums and not to different sectors that yield (perhaps) more tangible results, such as education, health care or infrastructure. There are numerous arguments to justify public investment in culture. One is that many of the public dollars invested return to the treasury in the form of income from the direct and indirect effects discussed above. According to the American Alliance of Museums, “Governments that support the arts see an average return on investment of over $7 in taxes for every $1 that the government appropriates.”18 Similarly, Americans for the Arts asserts that in the US the nonprofit arts and culture industry “generates $22.3 billion in revenue to local, state, and federal governments every year—a yield well beyond their collective $4 billion in arts allocations.”19 Eighteen percent of the total economic activity by nonprofit arts and cultural organizations returns to local, state, and federal governments in the form of tax revenue each year. In the case of the Guggenheim Museum, the initial public investment of $183.8 million was recovered within the first six to 10 years of the museum’s opening (depending on the method of calculation), and as Plaza20 points out, it has “created 907 new full-time jobs [and] earns around $39.9 million annually for the Basque treasury.” The Provincial Treasuries of Biscay estimated in 2004 that each non-Basque Country visitor to the museum generated an additional €36.01 in both direct and indirect tax revenues.21

MUSEUMS INCREASE REAL ESTATE VALUE In recent years, cities have seen major urbanization projects lead to the gentrification of neighborhoods around cultural landmarks, particularly museums. Such projects, when successful, tend to draw attention to areas of a city that had been disregarded by residents, investors and businesses. Real estate values in these

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areas increase, benefiting the district and city through increased property taxes and economic activity. In London, the establishment of Tate Modern in the London borough of Southwark turned a previously undeveloped area into a new pole of attraction for visitors and residents alike. A study by McKinsey & Company22 revealed the following: • As a result of the museum’s opening, property prices and commercial investment levels increased faster in Southwark than in other parts of London. • Commercial development in Southwark outpaced the London average, as did the increase in the number of new businesses. • The number of hotel and catering businesses in the local area increased by 23 percent from 1997–2000. • Twenty-six percent of people questioned in a MORI poll shortly after opening already associated the area with the museum. • In its first five years, Tate Modern created between 2,000 and 4,000 new jobs, about half of which are located in the South Bank area. These effects continue. Tate Modern attracts 4.7 million visitors per year. New real estate developments continue in the area. The Renzo Piano-designed skyscraper The Shard, currently the tallest building in the EU, was inaugurated in 2012 in Southwark and is jointly owned by a UK developer and the State of Qatar. The area has proven attractive to major professional service firms, including PricewaterhouseCoopers, Norton Rose Fulbright and Ernst & Young. City organizations such as the Greater London Authority have also moved to Southwark following the urban regeneration sparked by Tate Modern. Of course there are cautions to observe when celebrating the impact of museums on real estate value. The first is that museum developments need to be accompanied by a comprehensive public investment plan in order for the transformation to be successful, such as enhanced transportation networks, public spaces, and social and community services. The second is that speculation often follows urban redevelopment, artificially inflating real estate values and forcing out lower-income residents. It is for city authorities to control such downside processes and ensure that the benefits and opportunities of museum-led regeneration—new jobs, increased economic activity, growth of the hospitality sector and tourism generally—outweigh the disadvantages of such revalorization.

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LONG-RUN EFFECTS OF MUSEUMS Perhaps more important for the purpose of this book are the intangible long-run effects of museums, which are directly related to the idea of soft power. There are many effects that cannot be measured in quantitative terms but nevertheless make enormous contributions to the long-term vitality of a community and society, generally. Some of these are discussed below.

MUSEUMS ADVANCE SOCIAL, EDUCATIONAL AND CREATIVITY VALUES Museums tend to be evaluated on the basis of their visitor numbers. This is understandable, as it is an easy measure to obtain and can be compared across institutions. Some short-run effects of museums are maximized if visitor figures (and especially tourists) increase, as this leads to more dollars spent in the local economy. However, we have also pointed out that museums' sole purpose is not to generate an economic impact, but rather to preserve a valuable collection and rely on it to foster social, educational and creativity values. Such qualitative values can have a stronger transformational effect than short-term impacts. As Bille and Schulze23 state, “Educational and creativity effects can only occur in the long run and are obviously very difficult to verify or to measure, in part because we do not know the transmission channels through which such creativity and personality spillovers could materialize.” However, most people would agree that museums, like other cultural assets, are “important for the formation of identity, personality, attitudes, job motivation, creativity, etc.—factors that are also important for economic development. In other words, the arts can provide inspiration for creative processes and trigger actions directed towards change and innovation. Artistic and cultural activity in a region can thus indirectly lead to more innovative industrial development through the creativity in the arts sector spreading to other economic activities.” Despite their nonquantifiable nature, social, educational and creativity impacts in museums can be measured by soft benchmarks that include: • the quality of the visit, measured through visitor surveys • the length of stay of visitors • the transformational capacity of the museum on the community through

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participatory programs, measured through focus groups, community partner feedback or participants’ feedback • the condition of the artifacts or works of art • publications that are edited or published • research projects and collaborations with local companies • academic excellence of museum personnel, measured through international recognition, speaking engagements and the like

MUSEUMS HAVE A NON-USE VALUE Museums appeared in Renaissance Europe to collect and preserve valuable artifacts. This core function remains unchanged in today’s museums while new functions have been added. Museums preserve and interpret collections for the benefit of the public and for future generations. This function seems so obvious that it is sometimes taken for granted, but it deserves some consideration when thinking of a museum’s impact on a city’s economy and its soft power. Beyond the monetary value of a museum’s collections—literally priceless—there is value in their potential, that fact that those collections are available, even if a person does not use them. Museums’ collections are nonexcludable public goods, which means that their enjoyment by visitors does not alter or limit the potential enjoyment of future visitors. This notion sheds light on the non-use or passive-use value of museums, which according to Rizzo and Throsby24 can take three forms: “First, individuals may value the existence of a given item of cultural heritage, even though they may not consume the services of that item directly themselves. Second, they may have an option demand, i.e., a desire to keep open the possibility that they might consume the asset’s services at some time in the future. Third, the asset may have bequest value, insofar as people wish to bequeath the asset to future generations.” Frey and Meier25 describe three techniques for empirically measuring non-use value of museums: • Contingent valuation method: This method uses representative surveys of both visitors and nonvisitors to provide an estimate of their willingness to pay for the various social values produced by a museum. The result is a price estimate that visitors would be willing to pay to preserve the museum. Scholars such as Sanz Lara26 have estimated this value for specific museums, such as the Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, Spain.

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• Compensation variation: This method relates the impact of a museum in

a city and the behavior of its residents in view of such impact. For example, it can estimate the extent to which property values increase in a city that contains a museum and the extent to which people are willing to pay a premium to live near a museum, even if they do not visit it. Another example involves salaries: whether people are willing to earn less to work in a location that has a better cultural aesthetic due to the presence of a museum. • Analysis of referenda: A third approach for capturing social non-use values is to analyze the outcome of popular referenda regarding the approval or disapproval of public expenditures on museums that some people may not use but consider valuable and worth investing in. This method has been successfully implemented in Switzerland by scholars such as Frey and Pommerehne (1989) and Schulze and Ursprung (2000).

MUSEUMS ARE CRUCIAL TO PLACE MAKING, LOCAL IDENTITY AND CITIZENSHIP Museums tend to be urban landmarks in their cities. Historically museums have had the status of temples of knowledge and have been located in palaces and historic buildings of the city. This was the case when the majority of national museums started to proliferate in the 19th century, automatically giving the neighborhood where they were located a look and feel of power and importance, as did houses of parliament, opera houses or botanical gardens. No wonder some of the oldest museums are located in the historic centers of cities close to other symbolic buildings, giving the city a unique identity and a sense of place that goes back several centuries. Nowadays museums continue to be key in place making of modern cities, especially as contemporary architecture tends to go hand in hand with new museum and urban development. Contemporary architecture is undoubtedly a dominant force in the place making of 21st-century cities. There is hardly a major city that has not embarked in recent years on some sort of urban renewal process involving an iconic museum. The underlying reason for such developments is often to enliven a depressed area of the city, improve its livability and create a sense of place. Beyond architecture and public space, museums also interact with their

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immediate environment by supporting a social fabric that enhances local identity and sense of place. Through their cultural programs and initiatives—outreach activities and collaborative projects with nearby schools, universities, civic associations and other cultural institutions and research centers—museums establish informal relationships with other organizations in the vicinity. These relationships have a place-making effect. When a museum contributes to creating a strong sense of place, it also contributes to a higher quality of life and a more vibrant social and cultural scene. More talented and creative people may wish to live in the vicinity, and more knowledge-economy firms may relocate there to benefit from the creative environment. Museums also play a significant role in building citizenship. They are open spaces where civil society can grow and evolve. As urban planner Larry Beasley proposes,27 the museum has the potential to become “the agora of the city—the place where people come together to learn about issues, debate the future, consider new propositions and evaluate the various development moves that are changing the cityscape every day. Again, the idea is that the museum barriers come tumbling down and the physical plant of the museum becomes not just a repository but also a safe and respectful gathering place.” Museums have long evolved from simple repositories of artifacts to dynamic agents for democracy, protagonists in the increasing soft power of cities.

MUSEUMS CONTRIBUTE TO THE CITY’S IMAGE AND HOW IT IS PERCEIVED This effect is related to place making, but the focus here is on city branding and on how the city is perceived by visitors and residents. A visible museum nurtures the collective imagination such that people are likely to associate a prominent museum with the impression they have of the entire city. For example, a city like St. Petersburg would be perceived differently if the Hermitage Museum was not located there; Florence would not come immediately to mind when thinking about Italian Renaissance if the Uffizi Gallery or the Accademia were not located there. Cities exploit this by advertising and identifying their image with that of their main tourism assets, in many cases museums. This can create a lasting relationship between city-and-museum and museum-and-city in the minds of visitors and residents.

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There is also an element of pride and prestige in this city-museum relationship. Residents can have an almost patriotic feeling towards their museums, especially if these play a decisive role in the community, or if the museums are perceived as world class because of their collection, their education programs or their architecture. This perception also works for nonresidents, who may regard the population of a city as more sophisticated, cultured and sensitive because the city boasts a vibrant cultural scene and a rich offering of museums.

CONCLUSION In this essay we have supported the notion that museums are increasingly important for cities’ influence and soft power in the context of a burgeoning urban world and the global shift toward a knowledge economy. Culture, and specifically museums, have the potential to impact the city on multiple fronts through urban planning and policy development. Museums’ significant contributions to the economic vitality and quality of life of cities are reflected in the new knowledge economy. Culture and creativity have become critical and growing components of cities’ reputation, competitiveness and appeal. There is evidence that museums are critical economic agents in cities, and this has been synthesized here in the form of short-run and long-run effects. Not all the impact of museums is tangible or measurable. Like all social and cultural assets, museums make soft contributions that are sometimes evident only indirectly and in the long term. However, the proven capacity of museums to generate and sustain jobs, attract talent, position cities as tourism destinations, elevate their sense of civic pride or enhance their international visibility and prestige makes museums a key element in the soft power of cities worldwide.

ENDNOTES 1 “US Metro Economies,” prepared by I.H.S. Global Insight for the United States Conference of Mayors, 2013, http://www.usmayors.org/metroeconomies/2013/201311report.pdf. 2 Richard Dobbs et al., “Urban World: Mapping the Economic Power of Cities” (Washington, DC: McKinsey Global Institute, 2011). 3 http://www.aam-us.org/about-museums/museum-facts 4 US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Data for 2012, http://www.bls. gov/ooh/. 5 http://www.lovehomeswap.com/blog/latest-news/the-50-most-visited-tourist-

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attractions-in-the-world 6 Trine Bille and Günther G. Schulze, “Culture in Urban and Regional Development,” in Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, Volume 1, Victor A. Ginsburgh and David Throsby, ed. (London: Elsevier B.V., 2006). 7 Xavier Greffe, “Is Heritage an Asset or a Liability?” Journal of Cultural Heritage 5, no. 3 (2004): 301–309, http://www.researchgate.net/publication/248545875_Is_heritage_an_asset_or_a_ liability 8 Ibid. 9 B. Plaza, “The Return on Investment of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30, no. 2 (2006): 452–467. 10 http://www.pwc.com/us/en/cities-of-opportunity/2014/assets/pdf/cities-ofopportunity-transcript-miguel-zugaza.pdf 11 Victor A. Ginsburgh and David Throsby, eds., Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, Volume 1 (Amsterdam: Elsevier B.V., 2006). 12 Ibid. 13 Cultural & Heritage Traveler Study, Mandela Research, LLC, 2009. http:// mandalaresearch.com/index.php/purchase-reports/view_document/1-the-2009-culturala-heritage-traveler-study. 14 “Arts & Economic Prosperity III. The Economic Impact of Nonprofit Arts and Culture Organizations and Their Audiences in the City of Chicago, IL” (Washington, DC: Americans for the Arts, 2007). 15 http://www.culturalheritagetourism.org/resources/visitorProfile.htm, with sources from Travel Industry Association of America TravelScope survey 2003; The Historic/ Cultural Traveler, 2003 Edition, TIA and Smithsonian Magazine. 16 B. Plaza, "Return on Investment." 17 AAM’s 2009 Museum Financial Information Survey notes that for US museums, median earned revenue is 21.3 percent of operating revenue. At the 90th percentile of museums surveyed, the figure is 62.4 percent of operating revenue. 18 http://www.aam-us.org/about-museums/museum-facts 19 “Arts & Economic Prosperity IV. The Economic Impact of Nonprofit Arts and Culture Organizations and Their Audiences. Summary Report” (Washington, DC: Americans for the Arts). http://www.americansforthearts.org/sites/default/ files/pdf/information_services/research/services/economic_impact/aepiv//AEP4_ NationalSummaryReport.pdf. 20 B. Plaza, “Return in Investment.” 21 Guggenheim Bilbao Museum’s 2004 Annual Report. 22 http://www.tate.org.uk/about/press-office/press-releases/economic-impact-tatemodern 23 Ginsburgh and Throsby, Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture. 24 Ilde Rizzo and David Throsby, “Cultural Heritage: Economic Analysis and Public Polic,” in Ginsburgh and Throsby. 25 Bruno S. Frey and Stephen Meier, “The Economics of Museum,” in Ginsburgh and

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Throsby, Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture. 26 José Ángel Sanz Lara, Valoración Económica del patrimonio cultural (Gijon, Spain: Ediciones Trea, 2004). 27 http://www.museumofvancouver.ca/programs/blog/2012/11/2/city-museum-andmuseum-city

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Museums in Public Diplomacy Federica Olivares



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“T

he power of culture can often be underestimated as a diplomatic tool, but cultural exchange can not only serve as a universal icebreaker, it can tear down walls and build bridges between the most hardened of enemies. It may not turn foes into instant friends, but it does allow nations to find points of commonality that transcend politics.”1 This is how Wendy W. Luers, president emerita, Foundation for Art & Preservation for Embassies, advocates the soft power of art. Art indeed has often reached places that diplomacy could not. Objects of art can succeed where diplomats and politicians fail. As author John Holden puts it, “In an increasingly connected world, we should no longer think of culture as subordinate to politics.”2 On the contrary, we have to think that culture provides the context for politics. The impact of art gifts and exchanges in public diplomacy dates back to ancient times, in particular to the 15th century when ambassadors presented their credentials to foreign sovereigns, emperors and tyrants. Art objects became a sort of protective shield, thanks to the aura implicit in the work of art. Art and antiquities represented a safe zone. Museums today play a continuing role in international reconciliation and understanding. They are able to maintain good relationships when more formal channels of communication prove challenging. In some instances, museums represent the only remaining avenue for diplomatic relations when political tensions mount between two countries. This was the case in 2005 when the British Museum hosted “Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia,” which included art loaned from several European and two Iranian museums: the National Museum of Iran in Tehran and the Persepolis Museum. The exhibition, which then traveled to Barcelona and Japan, was held at a time of international political tensions because of Iran’s nuclear program.3 The British Museum subsequently loaned the Cyrus Cylinder (6th century BCE) to the National Museum of Iran in 2011, following a request from the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicraft and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO), at a time when the museum was the only remaining avenue for diplomatic relations between the two countries. Today museums “embody a sizable political role and have increasingly become internationally implicated/socially situated and inevitably heavily political.”4 The politically engaged and globally connected Western museums have become adept at the art of international cultural diplomacy, their reach sometimes extending beyond that of governments.5

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Besides their public diplomacy role, museums have a role to play in economic growth, attracting economic assets in the form of international tourism, trade and investments. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the explosion of artistic exchanges with BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). After Britain pushed for greater trade with China, British museums have embarked on numerous projects with Chinese colleagues and hosted a series of exhibitions drawn from China’s rich collections.6 This is true also for other Western countries and museums. Italy and its Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (MIBACT) have engaged heavily in a long-term strategy of significant art exchanges between Chinese and Italian museums. These are skillfully managed by MIBACT’s Department of Cultural Heritage Promotion and make it possible for Chinese people to appreciate the strongest symbols of Italian art, history and culture without leaving their country. In agreement with this Cooperation Plan, in 2012–13, Italy began by sending a great exhibit to the National Museum of China in Beijing: “Renaissance in Florence: Masterpieces and Protagonists,” which focused on the art and urban life of Florence in the Renaissance. In turn, in 2013 Italy hosted the exhibit “Archaic China: First exhibit of the Chinese civilization, 3500–221 BC” at Palazzo Venezia in Rome. And in 2014, the National Museum of China hosted an exhibition entitled “Rome/Seventeenth Century: Towards Baroque,” which proved successful in supporting Italian diplomatic and business missions to China.

MUSEUMS AS REPUTATION GENERATORS Museums have become major sources of generating positive reputations for countries and cities, contributing heavily to their influence and attraction around the world. BRICS countries, as well as Asian countries (Singapore) and Gulf countries (Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Saudi Arabia) are developing new gigantic or “branded” museums. The National Gallery in Singapore will open its doors in 2015. The Louvre Abu Dhabi is now being constructed on Saadiyat Island. The Pingtan Art Museum is being built on Pingtan Island in China, formerly a “war zone” between China and Taiwan. Globally renowned “starchitects” have been hired to place these projects at the forefront of the global cultural scene, attracting international tourism to their doors. Pingtan will soon become a free-trade zone, allowing the people of Taiwan to experience culture and shopping in the People’s Republic of China. Cultural mega-events have the power to shape national reputations globally.7

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The bronze masterpiece Boxer at Rest (Hellenistic 323–331 BC) was exhibited in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and in other US cities for the “Year of Italian Culture in the United States,” 2013. Photo by F. Olivares.

This is evident in the global competition for hosting mega-events, where Western countries are withdrawing and BRICS countries are stepping forward. It began with China being awarded the 2008 Olympics as well as the Shanghai World Expo in 2010. Other examples are Brazil hosting the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, and Qatar’s hosting the 2022 World Cup. At the same time, we can observe that some Western countries have withdrawn from the competition. In October 2014, Oslo, Norway, withdrew its bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics, making it the fourth city after Stockholm, Lviv and Krakow to have second thoughts about hosting the games. The Olympics have become an effective soft power platform for countries that wish to reshape their reputations, a move that is sometimes accompanied by a positive change in these countries’ approach to human rights.

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Because much of the content of global communication today is cultural, museums are becoming an influential cultural relations player, no less so than broadcasting, educational institutions, business, artists, performers and sports stars. Through their exhibits and cultural programs, museums are especially capable of creating the symbolic image of a place, be it a nation or a city. This specific expertise of museums allows them to contribute to place-branding, enhancing or transforming the reputation and perceived image of cities and regions. This is especially true of exhibits that present not only the cultural heritage of a nation or city, but also their current symbolic values, such as exhibitions on fashion and design. For instance, the controversial exhibition on Giorgio Armani held at the Guggenheim Museum in 2000, organized by Director Thomas Krenz as the first-ever exhibit on fashion in that museum, contributed extensively to the perceived image of Milan as a global capital for fashion. The exhibit traveled to the Guggenheim Bilbao, to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, and to London, Rome, Tokyo and Las Vegas. Museums can also represent an ideal context for public diplomacy initiatives. “Italy in the US 2013: Year of Italian Culture in the United States,” conceived by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and coordinated by this writer in her role as cultural adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, used major American museums as a space for building diplomatic relations. The exhibition showcased Italy’s influence and attraction through its artistic masterpieces, but also in its symbolic values of beauty, style and creative innovation, as well as the four Fs—fashion, food, form (design) and Ferrari. “The Year of Italian Culture in the United States” was developed as a public and cultural diplomacy event through agreements between President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Mario Monti and Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata. The two major goals were: 1. T  o celebrate the special partnership between the US and Italy based on shared values, historic connections, and human and cultural relations through the centuries. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, was chosen to inaugurate the “Italy in the US” program. The first work of art chosen for exhibition, Michelangelo’s David-Apollo from the Bargello Museum in Florence, reestablished the goal of celebrating the friendship between Italy and the United States, as the same masterpiece was brought to the National Gallery in 1949 as a token of gratitude by Italy for postwar aid for the US In a

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“magical” coincidence that gave the inaugural event even more meaning, the same David-Apollo traveled to Washington on the occasions of the reelection of two American presidents: Harry Truman in November 1948 and Barack Obama in November 2012. 2. T  o reintroduce the relevance of Italy on a global level using the exceptional communication platforms represented by major US museums and cultural institutions. The whole program of “Italy in the US” consisted of more than 180 cultural events in 40 American cities. The choice was made to develop the existing program of events already scheduled for 2013 by American museums. Events were not concentrated only in major American cities. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, presented the Fauno Rosso, a red marble statue of a satyr given to the Capitoline Museums in 1746 by Pope Benedict XIV. The exhibit was sponsored by the Italian energy provider Enel Green Power North America, a corporation producing renewable energies that has installed more than 150 turbines for wind energy production in Kansas, one of the largest projects of its kind in the world. The role that museums can play in international relations sometimes makes possible at the governmental level art loans that would not happen otherwise, as they involve priceless and irreplaceable works of art. Facilitating intermuseum loans is clearly evident in “Italy in the US 2013” with the loan of the bronze masterpiece Pugilatore in riposo (Boxer at Rest), a jewel of the Museo Nazionale Romano. This work of art had never before been exhibited in the United States. The statue, attributed to the late Hellenistic period (323–31 BC) and to the Lysippos school, is one of the rare original bronzes that has survived intact. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York placed Pugilatore in riposo in the ground-floor entrance hall dedicated to the museum’s collection of Greek and Roman art to highlight the value of the loan. During the months of its display, the statue became a true “icon within an icon” and drew renewed attention to the museum’s collections. The “Italy in the US 2013” program was meant to reinstate Italy’s role not only as a “cultural superpower,” but as a country capable of research, discovery and innovation. The project highlighted how culture represents a fundamental pillar of Italian foreign policy, focused in equal measure on science, technology and art, with a concentration on innovation from the Renaissance to today. To establish this link

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between past and modern innovation, many events were programmed with this dual aspect in mind. Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex on the Flight of Birds (1505, from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin) was chosen for exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington to celebrate the 50th anniversary of cooperation between NASA and the Italian Space Agency, the longest running partnership between NASA and any other national space agency. The overall concept underlying the program of events and initiatives was an “economics of culture” approach, where culture represents an asset in the value chain produced by a country. The program mirrored the multiple facets of the soft powers of Italian culture and excellence—art, science, technology, music, cinema, food, design and the Italian language. “Italy in the US 2013” was, therefore, an opportunity to promote the Italy brand, increasing the visibility of certain Italian companies. “The Year of Italian Culture in the United States” also introduced a new model for collaboration between public and private groups that surpasses the patronage concept of passive sponsorship, establishing true partnerships with a network of companies in Italy. Fourteen private companies joined forces to finance the entire “Italy in the US” initiative. Cultural diplomacy thus became an authentic attraction for partnerships with the business sector, allowing companies to benefit from allying themselves with a major cultural initiative.

PRIVATE PARTNERS, NEW RESOURCES: SPONSORSHIPS ARE GONE, PARTNERSHIPS ARE HERE As a result of cyclical and structural economic crises, there has been a major and permanent shift in the relations between cultural institutions and private donors. Many donors are no longer willing to give money for the standard benefit of visibility, but will only donate on the basis of a well-structured partnership project. Such projects do not happen overnight. They are the result of sound planning that identifies the donors’ mission, goals, marketing and communication strategies. Cultural diplomacy presents exceptional opportunities for museums to attract corporate donors who wish to benefit from brand enrichment. There is great value added in becoming a museum’s corporate partner for a public diplomacy event. The symbolic power of a nation or city portrayed in a major museum exhibit enhances the credibility and status of the corporate partner. The companies most willing to offer financial support to these kinds of events are active in strategic sectors such

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as public utilities, but also include major global brands of food, fashion and design. The food industry is becoming more interested in similar global initiatives of “gastro-diplomacy.” Many countries are launching new activities in order to exploit their specific cultural riches. Thailand’s government recently promoted the opening of thousands of Thai restaurants abroad, branding Thailand as the “world’s kitchen.”8 The brand-enhancement role museums and exhibits play in the context of public diplomacy can prove rewarding, especially in a time of diminishing economic resources and public funding. Museums’ development departments should bear in mind that this role could result in new, long-standing partnerships with the private sector and a major new revenue stream.

ENDNOTES 1 Wendy W. Luers, “Soft Power of Art: Lifelong Cultural Commitment Pays Diplomatic Dividends,” Huffington Post, November 18, 2010. 2 John Holden et al., Cultural Diplomacy (London: Demos, 2007), 20. 3 Leanne Hoogwaerts, “What roles do museums and art institutions play in international relations today?,” Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, 2012, http://www. culturaldiplomacy.org. 4 Christine Sylvester, Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It (London: Paradigm Publishers, 2009), 3. 5 Cristina Ruiz, “Curators as Kissingers: Can Museum Repair Diplomatic Relations?,” New Statesman, October 20, 2014. 6 Ibid. 7 Maurice Roche, Mega-Events and Modernity: Olympics and Expos in the Growth of Global Culture (London: Routledge, 2000). 8 See http://www.thaitrade.com/news_detail.php?id=218.

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London’s Knowledge Quarter: The Soft Power of Museums in the Knowledge Economy and Urban Development Baillie Card



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I

n the 21st century, the soft power of museums and cities will increasingly depend on the value of the knowledge that they produce and disseminate. In his foundational discussion of soft power, Joseph S. Nye writes that “information is power” and is intimately connected to the mechanisms of soft power in particular.1 Crucially, new communication and information technologies render states more “porous” and give corporations, local governments or agents of civil society—like museums—chances to bolster or hinder the state by wielding their own soft power.2 While studies of museological soft power have often focused on exhibitionary practices, unpacking how shows can be curated and funded to further political goals, this essay examines museums as active agents of urban development. It considers the British Library’s and British Museum’s participation in London’s emerging Knowledge Quarter project, asking, How can museums help cities build more knowledge-rich economies and societies? And how does that reciprocally impact their soft power? A manifold terminology describes postindustrial cities: the learning city, the intelligent city, the smart city, the creative city, the cognitive city and others, each with unique points of emphasis.3 In Britain, the “knowledge economy” has been a key driver of growth since the late 1980s. Although the term has eluded precise definition, Britain’s Economic and Social Research Council uses it to describe economic structures wherein “success is increasingly based upon the effective utilization of intangible assets such as knowledge, skills and innovative potential.”4 Sectors such as finance, arts and culture, consultancy, legal services and design belong to this category. Strikingly, in the UK the years between 1987 and 2006 saw knowledgebased service exports jump from under £13 billion to nearly £90 billion.5 The growth was largely urban: as of 2007, over a quarter of employment in private, knowledgebased businesses was located in London.6 In Britain, and London specifically, the creative sector (both public and private) is a foundational strength of the knowledge economy.7 The British Museum is an early member of London’s emerging Knowledge Quarter (KQ), a consortium of organizations in Camden Borough, and has a seat on its nine-person board, along with University College London, the Guardian, The Art Fund, The Royal College of GPs, the Wellcome Trust and Camden Council. Led by the British Library, the KQ was developed to connect all public and private

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organizations that create and disseminate knowledge within a roughly one-mile radius of King’s Cross, St. Pancras International and Euston train stations. The area contains an unusually high concentration of such institutions, and in late 2014 just prior to launching, the KQ had 30 members, including Google, the Francis Crick Institute and the Design Council. The KQ has many guises: it is a strategic branding exercise, a place-making initiative, a community-building federation and an accelerator of urban development. Its primary goal is not to spur property development, but rather to foster collaborative relationships between member institutions.8 Outcomes might include joint conferences and research seminars, secondment opportunities, collaborative research goals and shared marketing efforts. The board has identified four priority areas for projects, some of which reveal the KQ’s parallel mandate to act in local urban development: advocacy for its members; local community engagement; physical improvement of the area; and knowledge exchange, a concept used by British governmental agencies to measure institutional impact and instrumental to securing funding.9 As the KQ therefore comprises world-leading members but aspires to local impact, its activities bridge municipal and international spheres of activity. In many ways, the KQ is bridging gaps to define new conceptual and geographic territories. In terms of London’s urban fabric, it effectively creates a new neighborhood, joining the northern part of Bloomsbury with a massive urban redevelopment site near the historically deprived areas of King’s Cross and St. Pancras International stations. The overall project spans 67 acres and will house “50 new buildings, 20 restored old buildings, 20 new streets, three parks and 10 new public spaces.”10 It ranks among the largest urban redevelopment projects in Europe and places a clear emphasis on public space, encompassing the largest public square built in Britain since Trafalgar Square in 1845.11 Central Saint Martins, Palgrave Macmillan, Google and the Aga Khan University are already located in or committed to this area. To promote spatial cohesion within the new “quarter,” walkability (hence its one-mile radius) and street-level branding are priorities. There is strong support among members for a “knowledge trail” among all institutions and for decorating the district intermittently with KQ banners. In future, the KQ logo may be on local Legible London map posts.12 When travelers arrive from Paris at St. Pancras International station, they could one day be welcomed to the KQ rather than London.13

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By initiating the KQ, the British Library is pursuing its mission of “advancing the world’s knowledge.”14 Due to this broad goal, the library’s activities rest at the intersection of arts, culture and cross-disciplinary research, encompassing both museum collections and exhibition spaces, as well as vast reference collections that serve a highly diverse clientele. Its public museum spaces include the Sir John Ritblat Gallery, which displays collection treasures including the Magna Carta and the Lindisfarne Gospels; the Folio Society Gallery, which stages free temporary exhibitions from the collection on historical and thematic topics; and galleries for temporary paying exhibitions that put British Library artifacts in literary and historical context. By virtue of this wide reach, whereby the British Library is museum, library and archive; and whereby its collections equally serve biomedical scientists, industrial designers, entrepreneurs or musicians (and virtually any potential KQ member researcher), it is uniquely placed to knit connections among member institutions. This position, along with its international reputation and mandate of public service, encourages its perception by fellow KQ members as “a neutral space in urban development” at the heart of civil society.15 In an era of declining public support for arts institutions despite their economic contributions, focusing on knowledge as a uniting principle for the KQ may productively shift the debate for all parties. Miki Lentin, head of communications at the British Library and the force behind the KQ’s development, has said that organizations recovering from damaging postrecession cuts are “thinking of new ways of doing things with the resources that [they] have available and much of that is done through partnership”: collaborating can be a way of doing more with less.16 Equally important, however, is the power of member institutions to “lobby together” and “advocate to further their objectives.”17 By combining forces, KQ members not only magnify their influence, but also change the terms of the national conversation around arts and culture to explicitly embed it in discussions of the knowledge economy. Following Nye, this exhibits a core form of soft power, which is the ability to achieve desired ends by “framing the agenda.”18 Museums, of course, have always collapsed the traditional divide between the arts and sciences by carrying out material research and conservation on their collections. In this sense, they offer models to emulate in the new knowledge economy: studies reveal that, while policy makers have tended to treat the arts and sciences very differently (and increasingly so in Britain with recent slashes to arts funding

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Architect’s rendering of The Francis Crick Institute, a founding member of London’s Knowledge Quarter. This interdisciplinary biomedical research institute also provides community outreach, art and museum space. Photo courtesy of HOK with PLP Architecture.

alongside a reorientation towards STEM subjects), in knowledge sectors they are entwined.19 Already in 1999, for example, Barcelona’s strategic plan described cultural institutions as “the motor of a knowledge city.”20 The Knowledge Quarter has joined the nascent area dubbed by Camden Council “King’s Cross Central” with the very old and established brand of Bloomsbury, epitomized by the British Museum.21 Since first opening to the public in 1759, the British Museum has been located in Bloomsbury and its image is synonymous with the intellectual and cultural capital of the neighborhood. The area was home to architect and collector Sir John Soane, Charles Dickens, women’s suffrage leader Emmeline Pankhurst and the early 20th-century Bloomsbury Group of artists and writers that included Virginia Woolf. It has also long housed many higher education institutions, including University College London, the first nondenominational university in England. For this area, and London as a whole, the British Museum has been an “anchor institution” whose more than 6 million visitors per year provide a stable source of economic and cultural vitality.22 By partnering

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with the KQ, the British Museum is extending its knowledge-rich brand beyond Bloomsbury and into a new neighborhood. In this sense, the museum transcends the status of a fixed landmark to become a flexible, evolving and active agent of urban transformation. It also benefits reciprocally from its association with the KQ: after long being perceived as a conservative and inward-facing institution, the British Museum under Neil MacGregor’s directorship has striven to become a connected, networked, accessible and digitally savvy “museum of the future,” an image that the KQ will no doubt reinforce.23 The KQ’s influence clearly extends beyond discourse to very material processes of urban planning. Aside from local branding initiatives, the KQ seeks to advocate for local infrastructure projects, improve access to its resources and further any number of future objectives yet to be determined.24 Already the KQ has given feedback to Camden Council and Transport for London about the redevelopment of Euston Road (a major artery running through the KQ), and is participating in public consultation for London’s proposed cycling superhighway plan. Future initiatives could see other KQ members partner with Camden Council to provide apprenticeship programs, thereby increasing community participation and creating employment opportunities in the borough. In many ways, the KQ epitomizes the increasing power of civil society institutions: although the Camden Council is a key member, and the organization exists with the approval of local and national government officials, in policy terms its creation has been voluntary and not coercive.25 Its genesis has been collective and grassroots, and not a top-down government initiative, and its future development will be evolving and iterative, with no special legal or policy framework provided by the government. At present, it is funded by member subscription fees in proportion to each institution’s quantity of local employees.26 A 2014 House of Lords report on soft power in the UK emphasized cultural assets, including the British Library and British Museum specifically, as a wellspring of the nation’s soft power.27 As Professor Michele Acuto has shown, global cities are increasingly agents in international relations and diplomacy, and it seems reasonable that their anchor institutions will be uniquely poised to operate outside the city.28 The British Library and the British Museum, for example, both participate in the World Collections Program, which was established and funded in 2008 by the British Department of Culture, Media and Sport.29 Under this scheme, British museums form training and exchange partnerships with similar institutions in Africa

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and Asia to improve (often mutually) their collections and operations. Among other projects, the British Library has partnered with the Kenya National Archives to develop their respective sound archives, while the British Museum leads an annual six-week training program for international curators, artists and museum workers. London-based institutions therefore enrich civil society and the knowledge economy in other countries, even while advancing Britain’s foreign policy goal of fortifying commonwealth ties.30 This points to the complexity of soft power, whose varying types—along a spectrum from the autonomous soft power of the third sector to soft power that may indirectly reinforce the hard power of the state—can overlap. Regardless of the objective, however, much expertise transferred in such partnerships rests on what is called “tacit information.” Knowledge is often divided into two types: information that can be codified and communicated usefully through symbols (called explicit, declarative or theoretical knowledge) and information that resists codification and is instead communicated through experience (called tacit, implicit or procedural knowledge).31 A classic example of the latter is riding a bike: a set of instructions, no matter how detailed, will not guarantee success. Tacit knowledge is central to the KQ because it is widely recognized as pivotal to knowledge economies.32 The recent international trend of clustering knowledgeintensive organizations to boost innovation is spurred by this reality; while explicit knowledge can be digitally disseminated with increasing ease, the transmission of tacit knowledge is more easily achieved with dialogic, face-to-face interactions.33 Geographic proximity therefore offers certain benefits in the transfer of tacit knowledge: opportunities for planned and unplanned meetings, common regulatory and cultural contexts, and a sense of mutual trust by shared belonging to a place.34 Public spaces, such as libraries and museums with free entry, are crucial to fostering that type of unplanned interaction and build trust by asserting collective ownership and a shared sense of place for locals. Through their central functions of collecting, enabling researchers internationally, promoting wide access and mounting exhibitions, the British Library and British Museum each act as a “cultural junction box” that unites experts from diverse countries.35 As its collection is global, for example, the British Museum relies deeply upon bringing foreign scholars onsite to obtain their unique input about individual objects.36 Internally many museums, libraries and archives are specialized at intercultural knowledge transfer. Museums and other exhibiting institutions also,

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of course, build their audiences’ ability to understand cultural context. In presenting artifacts, museums offer patrons the chance to find novel points of view and link the qualities of objects to their original (or indeed received) political, social, environmental and other contexts. The recent British Library exhibition “Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination” (October 2014–January 2015) traced the varied reception and evolving meanings of the Gothic aesthetic through 250 years of British and European literature and visual culture. In discussions of soft power, Joseph Nye relates this broad set of analytical skills to “contextual intelligence,” or the ability to adapt one’s strategies to the particularities of a dynamic situation.37 In a knowledge economy, where context-heavy tacit knowledge is paramount, a robust contextual sensibility will arguably empower individuals to more intelligently adapt tacit knowledge to new situations. By objectifying and often scrutinizing context, museums therefore provide fundamental skill building and conceptual ground laying for operating effectively in a knowledge economy. The KQ is remarkable as an urban economic development initiative that is not primarily intended to bring temporary visitors to the area. While tourism is important, initial plans that the KQ increase footfall were explicitly revised to put greater emphasis on research collaborations and enriching local life. Immediately there is the goal of drawing longer-term residents and workers to the area: attracting students to the universities and employees to the member institutions.38 Yet while social scientists have worried that “[m]any policy actions suggested by the ‘creative class’ theory are geared towards building a façade that gives the creative class the impression of living in an attractive cosmopolitan city,” the KQ embodies a form of urban initiative geared towards ever-evolving programs of events, research collaborations, and opportunities for public engagement and learning.39 Although the longterm achievements of the KQ remain to be seen, thus far the project demonstrates the crucial role that museums can play in partnership with other organizations to actively shape their cities, moving past cosmetic adjustments to facilitate meaningful exchanges of ideas and mutually enhance their soft power.

ENDNOTES 1 Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Succeed in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2014), 1. 2 Ibid., 91. 3 Useful summaries of these types and others can be found in R. Mendez and S.

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Sanchez Moral, “Spanish Cities in the Knowledge Economy: Theoretical Debates and Empirical Evidence,” European Urban and Regional Studies 18, no. 2 (2011): 136–155. 4 This ESRC definition can be compared against several others in I. Brinkley, Defining the Knowledge Economy: Knowledge Economy Programme Report (London: The Work Foundation, July 2006). Retrieved at www.theworkfoundation.com. 5 C. Levy, A. Sissons and C. Holloway, A Plan for Growth in the Knowledge Economy: A Knowledge Economy Paper (London: The Work Foundation, 2011), 4. 6 Ibid., 7. 7 See I. Brinkley, Knowledge Economy Strategy 2020: The Work Foundation Submission to the Comprehensive Spending Review (London: The Work Foundation, October 2010), www. theworkfoundation.com. 8 Miki Lentin (B. Card, interviewer, October 14, 2014). 9 On knowledge exchange, see for example its use by Britain’s Economic and Social Research Council: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/collaboration/knowledge-exchange. 10 R. Godwin, “King’s Cross vs. Bermondsey—Where would you rather live?,” London Evening Standard, August 12, 2011, http://www.standard.co.uk. 11 Ibid. 12 Unpublished draft of Knowledge Quarter press release, courtesy Miki Lentin, October 14, 2014. 13 Lentin interview. 14 See the British Library Board’s 2020 Vision Project: http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/ stratpolprog/2020vision/themes/. 15 Lentin interview. In interview, Dani Salvadori, director of innovation, business and external affairs at Central Saint Martins, suggested that the British Library may be playing this role. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Future of Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), 13. 19 For example, The Work Foundation writes that creativity and design must be considered always alongside science and technology “because in a knowledge-based economy the two are inseparable.” I. Brinkley, Knowledge Economy Strategy, 8. 20 Cited in K. Ergazakis, K. Metaxiotis and J. Psarras, “An Emerging Pattern of Successful Knowledge Cities’ Main Features,” in F.J.Carillo (ed.), Knowledge Cities: Approaches, Experiences and Perspectives (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006), 3–15. 21 It is worth noting that the British Library contains, in large part, the British Museum Library collection. 22 See Anchoring Growth: The Role of “Anchor Institutions” in the Regeneration of UK Cities (London: The Work Foundation, January 2010). 23 “Museum of the Future” was a series of three public talks staged in autumn 2014 by the British Museum on its future; they focused on updating the museum building, adapting to digital technologies and the Knowledge Quarter, respectively. 24 Knowledge Quarter press release.

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25 Research during the planning stages of the Knowledge Quarter involved consulting with bids, cultural quarters and industry/higher education partnership schemes in Britain and America. The findings then informed democratic discussion between early Knowledge Quarter stakeholders, resulting in voluntary policy transfer as described by David P. Dolowitz and D. Marsh, “Learning from Abroad: The Role of Policy Transfer in Contemporary Policy-making,” Governance: An international Journal of Policy and Administration 13, no. 1 (2000): 5–24. 26 Knowledge Quarter press release. 27 See for example Ibid., 9 28 M. Acuto, Global Cities, Governance and Diplomacy: The Urban Link (Oxford: Routledge, 2013), 5. 29 For more information see http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/skills-sharing/ world_collections_programme.aspx. 30 The ongoing importance of strengthening connections among commonwealth nations was highlighted in Select Committee on Soft Power and the UK’s Influence, House of Lords, Persuasion and Power in the Modern World (London: The Stationery Office Limited, 2014). Retrieved at www.publications.parliament.uk. 31 J. Fantl, “Knowledge How,” in E.N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 2012). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ knowledge-how. 32 See for example I. Brinkley, R. Fauth, M. Mahdon and S. Theodoropoulo, Knowledge Workers and Knowledge Work: A Knowledge Economy Programme Report (London: The Work Foundation, March 2009). Retrieved at www.theworkfoundation.com. 33 See for example I. Nonaka and H. Takeuchi, The Knowledge-Creating Company (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 34 H. Bathelt, A. Malmberg and P. Maskell, “Clusters and Knowledge: Local Buzz, Global Pipelines and the Process of Knowledge Creation,” Progress in Human Geography 28 (2004): 31–56. 35 This phrase was used by Jonathan Williams, deputy director of the British Museum, to describe his institution in particular. (BBC World Service, British Council and British Museum—Oral Evidence (QQ 63-92), in Select Committee on Soft Power and the UK’s Influence, House of Lords, Oral and Written Evidence, Volume I (A–G) (London: The Stationery Office Limited, 2014), www.publications.parliament.uk, 172. 36 Ibid. 37 Nye, The Future of Power, xvii. 38 Dani Salvadori (B. Card, interviewer, October 17, 2014) and Miki Lentin (B. Card, interviewer, October 14, 2014). 39 R. Comunian, “Rethinking the Creative City: The Role of Complexity, Networks and Interactions in the Urban Creative Economy,” Urban Studies 48, no. 6 (2011): 1157–1179.

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71

O

ver the last two decades, Brazil has used its growing economic power, stable democratic institutions, successful businesses and oil reserves to project an image as a new heavy hitter in the global arena. The country’s economic successes have created a new chapter in its history “in which the lower middle class rose to account for more than half of the population—a fabulous turnaround for what for five centuries has been one of the world’s most unequal societies.”1 Brazil’s soft power, once linked to its “exotic culture,” carnival and football, has changed to encompass critical economic and diplomatic achievements and advances in social inclusion, finally enabling Brazil to claim its position as a powerhouse in the global south. According to Joseph Nye2, three main resources influence soft power: political values, diplomacy and culture. During this virtuous cycle, Brazil has increasingly been able to influence the world through ideas, practices and culture, rather than military might.3 But despite all the positive stories, the Brazilian project has not yet been fulfilled. According to the Palma ratio, which compares the gap between rich and poor in societies,4 Brazil remains among the most unequal countries in the world. The challenge of continuing to grow “fast enough to sustain the miracle of upward social mobility”5 remains unresolved. Growing economic uncertainty is on the horizon and questions are being raised about the long-term effectiveness of the cash transfer program, Bolsa Família, the government’s main socioeconomic tool for lifting poor families out of poverty. It is hoped that a decade of social inclusion has created a virtuous cycle of empowerment, resulting in a sustainable status quo for the emerging middle class. A central factor for sustained economic empowerment and upward mobility6 is exposure to cultural capital.7 Museums, as trusted sources of information and social dialogue, are imbued with the soft power that promotes cultural capital. In a country where education is a barrier to inclusion, this is an important role. This essay tries to take stock of what has changed in Brazilian museums’ soft power over the past two decades. First, have investments in Brazilian museums resulted in widening access to cultural capital8 while promoting social inclusion? Second, are museums playing a significant role in creating dialogue that can help overcome socioeconomic and urban challenges? Finally, are museums acting as ambassadors of Brazilian culture nationally and internationally?

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SOFT POWER, A GOVERNMENT POLICY The need to reposition the attractive Brazilian culture beyond carnival and football has been recognized in government strategy. I believe this is the best opportunity to consolidate and amplify our strength as a global power attractive to commerce, investments and tourism … The Brazilian Ministry of Culture is studying the best tools to explore the potential of this opportunity, now accentuated by the windows opened by the upcoming World Cup and the Olympics.9 —Marta Suplicy, Brazil’s minister for culture, 2013 This fostered a boost in internal investments in culture, generating growth for the museum sector. According to IBRAM (Institute of Brazilian Museums), public federal investments in museums10 increased from R$20 million to R$216 million between 2001 and 2011,11 with an additional R$20 million invested between 2013 and 2014 in museums located in World Cup host cities.12 But investments alone are not enough to ensure that museums are working towards improving their role on the ground and thus becoming true soft power engines. Simon Anholt,13 UK independent policy advisor, declared to interviewer Tyler Brûlé that “building one’s reputation through soft power, hard power, communications is all rubbish … you have got to make yourself useful around the place and then people will be glad that you exist.” In that light, how useful have investments in Brazilian museums really been?

BRAZILIAN MUSEUMS IN NUMBERS The table on the following page consolidates data from various sources, aiming to compare the concentration of investments in museums per region of the country vis-à-vis the number of museums, urban population, GDP contribution and Bolsa Família as an indicator of the concentration of communities in need. Southeast Brazil, with roughly 45 percent of the country’s urban population, has the two most populous cities in the country, São Paulo (12 million) and Rio de Janeiro (6.5 million).14 Studies done in 201115 demonstrated that 80 percent of public federal spending on museums and exhibitions was directed towards the southeast, with 78 percent to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo alone. Comparatively, Brazil’s northeast, second in urban population (24.1 percent),16 has received only

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90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Southeast South Northeast Center West North Museum Numbers

Urban population

GDP Bolsa Família Contribution

Investments Received

3.37 percent of investments, and the north, representing 7.2 percent of the country’s urban population, a laughable 0.13 percent. When analyzing distribution of resources versus museum numbers, the southeast region, with 38 percent of Brazilian museums, received 80 percent of government investments. The south region, with 30 percent of the nation’s museums, received 6.5 percent of resources, and the northeast, with a significant 21 percent of the country’s museums, received only 3.37 of resources.17 When looking into economic indicators, one can observe that the wealthier southeast, contributing 55 percent of Brazil’s GDP,18 and with a relatively low spread of Bolsa Família, is again favored through federal investments (apart from the state resources that top their total budgets). On the other hand, the northeast region, despite contributing a sizeable 13 percent to the country’s GDP and having one of the highest income disparities (confirmed by the highest number of beneficiaries of Bolsa Família), should be a prime candidate for strategic investments in museums as tools for improved social inclusion. Nevertheless, it receives a meager 3.37 percent of federal investments in museums, cultural centers and exhibitions. The data above demonstrates the concentration of investments not only in museums and exhibitions in big urban centers, but specifically in those of the southeast megalopolises of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, already well served by museums. This leads us to conclude that federal investments in museums are not serving to promote democratization of access to cultural capital for those disconnected from big urban centers, nor for those at the bottom of the demographic pyramid. Considering that investments in museums in the year of 2011 totaled only 0.05 percent of the country’s GDP, one may start to understand the government’s need to prioritize big urban centers. Most of Brazil’s 3,118 registered museums have deficient

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infrastructure and lack operational budgets and basic planning. Concentrating efforts to rescue Brazilian museums’ full potential by investing in southeast museums, where they have a more solid visitor base, makes good business sense in this light. One can only hope that future economic development will enable museums to reach those most in need, especially in areas where access to culture and knowledge is a barrier to development, thus allowing museums to use their soft power for social inclusion.

THE BLOCKBUSTER FACTOR A big part of the investments directed towards the southeast region is deployed to support blockbuster exhibitions. We look at this successful model to gauge where its soft power succeeds and where it fails. Despite Brazil’s vibrant cultural context, visitation to museums and exhibitions until the early 2000s was extremely poor. This scenario has improved in recent years, but is still a reason for concern. According to IBRAM, the number of Brazilian museum visitors jumped from 15 million in 2003 to 33 million in 2009.19 In another statistic, according to then-Minister of Culture Juca Ferreira, only 6 percent of Brazilians entered a museum in 2010,20 which, if compared to the previous year, would mean that approximately two-thirds of museum visitors were international tourists. For a country of such widely praised cultural wealth, high-impact museum exhibitions were seldom produced during the 1990s or earlier. This changed with a blockbuster exhibition created to celebrate the 500-year landmark of Brazilian history, “Brasil +500,” in 2000. “Brasil +500” inaugurated an era of cultural attractions in the country. Planned and produced by Brasil Connects, a private cultural production company linked to Banco Santos, it was distributed using strong marketing resources, tapping into the idea of showing 500 years of history and cultural achievements in one experience. “Brasil +500” reached visitation numbers much superior to museum visits in the same period. It had certainly tapped into a powerful tool to overcome emotional and social barriers for visitation, promoting the soft power of culture through well-planned marketing and communication strategies. “Brasil +500” attracted 1.9 million visitors in São Paulo alone,21 to the dismay of museum professionals. In parallel, a cultural center linked to another bank rose to the fore as a leader

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of high-profile blockbuster exhibitions. Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (CCBB), founded in 1989, positioned itself as a center of reference for culture, covering exhibitions, music, theater and cinema. By 2012,22 CCBB was dedicating nothing short of R$41 million to cultural projects. In 2013, four CCBB exhibitions covering international museum collections featured among The Art Newspaper’s ranking of the 100 most popular exhibitions in the world. It was the only Brazilian institution among the top 20.23 The vast majority of CCBB blockbuster exhibitions feature international cultural properties from high-profile European, American and Asian collections. Whereas there are not enough studies about the reasons for the huge success of CCBB’s exhibitions, it is possible to speculate that the Brazilian middle class, historically isolated from the rest of the world by language, economic and geographical barriers, could now enjoy access to previously inaccessible products. Additionally, CCBB makes cultural attractions financially accessible by reducing entrance fees to very little or nothing. The 2012 Musée D’Orsay exhibition “Impressionism: Paris and Modernity,” was free of charge and attracted 561,142 visitors in Rio de Janeiro alone. Banco do Brasil, a semipublic bank, has had a long trajectory of participating in the country’s development, serving as the financial engine of public policies. Its most recent brand positioning, “Good for All,” creates a coherent brand story using CCBB’s soft power to widen access to culture. CCBB falls under the auspices of Banco do Brasil’s marketing department, and is an important tool to forge relationships with the public. CCBB has undoubtedly found a place in the hearts of urban Brazilians: 2012 closed with visitation as high as 4.5 million between Rio de Janeiro, Brasília and São Paulo branches,24 a significant part of the 7.5 million visitors catalogued by IBRAM’s list of the 15 most visited museums in that year.25 CCBB Rio de Janeiro, the most popular of the three, ranks 21st among the most visited art museums and cultural centers in the world.26 According to Gilka Lemos,27 who studied visitors to CCBB Brasília in 2004, the majority of visitors are from fairly privileged backgrounds in terms of education, living standards and income. Despite the significant socioeconomic changes that have taken place since 2004, we can still rely on this information as an approximate mirror of reality for its four branches, located in busy urban business hubs in the southeast and the Federal District. The reality is that even with all efforts to make CCBB a democratic public utility, it is struggling to break the center-periphery

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“Impressionism Viradão” at CCBB, Rio de Janeiro. The exhibit of works from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris drew lines that formed around the block. Photo by Fernando Quevedo, Agency O Globo.

barriers that would allow it to reach a less privileged public. In conclusion, the blockbuster’s unprecedented attraction for the Brazilian middle class, once isolated from high-profile international museum exhibitions, certainly contributes towards raising cultural capital for those who are today players in different global spheres. It also helps put Brazilian museums, cultural centers and the cities in which they are located on the map of world-class cultural institutions, reinforcing the cities’ and the country’s soft power. On the other hand, it is still failing to be relevant to those at the bottom of the economic pyramid, even in the urban centers where they are located. A feeling that blockbuster exhibitions as a whole could be doing more to promote Brazilian artistic production and popular culture, both nationally and internationally, still remains. This could start a dialogue with those at the margins of society, attracting them to the center. But it could also counter Brazilians’ ingrained belief that “all things foreign” are best. A new Brazil, with renewed soft power, calls for change. It is the duty of cultural institutions, especially those closely associated with

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the Brazil brand, to use their soft power to raise Brazilians’ self-esteem and appreciation for local culture.

MUSEUMS, LOCAL CULTURE AND DIALOGUE The indisputable success of blockbuster exhibitions in attracting visitors provides an important lens through which to evaluate the activities of three museums topping national visitation ranks in Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Created in 2004 and located in rural Minas Gerais, Inhotim Institute is a privately owned, open-air museological complex, conceived by Bernardo de Mello Paz, housing a large collection of contemporary and Brazilian art. Located within a 645-hectare botanical park with several art pavilions, “the Inhotim experience is largely associated with the development of a spatial relationship between nature and art, which allows artists to create and exhibit their art in unique conditions.”28 Inhotim aims at bringing art closer to the general public and reaching out to the Brumadinho community, a city of 35,000 in rural Minas Gerais. Inhotim thinks beyond its art collection, taking its impact on the surrounding natural and social environment as its raison d’être. It is also a center of reference for botanical studies and sustainability, a reason why nearly three-quarters of its staff are local residents. Visitor numbers to Inhotim are encouraging and proof that even the onehour journey from Belo Horizonte is not a barrier to visitation. Inhotim ranked second among the institutions listed in IBRAM’s 2011 top 15 museums and cultural centers,29 behind only CCBB (not a museum, but a cultural center). Studies by the University Federal of Minas Gerais30 show that 80 percent of visitors are middle- to higher-income earners from Belo Horizonte.31 Despite the low numbers of economically disadvantaged visitors, Inhotim has had a positive economic impact in the Brumadinho community. Additionally, its range of public educational and social programs contributed towards widening the understanding and appreciation of art, culture and nature to local communities. More studies are necessary to quantify and qualify this impact, but we can safely say Inhotim is leveraging its soft power to connect art to nature, rural to urban, knowledge to sustainability and private to public. It is a success story with a real impact on the regional society’s thinking and practice, strengthening its cohesion and identity.32

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Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (Pinacoteca) and Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) are two museums using their soft power to connect institution to community. Pinacoteca is a visual arts museum with an important collection of works from great Brazilian masters of the 19th century to contemporary artists. Founded in 1905 and owned by the state of São Paulo, it is the oldest museum in the state’s capital city. Instead of relying on blockbuster exhibitions, the country’s second-most visited museum focuses on promoting Brazilian artists and art intrinsically connected to Brazilian culture.33 This is an encouraging sign. MAR, a brand new city art museum in Rio de Janeiro, opened its doors in March 2013 with an innovative proposal to create a public forum through art to discuss Rio de Janeiro as a singular experience and complex culture, and to become an interlocutor between the city and its people.34 Pinacoteca and MAR reach between 300,000 and 350,000 visitors annually. Located in mildly gentrified urban downtowns, both have programs connecting the museum to surrounding communities, with a direct social and educational impact. Pinacoteca has developed several very successful publications aimed at minorities and nonvisitors, such as the elderly and other vulnerable communities, seeking to spread the enjoyment of art beyond the museum’s doors. It has also developed educational programs with youth drug rehabilitation centers in its notoriously violent neighborhood.35 It is a great starting point, considering its previous reputation as an elitist museum. After only nine months of operations, MAR had received 27,219 students from public schools and signed up 1,518 people for its “Neighbors” program, aiming to develop activities with surrounding communities to discuss, understand and interpret their urban area through art.36 Though not a huge number, it sets a precedent for where the institution intends to go. Inhotim, Pinacoteca and MAR are using their soft power to boost enjoyment of Brazilian and local culture and self-esteem. Sadly, despite championing programs aimed at breaking the barriers between the institution and disadvantaged and vulnerable communities, more still needs to be done to widen their reach. Despite the success of these institutions, it is impossible to ignore that their visitor numbers are still far below those of blockbuster exhibitions. “Brasil +500” already established the high level of interest for local arts and culture. Have these three institutions failed to establish their relevance to their communities? With yearly budgets ranging

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from R$16 million37 to R$3738 million, not far behind that of CCBB, lack of resources cannot be blamed. Museums should learn from the formulas used by blockbuster exhibitions if they are to realize the full potential of their soft power.

SOCIAL MUSEUMS, AN EXERCISE IN SOFT POWER STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE A shining star in social museology, Museu de Favela (MUF) was founded in 2008 by cultural leaders of the Pavão, Pavãozinho and Cantagalo favelas in Rio de Janeiro. This was a living-territory museum about the memories and cultural heritage of the favela and its people.39 “Its collections are its 20,000 residents, their ways of life and history, its architecture, landscape, panoramic views, as well as the complex fabric of cultures that make this an important but still neglected part of the City of Rio de Janeiro’s history.”40 MUF has been a source of inspiration to many institutions involved in social museology. In the community, there is a dominant sense of segregation from the “official” city, commonly described as the “separation between the mountain and the asphalt,” or the favela itself (morro) and the upmarket neighborhoods that surround it: Copacabana, Ipanema and Lagoa (asfalto). MUF contributes towards the integration of its territory’s history and urban structures into the official narratives and map of the city. MUF fights for the dignity and improvement of conditions for its community and against the social segregation of the favelas. Sydney Tartaruga, MUF’s cultural director, believes it is in fighting for civil rights and strengthening the self-esteem of the community for their achievements, history and cultural value that MUF can play its most significant social role.41 Most of the community’s 20,000 residents support the work of the MUF and see it as a relevant ally. This is exercising soft power at its best. But despite this resounding impact, MUF enjoys little financial support from local authorities, even after transforming their territory into a growing tourist attraction. MUF is an example of a community-led museum successfully using the soft power of arts and culture from the bottom up, fostering dialogue to overcome social inequalities. Nevertheless, as with similar institutions with poor resources, MUF’s future hangs by a thread.

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LAST THOUGHTS The inspiring example of the city of Medellin may offer us a way forward for soft power as a social inclusion tool. Medellin banked on the soft power of arts and culture to rehabilitate a society once lost to crime and drug cartels. Its cultural model included the construction of an integrated network of Library Parks in formerly destitute areas, free access to museums, cultural projects in the poorest neighborhoods, Houses of Culture, graffiti tours and new museums geared toward telling the narratives of the local community. According to Jorge Melquizo, Medellin’s former secretary of citizen culture, the city’s development plan included culture as a right, central to inclusion, equity and fostering dialogue, peace and healthy coexistence.42 A feature of its success was a wide-ranging collaboration among different institutions and disciplines to achieve a common goal. Medellin managed to overcome its dire situation in less than a decade, and was voted City of the Year in 2013 by the Urban Land Institute and the Washington Post as the most innovative urban center in the world. Perhaps Brazilian museum professionals should start thinking outside the box about cross-institutional collaboration as one possible solution. Given the ineffectiveness of wealthier institutions in reaching disadvantaged communities, and the success of social museums to achieve that same purpose, policy makers should support partnerships that capitalize on their joint strengths to create benefits across all geographical and social territories. To conclude, two types of soft power policies have been considered. The first is an outward-looking policy, targeting raising the profile of big centers and big museum attractions to build a national image attractive to economic investments that will later trickle down the social chain, even if immediate cultural benefits are limited to a minority. This is the model adopted by Brazil thus far, confirmed by the current favoring of southeast institutions and by Rio’s upcoming mega projects, “Museum of Tomorrow” and “Museum of Image and Sound.” The second is an inward-looking policy that uses the soft power of museums and cities to connect the center with the periphery of societies and deliver solutions to local problems, which in consequence boosts the soft power of museums and cities. This is the model adopted by Medellin.

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Though the best path is clearly somewhere in the middle, the door to the soft power of museums as a tool for transformation and social inclusion must be opened by policy makers. Then, as in Medellin, museums may one day meet Simon Anholt’s call to become fully “useful around the place” so that people will “be glad that they exist.”43 The soft power of museums, cities and the country may finally reach its true potential.

ENDNOTES 1 Joe Leahy, “Brazil: The First Big ‘Soft’ Power,” FT Magazine, February 22, 2013, http:// www.ft.com/cms/s/2/37685a5c-7bbd-11e2-95b9-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3GmYT5eH9 (accessed December 10, 2014). 2 Joseph S. Nye, Jr., cited in Jonathan McClory, The New Persuaders: An International Ranking of Soft Power (London: Institute for Government–UK, 2010), 3, http://www. instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/The%20new%20 persuaders_0.pdf (accessed September 25, 2014). 3 Marta Suplicy, “O ‘Soft Power’ Brasileiro,” Folha de São Paulo, http://www1.folha.uol. com.br/fsp/opiniao/95343-o-quotsoft-powerquot-brasileiro.shtml (accessed August 25, 2014). 4 Max Fisher, “Map: How the World’s Countries Compare on Income Inequality (the US Ranks Below Nigeria),” Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ worldviews/wp/2013/09/27/map-how-the-worlds-countries-compare-on-incomeinequality-the-u-s-ranks-below-nigeria/ (accessed October 5, 2014). 5 Joe Leahy, “Brazil: The First Big ‘Soft Power,’” Financial Times Magazine, February 22, 2013. 6 “Cultural Capital–Pierre Bourdieu,” http://theory.routledgesoc.com/category/profiletags/cultural-capital (accessed October 3, 2014). 7 Ibid. Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital refers to the collection of symbolic elements such as skills, tastes, posture, clothing, mannerisms, material belongings, credentials, etc., that one acquires through being part of a particular social class. Cultural capital is regarded by Bourdieu as a type of wealth, is linked to a sense of group collective identity and is believed to be either a barrier or an enabler in upward social mobility. 8 Ibid. 9 Suplicy, “O ‘Soft Power’ Brasileiro.” 10 These numbers bundle together investments in museums, cultural centers and blockbuster exhibitions. 11 Portal Brasil, “Investimentos Em Museus Aumentaram De R$20 Milhões Para R$216 Milhões,” IBRAM, http://www.brasil.gov.br/cultura/2012/08/investimentos-em-museusaumentaram-de-r-20-milhoes-para-r-216-milhoes (accessed September 30, 2014). 12 ASCOM/IBRAM, “Situação Dos Museus Brasileiros É Debatida Em Audiência no Senado Federal,” Instituto Brasileiro de Museus, http://www.museus.gov.br/situacao-dosmuseus-brasileiros-e-debatida-em-audiencia-no-senado-federal/ (accessed October 16, 2014).

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13 Tyler Brûlé, “Museums as Soft Power–Interviews,” V&A + Monocle, http://monocle. com/film/Edits/museums-as-soft-power/ (accessed October 3, 2014). 14 Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, “Cidades@,” IBGE, http://www. cidades.ibge.gov.br/ (accessed October 10, 2014). 15 DDFEM e CESES, Relatório - Investimentos no Campo Museal 2011 (Brasília: IBRAM,[2012]), http://www.museus.gov.br/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Investimentosno-Campo-Museal-2011.pdf (accessed October 16, 2014). 16 Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, “Atlas do Censo Demográfico 2010,” IBGE, http://censo2010.ibge.gov.br/apps/atlas/ (accessed September 30, 2014). 17 DDFEM e CESES, Relatório - Investimentos no Campo Museal 2011, 1–33. 18 Wikipedia, “Anexo: Lista De Regiões do Brasil Por PIB,” Wikipedia, http:// pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Lista_de_regi%C3%B5es_do_Brasil_por_PIB (accessed October 13, 2014). 19 Mariana Fonseca, “Um Panorama Dos Museus no Brasil,” Le Monde Diplomatique– Brasil, https://www.diplomatique.org.br/acervo.php?id=2941 (accessed October 27, 2014). 20 Ibid., Juca Ferreira. 21 Agência Estado, “Brasil 500 Anos De Despede De São Paulo Com Catraca Livre,” O Estado de São Paulo, http://cultura.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,brasil-500-anos-sedespede-de-sao-paulo-com-entrada-livre,20000902p6171 (accessed October 17, 2014). 22 CCBB, “Quem Somos,” CCBB, http://www.bb.com.br/portalbb/ page512,128,10134,0,0,1,1.bb?codigoNoticia=17951&codigoMenu=9881 (accessed October 18, 2014). 23 Javier Pes and Emily Sharpe, The Art Newspaper Special Report –Spring/Summer 2014 (UK and US: Allemandi & Co., 2014), http://www.museus.gov.br/wp-content/ uploads/2014/04/TheArtNewspaper2013_ranking.pdf (accessed October 18, 2014). 24 CCBB, Quem Somos 25 Audrey Furlaneto, “01.04.2012 - O Globo - Segundo Caderno - P. 2. - Andrey Furlaneto - Público De 18 Museus Brasileiros Ultrapassa 7,5 Milhões,” Marketing e Cultura, http://www.marketing-e-cultura.com.br/website/pg003/ppassMateria.php?CODPpass=114 (accessed October 27, 2014). 26 Pes and Sharpe, The Art Newspaper Special Report, 1–16. 27 Gilka Lemos states that more than half of CCBB visitors are young adults and adults (20-49 years old), 67 percent have university degrees, more than 87 percent live in Brasília and surrounding cities, and have individual incomes between R$100,000 and R$200,000 placing them well above the R$14,000 per capita income that marks the national poverty line. Gilka Pinto de Lemos, “O CCBB Como Um Espaço Turístico Cultural De Brasília” (Especialização em Turismo e Lazer, Universidade de Brasília), 1–36, http://bdm.unb.br/ bitstream/10483/583/1/2005_GilkaPintoLemos.pdf (accessed October 20, 2014), 5 and 23–25. 28 Instituto Inhotim, “Em Exposição,” Instituto Inhotim, http://www.inhotim.org.br/ inhotim/arte-contemporanea/ (accessed October 1, 2014).

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29 Andrey Furlaneto, “Público De 18 Museus Brasileiros Ultrapassa 7,5 Milhões,” O Globo - Segundo Caderno (April 1, 2012), 2. 30 Ibid. 31 Average spending per person per visit (excluding transport) is R$61—only accessible to the middle class and above. Faria and Monte-Mór, Um Museu: O Que É Desde a Perspectiva Econômica E do Desenvolvimento Regional? Uma Aproximação a Partir do MuseuParque Inhotim (Belo Horizonte: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais–Cedeplar/UFMG, 2012), 5. 32 Ibid., 17. 33 Pinacoteca do Estado, “Institucional,” Secretaria de Estado da Cultura - São Paulo, http://www.pinacoteca.org.br/pinacoteca-pt/default.aspx?mn=534&c=1004&s=0&friendly =institucional&video=false (accessed October 2, 2014). 34 Instituto Odeon, Relatório De Gestão 2013 - Museu De Arte do Rio (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Odeon, 2014), 8. 35 APAC, Relatório Consolidade 4o Trimestre E Anual De 2013  (São Paulo: APAC, 2013), http://www.pinacoteca.org.br/pinacoteca-pt/Upload/file/Relatorio/Relatório%20 Consolidado%204º%20Trimestre%20e%20Anual%202013.pdf (accessed October 10, 2014). 36 Relatório De Gestão 2013–Museu De Arte do Rio (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Odeon, 2013), 16. 37 Ibid., 48. 38 APAC, 245. 39 MUF, “Sobre O MUF,” Museu de Favela, http://www.museudefavela.org/en/sobre-omuf (accessed October 11, 2014). 40 Gegê Leme Joseph, “Insight Favela: A Joint Project between CAMOC1 and the Museu De Favela,” Museum International 64, no. 1, 4 (2014): 56. 41 Gegê Leme Joseph, Interview with Sidney Tartaruga, 2013 (accessed October 10, 2014). 42 IFACCA, “Medellin, an Example that Art and Culture can Transform the Social Environment,” International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies, http://www. ifacca.org/national_agency_news/2014/07/31/medellin-example-art-and-culture-cantransform-soc/ (accessed October 13, 2014). 43 Simon Anholt, interviewed by Brûlé, “Museums as Soft Power - Interviews” (London: Monocle, 2014), http://monocle.com/film/Edits/museums-as-soft-power.

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Museums as Signifiers in the Gulf Hayfa Matar



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I

n the last two decades, the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)1 have experienced the largest boom in museum building in the world. Although many of these Gulf cities are emerging as new Arab cultural capitals, they do not yet compare with the historic Arab centers of culture such as Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus. This essay will explore the role that museums, old and new, and private nonprofit art organizations play in creating or supporting local identities, as well as in presenting an identity to attract and influence people locally, regionally and internationally—a strategy that is referred to as “soft power.” This is not a survey of the museums or cultural institutions in the Gulf, as each country has its own very different set of environments and trajectories.

STATE-RUN MUSEUMS In the 20 years after gaining independence in the 1960s and ’70s, many Gulf states invested their newly acquired oil riches in building museums. This strategy was part of developing their domestic infrastructure to announce their arrival as nations. Typically museums presented a single national narrative based on local heritage. These museums included not only national museums, but also purpose-built institutions housing different types of collections, and restored historic buildings. Once these museums were officially opened, it marked the end of the process, rather than the beginning. Marketing and public relations specialists were hired, rather than museum professionals such as curators and educators. The main responsibility of the staff was to open and close the museum each day.2 One of the very first modern museums in the Gulf was the National Museum in Bahrain. Efforts to establish the museum began in 1957 at Al-Hidaya Khalifiya School in Muharraq with the temporary display of artifacts discovered by a Danish archeological expedition. This was followed by the opening of Bahrain’s first museum in Manama in 1970, and culminated in 1988 with the opening of the Bahrain National Museum. The museum has an enormous wealth of archeological and cultural artifacts. According to a senior advisor to the Museums Directorate, these objects can fill as many as five museum exhibition halls. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of any agency of the Government of Bahrain.

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Accordingly in the last few years Bahrain’s Ministry of Culture has sought to decentralize and build more site-specific museums that can showcase these artifacts in their respective contexts. Rather than build mega-museums in the same vein as Doha and Abu Dhabi, Bahrain prides itself on increasing the number of institutions that focus on diverse themes, attracting a wider audience, both domestic and international. One of the key goals of Her Excellency Shaikha Mai bint Mohammed Al Khalifa, minister of culture, is to create sustainability and economic impact.3 In fact, Bahrain was a pioneer in the region in adopting cultural tourism as an urban regeneration model where the past would be juxtaposed with the present.4 Bahrain’s approach included building site museums like the Bahrain Fort Site Museum and restoring and converting heritage buildings, such as Bab Al Bahrain, at the entrance of the Manama suq. Kuwait, on the other hand, was a pioneer in art. The Department of Culture in Kuwait hosted its first public art exhibition in 1958. The show addressed themes that included colonialism and underdevelopment. The exhibition triggered a trend of annual art exhibitions that continues today. While Kuwait suffered setbacks with the invasion by Iraq in the early 1990s, it opened its Modern Art Museum in 2003, showcasing an impressive collection of major works by prominent Kuwaiti artists and Arab masters. Its shows are unique in the region because they attract a large number of visitors and initiate debates in dewaniyat (men’s salons) and in the media, thus engaging the public in a far more direct way than many other cultural institutions in the region.5 The ultimate aim for both state-run (and private) cultural institutions is to allow an understanding of what a museum is and can be to evolve naturally, based on the place, time and person. In some instances, a museum might be a platform to show the best of a local culture. In other cases, it might be a vehicle for historic preservation, or a place of learning and debate. A museum could also be a meeting place for social and cultural engagement, possibly even alleviating political and social tensions. For this evolution to happen, museums in the Gulf need to tell the stories that matter to their visitors. Exhibits could feature better didactic texts, for example, and more interactive, group-oriented approaches so that the experience is not purely a visual exercise. Furthermore, with the wide range of technology available, they

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At the Venice Architectural Biennale, 2010, Bahrain won the coveted “Golden Lion” for this exhibition critical of the rapid urban development threatening traditional ways of life. Three huts shown here were moved from Bahrain and reconstructed on site. Photo by Christian Richters.

should also focus on building their virtual/online platforms, especially if they see themselves as both global and local (“glocal”) centers of knowledge and learning. By doing so, museums will be able to build audiences, which is a main focus for most of these institutions in the Gulf, given the low foot traffic, especially from their own nationals. While the poor attendance rate may initially seem to signify a lack of interest in culture, heritage festivals such as the Janadriyah Festival6 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia attract more than a million visitors annually. The Liwa Date Festival7 in the United Arab Emirates is also hugely popular. It seems, therefore, that many nationals are very interested in culture and heritage, but choose alternative channels beyond the museum to engage with them.8 However, focusing on nationals is not enough; it is also important to explore ways of engaging the migrant communities that in some cases make up more than

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half of the populations of some Arab states. Migrants have played a significant role in the development of the Gulf as a whole, across all levels and industries. Ministries of Culture need to ask themselves: What identities do our museums explore, and what should they explore? Are these identities merely shaped by the national identity of citizens or can our museums go further? Such an exploration would be a classic example of a museum realizing its soft power potential. What is apparent in many Gulf museums is a reluctance to tackle controversial subjects and offer alternatives to the narrow, state-approved narratives. Sultan Al Qassemi, a leading Gulf public intellectual and patron of the arts, puts it simply: “In most museums in the Gulf we see the elements of the prehistoric era, the advent of Islam and a sudden jump to the era of the current ruling family.”9 Controversial subjects are often seen as too politically sensitive. These subjects are many: tribalism; the colonial/protectorate period; assassinations; the roles of other religious or ethnic groups within communities; the roles of women; the effect of migrant workers; and the environmental impact of development. Yet these are all very relevant issues that have shaped, and continue to shape, identities in the region. Highlighting them will help lead to critical thinking. It will certainly help boost foot traffic and make museums more relevant.10 The truth is that the information is already out there, at the fingertips of anyone with a smartphone or computer. Yet it takes courage to examine and confront the multiple, sometimes painful narratives and identities that shape each and every country in the Gulf. Nevertheless, taking such steps will foster a dialogue with both residents and visitors alike, using the museum as a platform to promote the country’s past and to broaden and deepen its pluralistic identity. This may seem counter-intuitive to some, but the more open a country is about its past, the stronger the sense of identity its residents will feel. With extremist ideology on the rise, a key challenge for governments and for communities is to engage with and address the concerns of young people. This must be done in a way that is both credible and relevant, especially at a time when organizations are luring disenfranchised youth towards a very simplistic understanding of the world (and of religion). Principles of pluralism and coexistence need to be actively and energetically promoted. A robust outreach and educational campaign is needed, deploying social media resources appropriate to the target audience to develop a deeper understanding of, and respect for, their history and heritage.

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In practical terms, this would mean that Ministries of Culture must delegate some of their power to independent curators with their own budgets, and engage independent board members, according to Sultan Al Qassemi.11 And local expertise would need to be nurtured. Currently these subjects are not being addressed by the Gulf region’s national museums closely and comprehensively, even though such issues are within their domains. But some nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are taking it upon themselves to explore such issues and, to remain relevant, are filling in the gaps left by the national museums in a way that is critical yet respectful of the culture.

NPOs Professor Rafia Ghubash, an academic, psychiatrist and former president of the Arabian Gulf University, founded the Women’s Museum in Dubai, which opened in 2012. It is considered the first contemporary cultural center in the Middle East dedicated to women—UAE women, to be precise. The museum is a platform to highlight the story of their empowerment and contributions in politics, economics and education—contributions that have not been duly recognized. Ghubash’s aim was threefold: to encourage appreciation of history and tradition, especially given the UAE’s rapid development; to engage young women and help them acknowledge the accomplishments of earlier female generations; and to bridge the divide between locals and foreigners by helping foreigners understand an important aspect of the UAE’s history.12 The Msheireb Arts Center (developed by Msheireb Properties, a subsidiary of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development) in Doha is another example that gives a voice to the neglected immigrant inhabitants who played an important role in modernizing the state. Located in a 1950s-era former girls’ school, the arts center houses an initiative called the “Sadaa Al Thikrayat,” which translates into the Echo Memory Project. This artist-led initiative aims to document, through architecture, artifacts and stories, the lives of the people who lived in Msheireb, Qatar’s earliest suburb, before its transformation into an area populated today mostly by South Asian migrant workers and merchants. It encourages curators and artists to work with migrant workers to record unwritten histories of this neighborhood, and is now a resource for artists, both local and international.13 A third project is the Museum of Omani Dress, an extension of the Center for

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Omani Dress, which aims to preserve the cultural legacy of Oman through its colorful traditional costumes at a time when younger generations are showing a declining interest in traditional dress. This museum, run by a nonprofit group of volunteers with the generous support of its sponsors, is intended to be a tool that “teaches the language and vocabulary of dress.” It reflects the evolution of Omani society.14 There are numerous other examples of comparable, privately run institutions that are making an important contribution to their communities, locally and regionally. But they could certainly benefit from more support. They too need to make their voices heard through domestic and international outreach campaigns that raise the profile of their work.

SOFT POWER How these Gulf countries reach out to their people internally, and project to the world externally, are crucial factors in harnessing the potential of soft power, especially given the many challenges facing the region. The use of soft power through cultural diplomacy can be effective in dispelling myths, building bridges between people and countries, and confronting the critical challenge of extremism. An ideological response to these kinds of challenges through art, culture and education is as important as the military and financial response. The Gulf countries have been very open about the reasons behind their massive investment in the arts. Her Excellency Shaikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, chairperson of Qatar Museums, Doha Film Institute and Reach Out to Asia, has said: “We want to showcase, with evidence, that Islam is a peaceful religion at the heart of the most intellectually and culturally sophisticated societies throughout history. That is our message.”15 Accordingly, the Museum of Islamic Art, designed by I.M. Pei, is a powerful example of soft power in practice. The “Roads of Arabia: Archaeology and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” an exhibition currently traveling in the United States, is another compelling example of soft power. It is the first international exhibition showcasing Saudi Arabia’s historical artifacts. The ambition and scope of this blockbuster demonstrate the effectiveness of exhibitions in shedding light on what is otherwise one of the least explored countries in the Gulf, if not the world, little known for its distinct craftsmanship and art heritage.16 Such exhibitions, it is hoped, will be held in Saudi Arabia in the future.

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At the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, Bahrain was awarded the Golden Lion, the highest award at the Biennale, for its entry, “Reclaim.” The exhibit, a third example of soft power in practice, touched on politics, economics and society, and offered a self-critical analysis of urban development and the country’s relationship with its rapidly changing coastline. The Venice installation featured three fishermen’s huts, dismantled piece by piece from the coast of Bahrain, along with a series of video interviews highlighting Bahrainis’ relationship with the sea, and photographic documentation of the different coastlines. The exhibition was then displayed at the National Museum of Bahrain, but without the reconstructed huts, given the presence of fishermen’s huts in their actual habitat only a few hundred meters from the museum. It was well attended in Manama, attracting new audiences, according to the co-curator, Noura Al-Sayeh. However, without the aesthetic appeal of the huts, it was not fully understood by the visitors there. But the international validation of the Venice Biennale award had an impact locally and was seen as an important first step in showcasing exhibitions that are more self critical and relevant.17 Nevertheless the soft power approach “doesn’t seem to be working as well internally as externally,” according to Dr. Pamela Erskine-Loftus, director of the Gallery for Media, Communication and Journalism at Northwestern University in Qatar.18 She attributes this to a lack of audience research in the Gulf. Many exhibitions may not really address what their audiences want. Perhaps more nuanced exhibitions might engage more widely and enable countries to reach out more effectively within their societies. Some of the more visibly successful examples of internal soft power include the Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa Centre’s work in hosting events and in restoring traditional Bahraini houses belonging to leading families and personalities, and the Sharjah Art Foundation and the Sharjah Biennial.

CONCLUSION It takes courage to examine the vulnerabilities in our region, present them honestly and foster a dialogue with people, using the museum or art gallery as a platform. These dialogues need to “stick” and retain a collective memory that is institution based. Museums and cultural institutions, if planned properly, can become the next Majlis: “a multigenerational area for dialogue and learning.”19 For that to happen, the mission statements of museums that “collect, preserve and interpret” should be shelved. Instead, in response to ethical, economic and scarcity issues, museums

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should adopt a new mantra: “to gather, steward and converse,” as American museum director Maxwell Anderson has proposed. This approach will help transform museums into “more nimble, responsive and accountable” institutions.20 Currently it seems that NPOs realize the need for multiple, nuanced narratives. These more site-specific and systematic institutions will most likely lead the way in presenting such narratives. They employ local staff and are low key, so they have a better understanding of where they are, who their audiences are and how they will be able to evolve. Accordingly they could actually shape new, more value-based, pluralistic and cosmopolitan identities, achieving a higher local and regional impact than the grander projects. Thus it is in the interest of larger museums to consider collaborating with NPOs, not only within their respective countries, but also regionally and internationally. Independent art historian and curator Salwa Mikdadi is a huge advocate of such partnering. Museums could tap into the audiences and resources of NPOs like the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah or the Juma Al-Majid Center for Culture and Heritage in Dubai, and gain tremendous insight from their educational programs. Partnerships between museums and NPOs to train staff and engage in research benefit all institutions. NPOs could curate programs that museums can host, including more experimental exhibitions from the museum’s collections. These innovative partnerships can really advance artistic and cultural practices in the region and engage communities more effectively.21

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank Tariq Baloch, Salma Tuqan, Alaa Al-Shroogi, Rashad Faraj, Mayssa Fatouh, Alex Aubry, Noura Al-Sayeh, Shermeen Al Shirawi, Sheyma Buali, Sultan Al Qassemi and Dr. Pamela Erskine-Loftus for sharing their knowledge and expertise.

ENDNOTES 1 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Sultanate of Oman and Kingdom of Bahrain. 2 A. Aubry, telephone interview with the author, October 2, 2014. P. Erskine-Loftus, “The Museum-Cultural Heritage Relationship in the GCC: The Effects of the Use of Western-style Museum Theory and Practice on Local Visitorship and Tourism.” Paper presented at the 2012 Gulf Studies Conference (Exeter, UK), 3. Available at: https://www.

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academia.edu/2037599/The_museum-_-cultural_heritage_relationship_in_the_GCC_ the_effects_of_the_use_of_western-_-style_museum_theory_and_practice_on_ local_visitorship_and_tourism. 3 A. Aubry, “Building an Arab World: Culture Capital,” Kalimat 2 no. 6 (2012): 78. 4 A. Aubry, “Contextualizing History: Bahrain’s Innovative Approach to Museum Creation” in Reimagining Museums Practice in the Arabian Peninsula, P. Erskine-Loftus, ed. (Edinburgh/Boston: Museums Etc., 2014), 71-75. 5 S. Al Qassemi, “Kuwait Art Museum Succeeds Where Others Have Failed,” The Huffington Post online, February 6, 2013. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ sultan-sooud-alqassemi/kuwait-art-museum-succeed_b_2996769.html 6 It is an annual cultural and heritage festival held near Riyadh for two weeks. Organized by the National Guard, it attracts more than one million visitors every year. 7 It takes place annually in UAE’s Al Gharbia (the Western region town of Liwa) and is considered to be the region’s premier festival since 2004, celebrating the local date production. 8 Ibid., 5. 9 S. Al Qassemi, “Treasure troves of history and diversity,” Gulf News online, January 25, 2013. Available at: http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/treasure-troves-of-historyand-diversity-1.1137150 10 Ibid. 11 S. Al Qassemi, e-mail interview with author, January 25, 2013. 12 F. J. “It’s a Woman’s World: Museums in the Middle East,” Web blog post, The Economist, July 30, 2013. Available at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/07/ museums-middle-east. 13 K. Exell, “Narratives of Resistance: Contemporary Collecting in Qatar.” Paper presented at the American Alliance of Museums Conference, Seattle, 2014. Available at: http://www.mapcollective.org/resources/AAM_2014_docs/Exell%20Qatari%20 contemporary%20collecting%20AAM%20May%202014%20text.pdf . 14 D. Solomon, “Legacy of Dress,” Oman Tribune, 2013. Available at: http://www. omantribune.com/index.php?page=leisure_details&&id=9547&heading=Oman%20Mirror 15 F. Biedermann and N. Muller, “No Stone Throwing in Glass Houses: Ripples of the Arab Uprisings in the Gulf,” Eurozine online, July 25, 2014. Available at: http://www.eurozine. com/articles/2014-07-23-mullern-en.html. 16 R. Covington. (2013) “Roads of Arabia,” Saudi Aramco World 6, no. 7 (2013). Available at: http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/201307/roads.of.arabia-.compilation.htm 17 N. Al-Sayeh, telephone interview, October 22, 2014. 18 P. Erskine-Loftus, telephone Interview, October 12, 2014. 19 P. Erskine-Loftus, “Common Purpose and Uncommon Outcomes: The Cultural Transferability of Museums” in Reimagining Museums Practice in the Arabian Peninsula, P. Erskine-Loftus, ed. (Edinburgh/Boston: Museums Etc, 2013), 44–45.

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20 M. Anderson, “Gather, Steward, and Converse,” The Art Newspaper online, June 8, 2010. Available at: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Gather,%20Steward,%20 and%20Converse/21513. M. Anderson, “Ownership Isn’t Everything—The future Will Be Shared,” The Art Newspaper online, September 15, 2010. Available at: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/ articles/Ownership-isnt-everythingThe-future-will-be-shared/21425. 21 S. Mikdadi, “How Collaborative Approaches May Help Museums Reach Their Communities” in Reimagining Museums Practice in the Arabian Peninsula, P. Erskine-Loftus, ed. (Edinburgh/Boston: MuseumsEtc., 2014), 151–161.

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When Soft Powers Collide Ngaire Blankenberg



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he had not yet decided whether to use her power for good … or for evil.” So reads a luggage tag I hang near my computer. Every time I sit down to work or surf, it makes me smile. Power may be delicious, but it is not benign. Neither are museums. Museums and cities are using their soft power to work together to make the lives of their immediate constituents—city dwellers—better, thus creating stronger communities and stronger reputations with which to attract people and investment. Some museums are places that celebrate diversity and seek to foster inclusion and belonging, resisting the divisive forces of our global cities. Others aim to address contemporary issues and create a platform for dialogue, skill building, culture sharing and pride. These museums seek to support individual agency—the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices—and the development of an equitable cultural capital,1 which boosts their legitimacy as one of the most trusted sources of information2 and enhances their moral authority. Legitimacy and moral authority are key components of soft power. However, soft power is not always employed so positively. Some people attempt to use the soft power of museums to propagate a single story—often a hard power story—effectively eliminating certain perspectives from a narrative that may be of an “imagined”3 ahistorical nation. Other people build museums or traveling exhibitions simply to promote their own brand or their own interests and values globally. For the skeptics, soft power may be simply the same idea under a new name—an extension of cultural imperialism, a way for the economic and military elite to perpetuate their value systems through museums and other cultural institutions. This is a well-studied phenomenon that Marxist sociologist Antonio Gramsci called “cultural hegemony.” Is soft power in the 21st century merely “the velvet glove concealing an iron hand?” Two major and interrelated factors are affecting museums’ potential for impact, ensuring that soft power is real: the emerging culture of stewardship is one, and the social significance of the internet is the other. As a result of these two factors, museums cannot realize the desired impact of their soft power without acting transparently. They must include a diversity of perspectives and connect with their local communities. The imperatives of transparency, multiple perspectives and local engagement have gradually moved from the periphery to the center of museums’ attempts to achieve lasting influence in their urban communities and in

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the world—in no small part because the growing number of city dwellers now have the tools and motivation to be watchdogs in their own right, holding museums and other institutions accountable. The culture of stewardship of the earth and of the body is a 21st-century phenomenon that has been defined by Barry Lord in his approach to global art history entitled Art & Energy: How Culture Changes (The AAM Press, 2014). Lord proposes an intriguing thesis that links culture to the dominant form of energy use in a given society. Although this thesis has been widely discussed in the voluminous literature on the social and cultural effects of coal and the industrial revolution, Lord shows that even beyond coal, each new energy source—from the mastery of fire forward—has brought with it certain cultural values that are increasingly accepted as the energy source becomes more dominant and we become more dependent on it. He persuasively links “the culture of transformation” (and international modernism) to the inspiring, world-changing effect of electrification, “the culture of anxiety” to nuclear power and “the culture of consumption” to our current dependence on oil and natural gas. The present moment he sees as a growing struggle between this still dominant culture of consumption and the emerging culture of stewardship of the earth and of the body that accompanies renewable energy. Lord characterizes the culture of consumption as one that places a high premium on consumable experiences (including museum visits), universally available credit, the dominance of brands and a postmodern marketplace of ideas4 in which creeds and ideologies are akin to fashion. On the other hand, the culture of stewardship that accompanies renewable energy fosters widespread values of local engagement, preservation, sustainability and transparency. Lord predicts a major shift in cultural values as countries gradually move to using more forms of renewable energy instead of coal, oil or gas. These cultural changes rooted in the energy transitions that make them possible are not just trends of the moment: they are much more fundamental, affecting how we see ourselves and others. Whereas the oil-based culture of consumption has convinced us over the past half-century that we are simply consumers, each equipped with our own credit cards, the culture of stewardship on the contrary encourages us to see ourselves and others primarily as stewards. As such, we take care of that which is closest to us—our bodies, the earth and the communities around us (which, as we have seen, are increasingly urban) both physically and in terms of engagement.

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Protesters at the Guggenheim in New York drop leaflets charging that workers at the construction site of the new Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi were being mistreated and underpaid. Photo: Hrag Vartanian/Hyperallergic.

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As stewards we are much concerned with the enhanced value of storage. Renewable solar or wind energy must be stored for the time when we need to use it. The culture of stewardship is deeply engaged in digital methods of storage of energy and of data. Indeed, Lord suggests, data may be understood simply as stored energy that can be secured, may be hacked into and become valuable only when they are transmitted over a network. The culture of stewardship is entirely at home on the Internet. So while the culture of stewardship sits alongside a strengthening urban civil society as a motivation for a more active form of citizen participation, the concomitant penetration of the Web and mobile media across the world enables such forms of participation to occur, spread and have impact, locally and globally. The omnipresence of the Internet in our lives amplifies the culture of engagement to one of global participation. The United Nations reported in 2014 that almost 32 percent of the population of the world owns a mobile phone, while 44 percent of the world’s households have Internet access, 78 percent of that number in “developed” countries and 31 percent in “developing” nations. The number of Internet users globally has reached almost 3 billion, with two-thirds of these users communicating with each other in the developing world. The Web is key to the ways individual citizens can mobilize other individuals to take action and make an impact in their communities and the world. It enables networks beyond the constraints of geography and is a key vehicle in the exercise of soft power. Celebrities use online platforms such as Buzzfeed and Upworthy to promote causes and themselves. Citizen activists are increasingly adept at bringing together millions of voices to put pressure on previously untouchable political and corporate leaders through Web-based communities such as Avaaz and Adbusters. These networked communities have what Clay Shirky terms “cognitive surplus”— the ability to harness their free time and talents to create new forms of creative expression and social action for the benefit of all participants.5 Such cognitive surplus can be mobilized only when individuals within the network recognize their own individual agency and are motivated to act. Agency happens when people experience that they can say something in the virtual world through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or other platforms, and that what they say is listened and responded to. Being responded to implies agency and even forms agency—an individual’s perception of her own ability to effectuate change.

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Democratic political systems assume the agency of citizens when they are called on to vote. But agency and an expectation of impact can be seen among people who live in liberal democracies or authoritarian regimes alike. This expectation is changing how people engage in all forms of public and community life, ranging from political to cultural participation. In its study Civic Engagement in the Digital Age,6 the Pew Research Center found that two-thirds of all Americans aged 18–24 engaged in some sort of social network-related political activity in 2012. These young adults were more likely to engage in political behavior on social networking sites—places where they could act as individuals and then share that action—than in any other venue. In a MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Report entitled Participatory Politics—NextGeneration Tactics to Remake Public Spheres,7 Elisabeth Soep describes how young people are increasingly exercising their “voice and agency on issues of public concern”8 through social media rather than through more conventional political channels. She refers to the live-streamed mass protests of the Occupy movement (which also included an Occupy Museums submovement9) and the viral campaign against Ugandan war crime fugitive Joseph Kony10 as examples of a new form of civic participation where social media do not replace public institutions but rather change the ways in which people relate to them: Many young people who are coming into their political selves today both distrust public institutions and want in. They get excited about alternative ways to make a difference, and they seek access to traditional channels to power. They may appear to act alone but are always operating in interconnected networks that allow for and inhibit specific modes of civic engagement. Through their interactions with peers and elites, they are redefining some key dynamics that govern civic life.11 Just as the spread of the Web and mobile is a worldwide phenomenon, so too is the use of social media to exert agency in the public realm. The “Arab springs” were fueled and even arguably created by the possibilities of the Web and social media. The same sense of agency and participation is apparent when it comes to engagement with cultural institutions. A 2011 survey from the Pew Research Center12 showed that American adults who connect to arts and cultural organizations through social media are much more likely to attend events and exhibitions

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than those who do not. While 35 percent of all American adults had visited a museum in the previous 12 months, among those who follow a museum on a social networking site, the figure is more than double at 82 percent. And while 29 percent of all adults had visited an art gallery, show or exhibition in the previous 12 months, the figure is almost three times as high (82 percent) among those who follow an art gallery or other visual culture organization on a social networking site. People who go to museums expect to be able to share their visit and are motivated to do so. Those who care about something in the community expect to be able to circulate information, engage in dialogue, provide feedback, create original content, do active research and mobilize others.13 “Open” museums, as with open cities, take this expectation seriously and are more successful at exercising soft power. Top-down museums with little local participation or relevance may be successful initially at attracting attention but ultimately will fail in exerting lasting influence and impact. The Brooklyn Museum is a good example of an open museum. It was one of the first museums worldwide that sought to think deeply and experiment widely with using the Web to make itself much more relevant to its community. As with many other museums, it initially aimed to expand its community with Web-based programs that could reach “anyone, anywhere.” Early experiments focused on “crowd-curating.” “Click: A Crowd-Curated Exhibition“ (2008) was a Web program that invited users to select photos for an upcoming exhibit in the museum. “SplitSecond Indian Paintings” (2011–12) similarly invited members of the museum’s online community to select their preferred paintings in a timed trial, evaluate them and then reevaluate them after reviewing them for an unlimited time alongside the museum’s written interpretive text. Significantly the Brooklyn Museum has been learning from its experience on the Web. In August 2014, Vice Director of Digital Engagement and Technology Shelley Bernstein spoke to the New York Times about how and why the museum was changing its online strategy. The museum had decided to shut down a number of its social media platforms to focus on deep engagement with visitors much closer to home. The change came from analyzing the impact of the museum’s online experiments and finding, to their surprise, that most Web visitors were local people, with a significant number being museum professionals. Bernstein concluded: “The farther away you were, the less deeply engaged you were in scale and scope. The

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closer you are, the more engaged you were. It has caused us as an institution to completely rethink what we do in terms of digital engagement.”14 The Web promises access to global audiences and in many instances it fulfills this promise. New York’s Metropolitan Museum, the largest art museum in the US with about 6 million onsite visitors annually, also reaches 92 million people through its Facebook page, 29 million visits through its website and still more millions on its Chinese Weibo account.15 Its virtual visitors are both local and international, but the museum’s success internationally is also due to local engagement elsewhere in the form of traveling exhibitions, loans of artworks, conservation, excavation and research projects, fellowship programs, and exchange and collaboration projects. Local also is increasingly international. New York City is home to more than 3 million people who are foreign born, with the majority from the Dominican Republic, China and Mexico. Around 6 in 10 New Yorkers are immigrants or children of immigrants.16 These demographics are similar to those in many of the world’s biggest cities. Most of these people experience the city face-to-face, but talk about the city through Skype, WhatsApp and Facebook, sharing a trans-local experience with their friends and families in countries and cities all over the world. For museums, the advent of social media and the culture of stewardship and participation provide an unprecedented opportunity to assess their relevance to their audiences. People who are asked for feedback can help shape a museum in a way that turns it into a valuable civic resource. Indeed, feedback is given because there is an expectation of participation, whether invited or not. The idea of the participatory museum, a term popularized in the 2010 book of that title by Nina Simon, crystallizes this relationship: How can cultural institutions reconnect with the public and demonstrate their value and relevance in contemporary life? I believe they can do this by inviting people to actively engage as cultural participants, not passive consumers. As more people enjoy and become accustomed to participatory learning and entertainment experiences, they want to do more than just ‘attend’ cultural events and institutions.… When people can actively participate with cultural institutions, those places become central to cultural and community life.17

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Museums have been running public programs for years, and with the recognition of museums as educational institutions, museum education departments have assumed greater prominence within the museum hierarchy. A participatory or open museum, however, goes far beyond enhancing public programs, affecting all facets of the institution. A museum that encourages people to take part in workshops or attend holiday programs but does not engage more widely, ignores complaints or excludes diverse perspectives in its exhibitions and charges high ticket prices can no more be considered participatory than a museum that offers no programs at all. In the age of stewardship and with the enhanced sense of individual and group agency ascribed by the Internet, museums and cities that do not invite participation or seriously consider community input can be left underutilized and undervisited and may even become the target of protests. In October 2013, the Red Location Museum in South Africa was closed in response to threats from the local community, residents of New Brighton, a poor apartheid-designated township in the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality. Although no artifacts or documents were touched, in the preceding months the museum building had been stripped of electrical wiring, water pipes, power sockets, fencing and wooden fittings, materials people then used for the shacks they live in. Thembisile Klaas, a local resident, told AFP: “Why build a house for dead people when us the living do not have a roof over our heads?... We are living in shacks which get flooded each time it rains ... and yet the municipality spends millions of rands building a museum.”18 The museum opened with the best intentions in November 2006 as an anchor for the Red Location Cultural Precinct, a major heritage and tourism component of the municipality’s Vision 2020 strategy, aiming to drive investment and economic growth. Noero Wolff architects had won a national competition in 1998 for a civic precinct that was to contain a museum dedicated to the struggle against apartheid, an arts center and gallery, a market, a library, a community hall and some housing. An electronic library, the city archive and art gallery opened as part of Phase 2 in 2011, but the market, community hall and housing have yet to be built. The museum aimed to treat visitors “not as consumers but [as] active participants”19 with a mission that “engages the public in educational and awarenessraising programs on Arts, Culture and Heritage; lends itself to partnerships and

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collaborative work; partakes in poverty alleviation and entrepreneurship-growing initiatives, affirming indigenous knowledge; adheres to international codes of practices; and embraces ongoing intellectual engagement and critique.” The Red Location Museum won a number of architecture awards,20 and its principal architect, Jo Noero, was the only African exhibitor at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2012 Venice Biennale with his exhibition “Common Ground/ Different Worlds,” featuring the Red Location Museum. Despite the mission, the design intent and a number of successful programs, the soft power that the Red Location Museum sought to exercise—empowering the local community and attracting tourists—ultimately could not compete with the harsh economic realities its community faces. The blame for conditions was laid squarely on the municipality, the owners and operators of the museum. The Red Location Museum example, which is not an isolated incident, demonstrates the challenges of museums that are not part of civil society when it comes to exercising influence. It also demonstrates the degree to which communities expect ongoing benefit and participation from the museums in their midst, an expectation that increases the more a museum publicly declares its intention to “do good.” Soft powers do collide. Intent does not necessarily equal impact. The tension between what one says and how that is backed up in all aspects of a museum’s organization and even beyond points to another key component of soft power—transparency. Perceived legitimacy and moral authority are key to whether or not a soft power strategy succeeds. Millions of dollars and hours can be poured into crafting a strong vision, brand and positioning, remarkable architecture, exemplary exhibitions and programs, but unless a museum is “believed” and is seen to be acting positively, these efforts are for nought. The very identity of a museum is based on authenticity and truth. Transparency is an implicit part of any museum’s value proposition. The Guggenheim Foundation has developed a strong brand internationally, spearheaded by the extremely successful opening of the Guggenheim in Bilbao in 1997. It describes its network of museums as “a global cultural icon” in which “each museum in the Guggenheim constellation combines distinguished architecture with great artworks, a tradition that has become a Guggenheim hallmark.”21 The Guggenheim Foundation’s international strategy aiming at spreading its own influence in the art world, however, has been challenged repeatedly with protests about

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the working conditions of laborers building the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. Human rights activists and artists have repeatedly and vocally protested the low wages and poor working conditions of the construction workers22 and have demanded that these be addressed not only by the UAE Ministry of Labor but also by the Guggenheim Foundation.23 The protests, online and at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, threaten the soft power impact of the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi. The UAE’s perceived mistreatment of workers challenges the legitimacy and moral authority at the heart of the Guggenheim’s promise. Another example of the increasing need for transparency in the museum world is the case of artist Ai Wei Wei. The People’s Republic of China has been very active in circulating blockbuster exhibitions like “Terracotta Warriors” and “Forbidden City” that increase cultural understanding and exercise soft power. But when Chinese authorities arrested Ai Wei Wei in April 2011 on charges of tax evasion, the art world responded with protests. Highly influential presidents and directors of major museums throughout the world joined a campaign demanding his immediate release. A petition with the following text collected 140,000 signatures: We members of the international arts community express our concern for Ai’s freedom, and disappointment in China’s reluctance to live up to its promise to nurture creativity and independent thought, the keys to “soft power” and cultural influence. Our institutions have some of the largest online museum communities in the world. We have launched this online petition to our collective millions of Facebook fans and Twitter followers. By using Ai Wei Wei’s favored medium of “social sculpture,” we hope to hasten the release of our visionary friend. 24 Signatories of the petition included the heads of museums that had benefited enormously from exhibitions organized with the Chinese government. Eighty-one days later, Ai Wei Wei was released. The tone of this successful petition is clearly one of inviting China to return to its previous position of soft power. Transparency means showing visitors how museum stories are told, including the many decisions made in collecting, curating and developing an interpretative plan. In writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2009 Ted Talk, she speaks of the danger of a single story:

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The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.… The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.25 If they tell only a single story with their collections and exhibitions, museums that seek to use their soft power to influence others can unwittingly become sites of propaganda. As one of the most trusted sources when it comes to interpreting the past, museums are expected to use their power to present a balanced view. This issue of transparency can be seen in the troubled historical relationship between museums and racialized people—those who have an ethnic or racial identity imposed on them by others. There are many ways in which racialized people have been demeaned, dehumanized and excluded in museums. In the 19th century, as repositories and representatives of hard power, museums and zoos displayed living indigenous peoples and collected and classified their remains. Far from being isolated incidents, the practice was relatively common at museums, world fairs, colonial exhibitions and zoos in Paris, Hamburg, Antwerp, Barcelona, London, Milan, New York and Warsaw. European and American visitors were invited to gawk at and study what was presented as scientific evidence of a “natural” social hierarchy—and therefore, a justification for colonialism. Although the practice of displaying live people in zoos eventually died out (although as recently as 2005, African people were set up as “exotic displays” at an African Village in the zoo in Augsburg, Germany),26 some museums continue to hold human remains in their collections. The 1990s saw legislation enacted in various parts of the world to address this issue. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was enacted in 1990 in the United States. The guiding document Turning the Page: Forging New Partnerships Between Museums and First Peoples was widely adopted in Canada in 1992, and in 1993 the Council of Australian Museum Associations endorsed Previous Possessions, New Obligations. The 1990s also marked the beginning of the transformation of a number of European colonial museums. In France, the Museum of Man and the Museum of African and Oceanic Arts became the Musée du Quai Branly and the Cité nationale

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de l’histoire de l’immigration. In Sweden the Ethnographic Museum of Götheborg became the Museum of World Culture, and in Holland the Troppenmuseum replaced the Colonial Museum of Haarlem. The Royal Museum for Central Africa at Tervuren in Belgium is due to reopen in 2017 as “a place to remember the shared colonial past that will create a dynamic platform to facilitate encounters and dialogue between visitors from different generations and cultures.”27 Despite these changes, which some say do not go nearly far enough, many people continue to be deeply mistrustful of museums. Their legacy as instruments of oppression in colonized countries is one of the most controversial for science, ethnography and history museums. It remains a major impediment to a museum’s ability to engage racialized people. In 2014, the Barbican in London sought to present a performance/exhibition titled “Exhibit B” by artist Brett Bailey that drew on the form of the human zoos in an attempt to comment on current “racist and xenophobic policies of the EU.” Vehement protests greeted the exhibition, which featured live performers, including a black man in a cage and a seminaked woman with shackles around her neck. The exhibit had already been presented in Edinburgh, Berlin and Paris, and protests also occurred in those cities. Prior to the show at the Barbican, protests moved online via Twitter, a petition was launched via change.org demanding that the exhibition be withdrawn, a Facebook page and website were set up, and marches were organized. Ultimately more than 23,000 people signed the petition, including many university professors and anti-racism organizations. The Barbican reluctantly withdrew the show. A press release from the protesters went on to say: Whilst #boycottthehumanzoo acknowledges this victory against racism and white superiority, we also see this is just the beginning. “Exhibit B” revealed that the art industry is riddled with white privilege and elitism, the very issues the exhibit was said to challenge. Our observations during the course of the campaign will be the driving force behind a fresh movement to defeat the white supremacist ideals of Barbican and similar arts institutions to ensure that the next generation of young Black Britons will have equal access to and equal success within the art industry as their white counterparts.28

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People of color are now the majority in an increasing number of the major cities in the West, where the most visited museums are located.29 In the US for example, non-Hispanic whites represent between just over a tenth to just under half of the population of the country’s largest cities.30 Yet US museums are falling behind when it comes to attracting people of color. According to the National Endowment for the Arts’ public participation survey (2012), non-Hispanic white Americans are overrepresented among adult art museum visitors (81 percent of visitors, while just 63 percent of the US population), while Hispanics and African Americans were significantly underrepresented. Nevertheless, since 2008, the percentage of Hispanics and African American visitors has remained stable whereas attendance by white non-Hispanics has suffered a marked decline, indicating a move, albeit slow, towards greater audience diversity.31 A key aspect for museums in exercising soft power among the cities of today and tomorrow is their ability to transcend past history and in some cases lasting racism, to be relevant, meaningful and attractive to everyone. This can be done through ongoing proactive engagement, transparency and a commitment to multiple perspectives. When museums see themselves as part of civil society, their public—the people who interact with them—are seen as citizens. The identity of citizens is different from the identity of visitors or consumers. “Citizen” implies a form of political participation and autonomy, a social contract whereby people have certain rights and duties with respect to all institutions, including cultural institutions. The notion of citizenship in a city, however, is markedly different from that in the larger context of a nation or country where a citizen is identified and regulated through national policies and politics. In a city, citizenship is a more fluid notion, connected to place, to conflicting and cohering notions of identity and belonging. One is not a citizen of a city in the same legal way as one is a citizen of a country. One may be born into national citizenship or one may acquire it, but one feels city citizenship. City dwellers feel that they are connected to a community that they can speak to, see and impact. As the Knight Foundation’s Soul of the Community study has shown, “soft” aspects like social offerings, openness and aesthetics are key to creating the attachment to place that leads to community cohesion and economic development.32

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In 21st-century cities, museums are spaces whose soft power is exercised through the concept of civic agency. Soft power can only be deemed successful if it achieves its intended outcomes among all of a city’s increasingly diverse population. Soft power in our age is unrealizable without engagement and stewardship. Attempts to exercise soft power are easily dismissed if the museum does not recognize the agency of those it purports to reach.

ENDNOTES 1 A term coined by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. It refers to elements such as skills, tastes, accent, clothing, mannerisms, belongings that one acquires through being part of a social class, which creates a sense of group belonging. According to Bourdieu, cultural capital can become a source of social inequality as some forms are valued over others. 2 National public opinion survey conducted by Lake Snell Perry & Associates for the American Alliance of Museums, 2001. Museums were seen by the public as society’s most trusted source of reliable information. 3 Benedict R. O’G. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006). An imagined community is different from an actual community because it is not (and, for practical reasons, cannot be) based on everyday, face-to-face interaction between its members. For example, Anderson believes that a nation is a socially constructed community imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group. 4 Barry Lord, Art and Energy: How Culture Changes (Washington, DC: The AAM Press, 2014), 189. 5 Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (New York: Penguin Group, 2010). 6 http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/04/25/civic-engagement-in-the-digital-age/ 7 Elisabeth Soep, MIT 2014, file:///C:/Users/ngaire/Documents/Museums,%20 Cities%20and%20Soft%20Power/Research/Participatory_Politics_Next_Generation.pdf. 8 Ibid., 2. 9 http://occupymuseums.org/ 10 The film spread virally. As of March 1, 2014, it had received over 99 million views and 1.3 million “likes” on YouTube and over 21,000 “likes” on Vimeo. 11 Elisabeth Soep, “Participatory Politics: Next-Generation Tactics to Remake Public Spheres,” The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Report on Digital Media and Learning (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014), 3. 12 http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/01/04/section-4-social-media-use/ 13 These are the foundations of what Soep describes as participatory politics. 14 Anand Giridharadas, “Museums See Different Virtues in Virtual Worlds,” New York Times, August 7, 2014, http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/arts/design/museums-seedifferent-virtues-in-virtual-worlds.html?referrer&_r=0. Retrieved November 5, 2014.

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15 Ibid. 16 Sophia Hollander, “City Sees Wave of Newcomers,” Wall Street Journal online, December 18, 2013, http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303773704579266431 847188194. 17 Nina Simon, The Participatory Museum (San Jose, CA: Museums 2.0, 2010). 18 http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/PE-residents-force-anti-apartheidmuseum-to-close-20140731 19 This phrase is used on the museum website and in much of what has been presented about the project. http://www.freewebs.com/redlocationmuseum. 20 Including the Lubetkin Prize from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2006 for the best building in the world outside the UK; an Award of Excellence from The Institute of South African Architects in 2008; and The University of Cape Town Creative Award in 2011. 21 http://www.guggenheim.org/guggenheim-foundation 22 http://news.artnet.com/in-brief/the-guggenheim-refuses-to-answer-questionsabout-gulf-workers-154683; http://news.artnet.com/art-world/artist-sneaks-into-futureguggenheim-abu-dhabi-site-to-interview-workers-75148 23 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/nyregion/protesters-urge-guggenheim-to-aidabu-dhabi-workers.html?_r=0 24 Signatories of the petition included Richard Armstrong, director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, and Alexandra Munroe, Samsung Senior Curator, Asian Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Juan Ignacio Vidarte, director general, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and deputy director and chief officer for global strategies, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Glenn Lowry, director, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Sir Nicholas Serota, director, Tate and Chris Dercon, director, Tate Modern; Yongwoo Lee, president, The Gwangju Biennale Foundation; Tony Ellwood, director, and Suhanya Raffel, deputy director, Queensland Art Gallery, Australia; Carolyn ChristovBakargiev, artistic director, documenta 13, and Bernd Leifeld, CEO, documenta; Marcelo Araújo, executive director, and Ivo Mesquita, chief curator, Pinacoteca de São Paulo. 25 http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/ transcript?language=en 26 http://www.spiegel.de/international/german-zoo-scandal-african-village-accusedof-putting-humans-on-display-a-359799.html 27 http://www.africamuseum.be/museum/renovation/renovate/index_html 28 “Withdrawn: The Racist Exhibit B from the Barbican.” Press release September 24, 2014. http://boycotthumanzoouk.com/press-release-withdraw-the-racist-exhibit-b-fromthe-barbican/. Accessed November 14, 2014. 29 According to the Art Newspaper, the 10 most visited museums are in Paris (the Louvre, Centre Pompidou and Musée d’Orsay), London (British Museum, National Gallery, Tate Modern), New York City (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Vatican City (Vatican Museums), Taipei (National Palace Museum) and Washington, DC (National Gallery of Art). According to London Councils, 40 percent of the population of London is “Black and Minority Ethnic” (BAME) (http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/londonfacts/default. htm?category=2); 42.8 percent of the population of New York City is nonwhite (including Hispanic or Latino) (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36000.html), approximately

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17 percent of the population of Paris is nonwhite and 61.5 percent of the population of Washington, DC, is nonwhite (including Hispanic or Latino) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Demographics_of_Washington,_D.C. - Ethnic_composition). In addition, tourists from emerging economies are expected to drive growth over the next decade. 30 Jennifer Hochschild, “Reflections: Race and Cities: New Circumstances Imply New Ideas,” Cambridge Journals 10, no. 3 (September 2012), http://journals.cambridge.org/ download.php?file=%2FPPS%2FPPS10_03%2FS1537592712001661a.pdf&code=c6d8d1dfb2f d2fd674f024857fd4885c. 31 “How a Nation Engages with Art: Highlights from the 2012 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts” (Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Arts, 2012), http:// arts.gov/publications/highlights-from-2012-sppa. 32 http://www.pps.org/blog/stronger-citizens-stronger-cities-changing-governancethrough-a-focus-on-place

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Unearthing the Genius Loci of Museums in the Indian Subcontinent Batul Raaj Mehta



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tate museums across India all house similar collections. There are Buddhist artifacts, a few idols of various deities recovered from excavations, a few bronze idols, coins, pottery shards and tools from prehistoric times, a few architectural features, Islamic inscriptions, miniature paintings, decorative arts from the last 300 years, samples of minerals, textiles and sometimes taxidermy and arms. Most government museums across states and even the National Museum, Delhi, have similar procedures of collection, classification and means of display. In the entire Indian subcontinent, museums are traditionally referred to as ajaibghar, jadughar and in some instances vaastu sanghralaya. These terms translate to “House of Wonders,” “House of Magic” or “artifact collections.” The prefix to the name may identify the location of the museum, but the collections, displays and lack of a narrative betray no context. Often sculptures excavated in Amravati (in south India) will find their place in museums across the country. The same goes for Buddhist sculptures from Bihar (east of India) that include inscriptions without any subtext. Rarely do state museums connect locally, or help establish the context of the collections or inform anyone of the big picture. A sense of identity created from the artifacts is sorely lacking. As a result, locals seldom visit their own state museums. The few visitors whiz past, stopping only at the most easily identifiable artifacts, such as taxidermy specimens. The reason for this similarity of collections and settings lies in the colonial origin of museums in the subcontinent. The administration and record keeping of the colonial rulers, and their distance from the local culture, led to the genesis of Indian museums as they now exist. The past decade and a half, however, have seen a few museums embracing identities that respond to their own communities and histories, making the local visitor aware of the contributions of a period or region. This change in focus has been brought about probably by a need to express one’s distinctiveness in a world that is increasingly homogenized. The various regions of the subcontinent may feel the need to establish their unique identity as they compete for a slice of the growing tourism pie. This essay charts the path of museums in the subcontinent, examining how colonial-era museums persist in independent India, and exploring how some museums are finding a new form of soft power by serving their local communities, rather than a vague and amorphous audience of distant strangers.

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MUSEUMS OF COLONIAL TIMES Museums in the subcontinent, as elsewhere in the world, were extensions of colonial rule (hard power) and were set up initially as cabinets of curiosity. It is generally assumed that the great knowledge-producing project of the British Empire was primarily one of control.1 The colonial powers viewed the various cultural differences and their manifestations from an “outsider’s perspective.” The East India Company’s India Museum was born of items collected by officers displaying a scholarly enthusiasm beyond the line of duty. The museum started as a motley collection of scientific samples, manuscripts and antiquities, curiosities and military loot, which the Company Board agreed to house in London.2 These were collected in the latter half of the 18th century. Only in 1801 was a librarian appointed for the repository. The Indian Museum was dissolved with the demise of the East India Company in 1879, as the governance of India was transferred from the East India Company to the British Crown after the first revolt for independence in 1857. Its collections were distributed to various institutions and contributed to the core of Indian materials in various British museums. The scholarly mindset for understanding a foreign culture and its past was the driver for establishing the Archaeological Survey of India in 1861. It would also give a deeper understanding of cultural behavior and help strategize control. Artifacts unearthed in various excavations by survey archeologists were sent to universities or larger museums in big cities in the subcontinent. The Amravati idols, the Chola bronzes and Buddhist artifacts are found in museums, often without any context of the objects or where they were discovered. Frequently the excavation report would be buried among tomes of records and the artifacts would eventually be disconnected from their origin. Lord Curzon, as Viceroy of India (1899–1905), famously noted that Britain, as a civilized power, had to recognize its duty towards the “greatest galaxy of monuments in the world.” As an extension of this philosophy, loose objects that needed to be protected from theft or the weather were no longer to be taken away to the capital but were now to be housed at museums across India, removing and yet not removing the object from its context.3 Curiosity and an attempt to understand a foreign culture were only the start of the museums, but may not be the primary reasons why museums were built in the Indian subcontinent over the next century. The trade fairs in the UK, where articles from all its colonies were displayed and marketed, contributed to the perpetuation

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of museums in India. The hard power of economics was undeniable in the growth and attraction of the colonies. This hard power was sustained by the unassuming museums in India. Around the time of the 1851 Great Exhibition in the UK, museums in India became intermediaries for cataloguing and sourcing well-crafted artifacts from Indian craftsmen. The European market was eager for well-designed and intricately crafted Indian goods. The decorative arts, along with archeological artifacts, became a prime focus of the collections, and the Indian museums, established in key cities across India, became sources for these items. The elaborate accession numbers in the registers of these local “repositories” collated with the collections housed in the English museums. Ordering the decorative arts became very simple by referencing the numbers in the English museums. Within this elaborate system, art colleges were set up in India (Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and Lahore), where artists could be trained using the museum collections as references. So the supply chain would also be connected through what were essentially mail-order catalogues. The best examples would be kept in the Indian museum and in the English museum, using a similar accession number. This ready reference would help the buyer order and the craftsman manufacture to the same exacting standards. This system set up under the Department of Science and Art (DSA) seemed like good economic planning. One of the officials who set up the scheme commented, “It will be seen … that the already existing museums will be called upon to fulfil a new function, that of trade museums, or to put it more simply, sample rooms.”4 History shows that this was not to be. Taxes on Indian goods and the industrialization of Europe proved to be detrimental to the dream of developing these Indian “sample rooms.” While the hard power of economics failed to sustain, the soft power of the museums and their collections persisted. The systems that had set up these museums weren’t just bureaucratic, but physical. The case works for all the museums originating under DSA were similar, down to the last centimeter, whether in South Kensington or in Patna.

PERSISTENCE OF COLONIAL MUSEUMS IN INDEPENDENT INDIA India and Pakistan gained their independence in August 1947. Independence brought a need to create a distinct national identity that acknowledged the past but was not indebted to it. India started subconsciously outlining an “Indian” identity.

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Prior to colonization, the Indian subcontinent was comprised of many principalities and kingdoms. Colonial rule brought about an imposed unity that distorted history and Indian cultures. Independent India needed to counter both to assert herself as one homogeneous entity under a national banner. The first Republic Day in 1950, when the new Indian constitution was adopted and India became a democracy, was rich in the symbolism of reclaimed nationhood—a parade in full regalia, showcasing military strength. Soon the Republic Day parade, where India was presented as a pageant of composed and ordered differences, became the norm. The epic, lyrical poetry of earlier imaginings of India was transcribed into the bureaucratic prose of building a “composite India.”5 This postcolonial “Indianess” extended to various cultural facilities and museums. The National Museum in Delhi was the first of the museums conceived in Independent India. The National Museum was to be built at the same location in Delhi, where its colonial master planner, Edwin Lutyens, had demarcated a space for a museum. Before settling in its permanent location, the Indian government appropriated an earlier landmark exhibition, conceived in 1939 by British scholars: an Exhibition of Indian Art. By the time this exhibition saw the light of day postwar, India had become two nations, India and Pakistan. The exhibition was to showcase the Art of India and Pakistan at the Royal Academy, London, in 1947–48—at the precise time that India was defining its new independent nationhood. When the exhibition was over, the artifacts were to be returned to private owners and museums, according to their geographic locations, which were now in two nations. India used her share of loaned artifacts to kick-start the National Museum. The government had to return the Indian artifacts eventually, albeit begrudgingly, to the various collectors and royals who were the legal owners. After the return of the artifacts from the London exhibition, the onerous task of populating the still unbuilt National Museum began. Old habits die hard. It was decided that the National Museum was to be populated as various colonial museums had been: the “best” historical artifacts, and some contemporary artifacts from across India, were to be displayed in the museum, based on material classification. The same scientific classification used by the colonialists was to be used again, as much because it was already in place and because the key bureaucratic staff, the scholarly elite who had run museums in colonial India, were Indians who knew these systems and were trained in them. Artifacts for the new museum were

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A Buddhist monk explores the Buddhist symbols in an interactive exhibition at the Buddha Smriti Park Museum, Patna, India. The museum opened in September 2013 and is visited by locals and Buddhist pilgrims alike, in addition to a small number of tourists.

purchased from private sources or procured from various small museums around India that had been set up in colonial times, thus continuing the colonial practice of distancing the collections even further from their context. Museums like the Indian Museum, Kolkata, Victoria Memorial, Kolkata, Prince of Wales, Mumbai, and some of the other larger museums refrained from contributing to the National Museum. Being fairly autonomous in their functioning, they had the wherewithal to decline, thus maintaining their prized collections. The newly opened National Museum fulfilled a diplomatic need, but did not serve the purpose of creating an Indian identity. This vision did not trickle down to those trained in systems that were developed for a different purpose.

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In the ensuing few decades, government museums all across India were maintained and operated by archeologists or historians schooled in the same systems established in the earlier half of the previous century. They followed the systems set up by the colonial museum developers but with a different vision. No longer did the museums need to be classifications of curiosities or sample rooms. They needed to recount Indian history from an Indian perspective. But the power of the accessioning, registrarial and cataloguing systems developed and practiced for almost a century was too strong to shake off. Material classification rather than chronological classification continued to be the way a gallery was organized. And most importantly, displays still lacked a narrative, a context or a connection to the local visitors’ own history, thus failing to create an Indian narrative. The colonial, hard power reasons museums were set up more than a half a century ago have been eradicated, but this influence has remained. Indian museums still lack their own voice. Colonialism creates a native elite and teaches it to admire—all too often to ape—the ways of their foreign rulers. That habit of mind has survived in independent India.6 For more than 150 years, the visitor experience in Indian museums remained more or less stagnant. In the last decade, however, some changes are taking root. Some museums are starting to develop their own voices, fostering or reinforcing a local identity and connecting to a specific audience. The Baroda Museum, in the city of Baroda in western India, set an interesting precedent in this regard. The Baroda Museum was created in 1887 by Sayaji Rao Gaekwad III (ruled from 1875 to 1939). The Gaekwads of Baroda were a principality of the British rule, with a fair amount of autonomy. Since the days of the Gaekwads, Baroda has been known as a city of culture due to its patronage of the arts, culture and education. The extremely progressive Gaekwads and their policies like universal education often became benchmarks for the British administration. This was also the Gaekwads’ manner of showing that they weren’t subservient and could act for themselves. The Baroda Museum became an extension of these values. Soon after establishing the museum, the Gaekwads too collected samples and excavated material, searching for the best in each category of art, archeology and curiosities. Specific sections on science and for children were added. Fine art from across Asia was added, establishing measures for refinement and taste. The Gaekwads were also patrons to some of the renowned contemporary Indian artists of the time, such as Raja Ravi Verma. They hired curators, almost always Indian or German, never

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British—probably as a snub to the British attitude of thinking the audience incapable of appreciating fine aesthetics. They also hired prominent art critics in the 1910s to procure the best examples of European fine art. Originals by Veronese, Caracci, Constable and Turner were some of the artists added to the collection. The Baroda Museum was far better maintained and the quality of display higher than any of the government museums. This collection of European art, which would reach Baroda only after World War I, was enthusiastically displayed in galleries and museums in Europe before it reached India. The coverage in Europe endorsed the collection. An Indian collector, too, had the ability to create an exhibition with specimens of European art, just as the British were doing with the arts of their colonies. In the Baroda Museum, European art was displayed by country rather than as a linear chronological progression, thus educating the audiences that Europe too had multicultural identities. By laying open this collection to their own people rather than only adorning the walls of their palaces, the Gaekwads acknowledged their citizens’ aptitude to recognize and appreciate the fine arts. It was a subtle display of soft power based on self-determination. Unlike the hard power of the British Empire, where commerce and curiosity marked the colonial power’s relationship to those it colonized, taste and intelligence, the marks of equality, were engaged at the Baroda Museum. Today it still attracts a large audience, although the museum has aged. Some visitors come to admire the collection, others to admire the soft power exercised by the Gaekwads almost 150 years ago. More recently, the National Liberation War Museum of Bangladesh has lent its soft power to its community. The museums of Bangladesh shared the same history as those of India and still show vestiges of the past. But the country’s struggle for independence was far bloodier than that of India. The year 1971 saw the liberation of East Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh after a war that left 10 million refugees, more than 3 million dead, another 200,000 women who were rape victims or sex slaves, and most of its liberal intelligentsia brutally murdered. Pakistan, including the erstwhile East Pakistan, was partitioned using religion as a demarcating principle. Bangladeshi nationalists struggled to proclaim their Bangla cultural identity, including the Bengali language. Sectarian wars were fought on Bangladeshi soil by proPakistani supporters and the Pakistani army against the Bangladeshi nationalists, who were supported by India. The nationalists included people from all demographics.

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Interestingly, after the 1971 formation of Bangladesh, the democratically elected governments were frequently toppled by dictatorial powers. Depending on who was in power, whether a pro-Pakistan or pro-Bangla, pro-Indian administration, the recording and telling of history would change. Often history textbooks would refrain from referencing the 1971 genocide or war atrocities. As soon as a pro-Bangla government came to power, the textbooks would tilt differently. This political seesaw of denial and acceptance became the context for creation of the Liberation War Museum in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, in 1996. Eight freedom fighters who had fought the 1971 war after giving up a sheltered and privileged life set up a trust to establish a Liberation War Museum, where history and its lessons would not be forgotten. With meager resources, they appealed for any memorabilia that people could contribute. The war generation responded wholeheartedly with newspaper clippings, documents, clothes, photographs, HAM radios and, in some touching examples, the only surviving memento of a martyred loved one. As these generations came forward, they instructed generations born in the ’70s and ’80s who were in the dark about the brutality of the war. This museum began building its collection in a markedly different way from many of the museums described above. Instead of inheriting colonial-era artifacts and classification systems, it began with outreach and an oral history collection program that urged schoolchildren to collect war stories from their elders. This worked as an awareness program that discovered hitherto untapped bonds within the family, created a new awareness of history and also allowed documentation of more than 10,000 personal stories that were transcribed by the museum. The museum bus was another important tool for the outreach program. Started in 1999, it now spreads the message of the museum to the interiors of Bangladesh when it is difficult for large groups and schools to make it to Dhaka. The program is run by a group of volunteers, primarily youngsters who have either a direct family connection to the war or are committed to the values of the museum. They help make it a living museum that is building national unity as well as a tolerant society opposed to the abuse of human rights.7 A final example is the Bihar Museum in Patna, due to open in late 2015. Bihar is a state that has some of the oldest recorded history of spirituality, education, art and royalty in India. The Bihar Museum will house the collection of the Patna Museum, established in 1917. Organized as a colonial-era museum, the Patna

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Museums housed artifacts excavated from the surrounding regions and acquired after a fair amount of consternation from the Bihar Sharif museum between 1912 and 1917, when it was established in a temporary location by Sir Edward Gait. The Patna Museum also housed some of the fine stone sculptures of the Mauryan period, along with sculptures unearthed from neighbouring Orissa and Jharkhand. Kurkihar bronzes, Mauryan terracotas, Gandharva Buddhas, along with taxidermy specimens and mineral samples, are displayed in the galleries of the Patna Museum. As one would expect with all colonial museums, there are galleries dedicated to the decorative arts and miniature paintings, too. All these collections are classified by material and typology, and displayed in separate galleries accordingly. The labels identify the name of the artifact, the accession number, approximate period and, in some cases, location of excavation. Bihar has had a glorious past, in some ways comparable to Jerusalem, as it is the cradle of two important religions of the subcontinent, Buddhism and Jainism. It also had one of the earliest universities, Nalanda. Many important Eastern philosophies and advances in economics, medicine, literature, grammar, art and architecture come from Bihar. Bihar had one of the first democratically elected governments prior to the year 2000. Through the last 500 years, Bihar has been a stronghold of Indian history, whether the Grand Trunk Road that allowed trade from Burma to Afghanistan, or the spread of Sufism and the origins of some of the keys phases of the Independence Movement. The entire subcontinent prides itself on this history. Bihar is strewn with important excavated historical sites, and has a huge potential for developing tourism. But somehow in the last 25 years, Bihar became a dreaded and avoided state in India. “Bihari” was no longer only a way of addressing someone from Bihar, but a term that implied disdain. This was due to a failure of the earlier governing bodies, permitting corruption and lawlessness to prosper. Industry, tourism, education, investment and related economic livelihood were absent from Bihar, which led to a brain-drain and migration to other parts of India. The constant battle for bare necessities and the absence of any state-supported welfare led to further social and criminal issues. Bihar had become a culture shock for the rest of India, too. The last decade has seen a slow and steady improvement through good administration by the current government. Better security, infrastructure development and an increase in investment have led to an abundance of small businesses

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and franchises flourishing in the large cities of Bihar. By simple steps like distributing sanitary pads and bicycles to all schoolgirls, literacy among women has increased. With a combination of effective governance and soft power diplomacy, the government has been endeavoring to reclaim the Bihari sense of pride. Events themed around “Proud to be a Bihari,” where individuals pledge to forsake destructive habits such as domestic violence, bribery, child labor, etc., are enthusiastically received by the public. These self esteem-building exercises focus on making the Bihari people aware of their rich cultural past and its contributions to the subcontinent. The visionary Chief Minister of Bihar, Mr. Nitish Kumar, was vocal on reclaiming this identity: “I wanted to awaken the Bihari identity, to revive pride in Bihar’s glory, to urge people to take a pledge to take the state to great heights, striving together as Biharis. ‘I have a dream,’ I told them, ‘to see Bihar achieve similar glory that it had attained in the past. I want to make Bihar so glorious that Bihar Identity is associated not with shame but with pride.’”8 An example of this agenda was the creation of the Buddha Smriti Park (Buddha Memorial Park) and Museum in 2010 and 2013, respectively. Buddha attained Nirvana in Bihar in the 3rd century BCE, and there are many locations around Bihar connected to events in Buddha’s life. The erstwhile Bankipore jail in the center of the city of Patna was demolished to create the Buddha Smriti Park, a haven of peace and tranquillity in a city plagued by chaotic traffic, noise and clutter. The park is frequented by the locals of Patna and tourists alike, irrespective of their religious affiliation, as access is open to all for a nominally priced ticket. The museum exhibition emphasizes the spirituality and peace of Buddhism. Most of the art here depicting Buddha’s salvation has been commissioned from traditional artists of Bihar, signifying New Age patronage for lesser-known arts. An example of building cultural pride through history is the upcoming Bihar Museum, spread over a 14-acre site in Patna. The museum will house key artifacts from the Patna Museum in a new, world-class facility while narrating Bihari history. The Patna Museum artifacts suffered in an outdated system, completely isolating them from their context and location in history. Researchers were the only visitors genuinely interested in the museum’s collections. Other visitors were mainly families who had no other recreational outlets. They spent maximum time in the taxidermy section recognizing animals, while schoolkids snaked through the museum and privacy-deprived young couples found solace in the long, semi-lit corridors of

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the galleries. ‘‘Pride” and “history” could be found in the museum’s brochure but in were conspicuously absent from the museum experience. Nitish Kumar saw the immense influence this museum could yield in reclaiming Bihar’s heritage while also becoming a milestone for museums across India. He and his Department of Art, Culture and Youth, Government of Bihar, prepared the following: •Inculcate Bihari pride in its history

End Result

•Promote tourism in the state •An institution that rivals the best in the world for many decades to come •Sustainable development

Means

Objectives

•Complement the existing Patna Museum •Hi-Tech innovative displays, interactive models and audio-visuals •Showcase the magnificent contribution of Bihar to the Evolution of the Indian Subcontinent •A star attraction for Bihar, India and internationally

The Bihar museum was conceived as a chronological progression highlighting the achievements of Bihar over three millennia, and includes sections on art that benefited from the patronage of various Bihari rulers. A special children’s section will present key features of Bihar and its history through games, animations and interactive storytelling. The Bihar Museum steps away from the material, typology and outdated classifications of colonial and conventional Indian museums. Instead it relies on a voice that develops the experience chronologically through personalities, achievements and impact, probably for the first time in an Indian museum of this scale. The exhibitions convey a sense of place and time irrespective of the visitor’s level of intellectual access, literacy and familiarity with the subject matter. Museums in the Indian subcontinent, as elsewhere, can be diplomatic tools, using their soft power to champion a spirit of place, its genius loci. Current and future generations of Biharis will draw strength and pride from their histories as preserved and interpreted by the Bihar Museum, just as Bangladeshis do at their National Liberation War Museum. This is museum soft power at its most effective.

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ENDNOTES 1 Kavita Singh, “Material Fantasy: The Museum in Colonial India” in Art And Visual Culture in India:1857–2007, Gayatri Sinha, ed. (Mumbai, India: Marg Publications, 2009), 40. 2 Ibid., 42. 3 Ibid., 48. 4 E.S. Buck, “Note on the exploitation of Indian Art-Manufactures in connection with the Museums and Exhibitions, Provincial and International.” National Archives of India, File 1882: Home Department Public Branch A, no. 157 (July 1881). Subject: Distribution of business between the Home and Revenue Departments, p. 4, para 16. 5 Sunil Khilnani, “Many Wrinkles in History,” OutlookIndia Magazine, August 20, 2001, http://www.outlookindia.com/article/Many-Wrinkles-In-History/212958. 6 Mark Tully, No Full Stops in India (London: Penguin, 1991). 7 http://www.liberationwarmuseum.org/gallery.html (2013). 8 Arun Sinha, Nitish Kumar and the Rise of Bihar (London: Viking, 2011).

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Cultural Nomads: Creative People on the Road Robert Punkenhofer



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t was in 2004 that I picked up the phone and listened with some surprise: “Robert, you have 15 months and €6.5 million to organize Austria’s participation at Expo 2005, the World’s Fair in Aichi, Japan.” Ever since, I have experienced first hand the life of a cultural nomad, with stops at universities in Austria, France, Venezuela and the US In this essay I would like to address some key issues that influence and define the status of cultural nomadism, analyze the political and socioeconomic frameworks and give some personal examples where life on the road was fulfilling but also flawed.

CULTURAL NOMADS: CONCEPT AND DEFINITION While it is true that relatively recent developments of globalization and technology accelerate the speed and frequency of cultural nomadism, the phenomenon itself is not new. The concept of nomadism is as old as humankind. Remembering that we are all descendants of African nomads helps us appreciate how deeply our aptitude for diversity is rooted in our genes and in society. Historical events like the extensive migration period several thousand years ago shaped the world as we experience it today and allowed humans to learn from one another and progress in their cultural development. In monarchic times, royal courts and capitals were buzzing with intercultural exchange. The emperor of Austria regularly sent for the smartest and most creative minds to live and work at his court. One of these early cultural nomads was then-6-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It turned out be the first of his many travels, which totaled more than 10 years spent abroad of his short lifetime. Not only did he travel regularly within Austria, the family also journeyed to Germany, France, the Netherlands and Italy for several months at a time. His colleague Beethoven, although traveling less extensively, spent several years commuting between Vienna and Bonn before finally settling in Vienna. And Goethe’s extensive trip to the south of Italy, which lasted over a year (1786–88), resulted in the diary-based, semifictional report, Italian Journey. One has only to read Jules Verne’s classic novel Around the World in 80 Days to get an impression of how fascinating and enriching the concept of traveling to other cultures once was and, no doubt, always will be. In today’s global society, cultural nomadism is evident everywhere. We drink our favorite chai latté in the Indian shop around the corner, we read Haruki Murakami’s newest novel on the train. The cultural artifacts that we consume from outside of our “original culture” might easily outnumber the artifacts from

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our national culture that we encounter every day. Between 2003 and 2012, the global trade in cultural goods doubled.1 The boundaries of the “Western art world” expanded. Classic events such as the Biennale in Venice gave way to more international art hubs in Havana, São Paulo, Deli, Beijing, Tehran and Tel Aviv. Over the past two decades, several hundred local biennales and art festivals have popped up all over, particularly in Asia and Africa. Nigeria-born Okwui Enwezor is curator of the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), while Italian-American curator Carolyn ChristovBakargiev shapes the 14th edition of the Istanbul Biennial in the same year. Both curators reflect the evermore nomadic art world. All around the globe, countless artist-in-residency programs enable artists to spend a few months in another culture. But not only art institutions, also universities—the European Union’s Erasmus Program is an excellent example—increasingly foster the international exchange of students, facilitating the exchange of knowledge and experience among young people from all over the globe. And the more international their student bodies, the more highly ranked these universities are. Members of the creative class—highly efficient, innovative people working in areas from entertainment to design, from arts to technology—who move from one cultural hub to another following work, projects or studies: these we refer to as cultural nomads. I would like to distinguish between two different types. First, the cultural elite, the so-called “miles and more” star curators or artists or musicians who jet-set from one creative hub to the next, have multiple places of residency and stay in one culture for a short time only. Second, the broader mass of creative workers who, through private initiative or institutionalized programs like an artist residency live, work or study in a city other than their own for a longer time, three months or more.

IMPACT: THE ALLURE OF INTERNATIONAL HOT SPOTS The cultural industry is booming. A 2014 survey from the “Creativ Wirtschaft Austria” of the Austrian Ministry of Economics showed that the cultural economy offers better prospects than trade and industry.2 In Catalonia, Spain, the cultural industry generated €3.7 billion3 in 2013, and in the US, the creative class already represents a third of the working force, earning 50 percent of all wages and salaries.4 Considering the impact a creative class has on a nation’s GDP and trade, it is understandable that more and more nations aspire to become centers of creative

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attention. Since 2007, promoting the creative industries is a key point on the EU Commission’s cultural agenda. In times of economic stagnation, these figures clearly indicate that the creative industry is one of the most promising sectors, promoting economic growth, higher rates of employment and increasing export. The further deregulation of national culture and media policy frameworks, the ongoing digitization and the increasing affluence of consumers in emerging markets help to further expand and globalize the creative industry and spur cross-cultural cooperation, trade and initiatives.

FACTORS THAT FOSTER CULTURAL NOMADISM AND COMMON CHALLENGES Accessibility I remember well the first meeting with the city commissioner for the arts of Graz, the second largest city in Austria. When I presented my idea for a floating island to be designed by Vito Acconci for the annual European City of Culture in 2003, the politician confided that he longed for the same success as Frank Gehry’s museum in Bilbao. Around the globe, city mayors dream of the “Guggenheim effect.” The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao cost approximately €130 million to build, but contributed almost €2 billion to the Basque GDP and created more than 4,000 jobs in ancillary businesses. However, stakeholders fantasizing about similar developments tend to forget that Bilbao was an organized plan to reanimate the city after its economic crisis. Many companies had left for cheaper production costs in Asia, the steel industry was bankrupt and the city had survived disastrous flooding. The Guggenheim was part of an all-encompassing plan across all party lines to rescue the city, which involved not only building one new museum, but redesigning the entire city, including universities and public transport systems. Ambitious endeavors that include importing the “new Louvre” or a similarly impressive cultural institution without redesigning a city on a large scale according to an authentic, homegrown vision might not prove sustainable. Apart from setting up one center of attention, a city’s overall accessibility based on a strong genius loci is perhaps the most important factor for a creative community to grow and prosper. When trying to reactivate a rural estate of 200 hectares on the Costa Brava, the important factors of population density, a good infrastructure

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and public services, as well as the support of the leading private and public stakeholders, became evident. No matter how great the art on the estate, without enough visitors and residents, and without the commitment of the community, it is nearly impossible to implement a sustainable and well-functioning artistic program. Also, officially planned cultural districts often depend on private investors facing inadequate leadership of elected officials and public servants, raising the questions: Who benefits from this development, and is the public good well served? On the other hand, when I opened a gallery in Mexico nearly two decades ago, I could see the scope of its impact quickly, personally and structurally. In only 10 years, Mexico City went from the periphery of the art world to one of its centers. As the first open space for conceptual art in the country, my nonprofit space named Art&Idea featured the first solo exhibitions of artists like Santiago Sierra, Damian Ortega, Teresa Margolles and others who did not previously have access to a showcase for their work. Economic developments like NAFTA boosted the art market and related art fairs, while support came from other cultural nomads such as Gabriel Orozco, a Mexican artist who had set up his studio in New York, allowing these emerging artists to succeed in the international art world.

Impact of Politics Another aspect cities desperate to become a dynamic art hub tend to overlook is the importance of social and political freedom. Richard Florida asserted that, among others factors, a city’s openness to the gay community is an important determinant of its success with the creative class. A thriving gay community can be seen as a measure of a society’s diversity and openness, which in turn attracts creative superstars and workers drawn to liberal and democratic societies that encourage intellectual dialogues and the free flow of ideas. New aspiring hot spots like Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and Russia have political systems that run counter to these ideals and therefore constitute obstacles to creative growth that even art and money cannot dispel.

Affordability Affordability is an important factor when assessing the value of European cities among the world’s culture capitals. Rental and living costs, as well as prices for arts participation and consumption, differ drastically in European cities. Amsterdam, once a reasonably priced city, has increased its prices for cultural venues by more

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than 50 percent since 2009. London and Barcelona are at the high end of cultural cost: around $200 for a typical ticket at the Royal Opera House in London or the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. Developments like this led the British newspaper The Independent to proclaim that “London is too rich and too expensive for its own good.” In his article, author Simon Keller calls attention to the problem. Attracting rich investors and financial capital might benefit the city’s economy in the short term, but what if all the creative nomads—those who made the city the vibrant, diverse and entertaining area that attracted the rich and powerful in the first place—are driven out by the expensive cost of living? It is doubtful that a model that excludes the mass of creative industry can be sustainable.

Creative Buzz: Combining the Factors A good example of a city that combines the majority of factors attracting the creative crowd is Berlin. Its motto “Poor but Sexy,” coined by Berlin’s openly gay mayor, reflects the city’s image and gained worldwide attention. Without its large number of cultural nomads, the claim of sexiness would not be possible. With its inimitable flair, electric atmosphere and vast number of cultural venues and industries, creative talent (and tourists) from all over the world are attracted to the city. In 2006 Berlin became the first German city to be officially recognized as a “City of Design,” joining the global UNESCO network of Creative Cities, including my original hometown of Graz. Institutions like the International Design Center Berlin (IDZ) and Creative Industries IHK work tirelessly to link the creative scene with politics and business, and promote international art initiatives. In 2007 Asia-Pacific Weeks in Berlin invited Asian countries to exchange business plans concerning their creative industries and set up creative networks. Currently cooperation with the “Baltic Sea Region” capitals has led to the European art project, “Creative Metropoles.” The city’s artistic freedom, exhibition venues, trade fairs, affordable rents and living costs, and access to a like-minded, interested audience are reasons why so many young creative workers choose Berlin as their city of residence. The results are astonishing. Berlin is reported to have contributed more than half of Germany’s revenue generated by the cultural sector—more than €32 billion out of a total of €60 billion from 2011 to 2012.5

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Inside the Austrian pavilion at Expo 2008 in Zaragoza, Spain, visitors encountered the dance company Liquid Loft, under the guidance of Expo director Robert Punkenhofer. More than 100 countries participated in the Expo, whose theme was “Water and Sustainable Development.” Photo ©Wolfgang Thaler/ Expo Office Austria.

The Cultural Nomad: Personal Opportunities and Challenges Looking at the statistics, one gets a clear image of the power and energy of the creative class. But who are these individuals contributing to the global exchange? What are their motivations, what challenges do they face when leaving their hometowns to set out for an uncertain future? Leaving the fixed structure of a familiar culture allows individuals to move more freely, defy old stereotypes and define themselves in new ways. In unfamiliar structures, it is possible to change prevailing patterns that long-time inhabitants may take for granted. Rigid social and civic structures might ultimately soften when confronted with the unconventional methods of cultural nomads.

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Coming to a new place, eager to make new connections, travelers are more alert and open to their surroundings. This self-motivated stage of positioning one’s self in a new context can facilitate innovation and new projects. When I met Vito Acconci in New York, I invited him to Graz in Austria, where he created the Murinsel, his first important piece of architecture, a radical building floating in the middle of a river. By that time, Acconci had already become a famous performance and video artist, but stepping out of his usual environment and network allowed the studio to succeed in a new field of interest. At the same time, my moving between Venezuela, Mexico and the US allowed me to foster ideas and relationships that ultimately led to such projects as the Mur Island, the World’s Fair projects in Aichi, Japan, Saragossa, Spain, and Shanghai, China. Being a cultural nomad may be in vogue, but it can be also be a tough life. An important tool for artists hoping to succeed in a new environment is a good business sense. Just being creative is not enough. Today every industry is creative on some level. Focus and self-discipline are necessary in order to succeed in a day-today routine that may lack structure and schedule. Self-employed creative workers must be able to meet deadlines, plan ahead and stay within budget. Psychological challenges like loneliness and a sense of being rootless add to the difficulty. The lack of extensive social networks in a new environment also poses an obstacle to initial success. Old friends from school or university who might otherwise facilitate the start of a new career don’t exist in a new city. When I returned home to Austria to become director of the Austrian Design Foundation after having been abroad for 10 years, I wasn’t able to accomplish projects of a larger dimension right away; I needed about a year to meet enough people and gain their trust for them to cooperate on projects of a broader scope. No matter if it is Vienna or Barcelona or Abuja, every new beginning in another city takes time for social and professional networks to grow, to learn about the culture and identify important stakeholders. Taking bold steps in a new environment comes with the risk of upsetting established stakeholders. When Adam Szymczyk, the Polish-born, Basel-based curator of Dokumenta 14 in Kassel, announced his plan to show part of that year’s Dokumenta in Athens, he caused an uproar. Apparently he had not involved the local stakeholders enough in his decision. Several people had to leave their new jobs after less than a year due to lack of support within the local power structures. Hopping from one international temporary engagement to the next might be

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fun in our 20s or 30s, but it loses its allure with age, or when the fruits of the experience are less than we imagined. When an artist, filmmaker or musician is forced to keep on traveling due to lack of a stable employment, nomadism is mainly exhausting. The existence of a family adds to the factors that have to be considered. Can the spouse get a visa or a job at the new destination? Do the children have the opportunity to attend a good school? How often will they have to switch schools and leave friends behind? Sadly, I know many once-aspiring artists who later in life find themselves forced to take diverse jobs all over the globe, never having been able to build a satisfactory work resumé.

Challenges Involved in Maintaining a Sustainable Scene: Public Funding and Visa In the cultural system, the uncertain socioeconomic reality for the majority of the creative class is often overlooked. Despite the creative industry’s growing importance, financing an artistic lifestyle, let alone a nomadic one, is more and more difficult. While star-curator Germano Celant was paid €750,000 to organize a pavilion for the Milan Expo 2015, in France, a survey from 2008 showed that 93 percent of curators earned less than the national average income. In Austria, the situation for the creative class isn’t any better. For the year 2008, the Austrian Cultural Ministry reported the median net income for artists was €4,500—per year! The income of female artists is 35 percent below that of their male counterparts. Cultural nomadism can be greatly enriching when a new culture is absorbed and added to an individual’s cultural background, resulting in new ideas and innovation influenced by both environments, the new and the old. Paradoxically, the “stars” of the art world, the internationally known artists, filmmakers, architects, etc., often merely touch the surface of one nation, only to set off to the next, bringing along their entourages and mostly failing to absorb the elements of a different culture. Meanwhile the many anonymous members of the creative class who immerse themselves in the new culture are severely affected by funding cuts to international exchange programs and scholarships. Scarce public funding and the loss of artist residency programs prevent the average creative worker from participating in cross-cultural exchange, causing the creative industries to be evermore elitist and exclusive. With the exorbitant tuition fees at many colleges of art in the US, it is becoming impossible for students of modest means to acquire that kind of higher

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education. Never were the arts more in danger of becoming elitist. A potential solution to the imbalance of power and access is to combine in exhibitions, festivals and residency programs well-known creative people with locally based, emerging young artists. Not only does it secure media coverage and international attention, but the combination of established masters and young innovators is also enriching for all parties involved. Despite the growing importance of creative industries and ongoing globalization, access to private funding is of increasing importance. The Vienna Art Week, for example, a public event that contributes to the image of the whole city, depends on private funding for 98 percent of its budget. This trend is promising, and the commitment of private donors is welcome as long as there is no interference with the artistic programming. At the same time, this funding scheme is worrisome if the production of new content is tied to a requirement of commercial success. As South Korea’s best-known novelist Hwang Sok-yong put it, “The best thing the government can do for the literary world is to keep supporting it and leave it alone.” This statement applies to all creative branches. In addition to public funding, structural issues—the ease of setting up one’s own business, social security, tax and visa legislation—determine a city’s attractiveness for cultural nomads. I experienced what a hindrance such restrictive structures can be when, as a young aspiring European student at New York University, I wasn’t allowed to work during my studies or stay in the country afterwards. Confusing or restrictive legislation deters creative young people from settling down after their studies, resulting in the so-called brain-drain phenomenon, and restricts the number of innovative start-ups and new entrepreneurs. The European Union recognized this structural problem and implemented changes meant to foster international mobility, like the Bologna Process of 1999. Still, all too often artists setting out for another country face difficulties navigating through foreign tax and insurance bureaucracies. These processes should run more smoothly and artists should be better protected from financial risk. While for artists in the West, visa and residence permits are attainable most of the time, artists from outside these countries face additional difficulties. The 2008 “Mobility Matters,” a study for the EU Commission, showed that there are 489 residency and mobility programs in Europe. The US has about 200. But only seven can be found in Central America and the Middle East. This imbalance fosters old power

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disparities between western and eastern Europe and the global North and South. Artists from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and even eastern Europe are still largely left out of international exhibitions. Often during festivals promoting international cooperation, one or two contributing artists are excluded due to visa problems, or simply because they lack funding. In Russia currently, the culture has become more closed than ever, making it difficult for cultural nomads to contribute to the creative scene there. In general, there should be more concentration on developing countries. We should all aspire to a global open-mindedness towards creative exchange.

Being a Cultural Nomad: A Personal Approach I was inspired to life as a cultural nomad by participating in a high school exchange program based in Paris. There I was fascinated by the glamorous allure and vast offering of festivals and exhibitions that presented themselves to me, a boy from a small town in Austria. Back home at age 16, I had the ambitious plan of opening an exhibition space. But the basement room that the local commissioner for Youth, Culture and Art offered me in no way satisfied my “Guggenheim ambitions.” Still the experience fed my desire to organize cultural events and to travel whenever I could get the opportunity. For my law degree dissertation, I traveled to Venezuela; for my specialization in art management, to New York. Later I discovered the Austrian Foreign Trade Organization, a kind of institutionalized nomadism. Upon completing my training in Vienna, I worked as a deputy trade commissioner in Mexico, where I was sometimes mistaken for the cultural attaché. For me, being a cultural nomad was possible thanks to an institution that combined financial stability with personal and geographic freedom. The juggling act between multiple employment situations and destinations hasn’t always been easy. It has required long working hours. The pressure on my family life led to my becoming a single father. Still, it is personally very gratifying whenever I am able to bridge different fields of interests. When I worked on the World’s Fair projects, the demand for economic skills fused successfully with the imaginative world of art.

Cultural Nomadism: Conclusion Let me draw to a close and summarize the development, opportunities and challenges involved in navigating within the evermore globalized creative industries. The purpose of this essay is not only to illustrate the increasing mobility and

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cross-cultural cooperation of people involved in the creative industries, but also to point out the dangers involved in cutting public funding. All creative workers around the globe should have equal access to the cross-cultural exchange of creative work and goods. Geographical accessibility, a good infrastructure, a liberal policy and affordable living conditions are all factors that attract the well-educated, innovative creative class—from artists, writers, designers and architects to workers in the music and entertainment industries and multimedia start-up entrepreneurs. Cultural nomads enrich their host destinations with their creative output, sometimes helping to change outdated social and economic patterns. But all too often, despite their adventurous spirit, cultural nomads face serious psychological and financial challenges. Structural issues such as inadequate public funding, restrictive visa and work permit policies pose obstacles for inhabitants from developing countries and hinder them from participating fully in cross-cultural exchange, despite the trend toward greater globalization, cheaper travel costs and connecting technologies such as Skype. In view of the growing importance of international networks and intercultural cooperation, it is important that all stakeholders be able to participate in the vibrant world of cultural nomadism. Only if we ensure that international exchange programs, educational training and scholarships are available equally to creative workers from all social and national backgrounds will the phenomenon of cultural nomadism grow and prosper globally. If not, cultural nomadism is at risk of becoming a restricted, elitist network that is unable to meet the demands of an interconnected world.

ENDNOTES 1 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development: Values and Shares of Creative Goods, 2003–2012 in the Global Database on the Creative Economy, http:// unctadstat.unctad.org. 2 Kreativwirtschaftsbarometer der creativ wirtschaft Austria, spring 2014, http://www. creativwirtschaft.at/factsfigures/studien 3 Jose Angel Montanes, “El Patrimonio, Un Valor En Alza,” El Pais, September 27, 2014. 4 Robert Punkenhofer, “Creative Industries—Hype and Reality,” Folio Verlag 14, 2010. 5 IHK Berlin: Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaftsindex Berlin-Brandenburg, 2013.

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Cranking Up the Soft Power Engine of Chinese Museums An Laishun, Ph.D



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Ningbo History Museum by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Wang Shu. He created the facade using 1 million recycled bricks and tiles, a method known as wapam.

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n the past 30 years, Chinese society has undergone tremendous changes and transformations, which have had a profound influence on China’s cultural ecology, including museums. In the 1980s, when Chinese museums began to restore and redefine a collapsed cultural identity, cultural resources and values were in competition—traditional and modern, Chinese and Western, national and social, mainstream and marginal. In the late 1990s, when China’s overall economic strength improved and the number of museums increased at an unprecedented rate, people began to think about how museums might improve, not just in quantity but in quality. How could museums play a more active role in changing functional cities into culturally oriented ones? Today museums are playing an increasingly active role in China’s contemporary cultural ecology. The weight of museums is more significant in the dual index of Chinese cultural competition— namely economic development and soft power. But the task of improving soft power is more arduous and has a longer way to go. The renewal of museum exhibitions and improvements in the museum experience are crucial and directly influence museums’ economic and social success. The

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number of Chinese museums has increased from 2,970 in 2008 to 4,165 in 2013, an average increase of 239 new museums each year. At the same time, the number of private museums has increased from 319 to 811 in just five years, a remarkable 100 new private museums per year. Although the development of private museums may not be surprising in other countries, given China’s history, it is of great significance. In addition, the policy of free access to museums implemented in 2008 has enabled hundreds of millions of rural migrant workers and urban low-income people to experience museums. These new visitors account for a major proportion of the 500 million museum visitors annually. Many soft power factors, such as the improvement of cultural experiences for millions of Chinese citizens, result directly from the enhancement of museums. Chinese museums’ contribution to the national economy grew over the past decade, from 6.75 billion RMB in 2001 to 26.33 billion RMB ($4.29 billion US) in 2011, a growth of almost 300 percent compared to a 10 percent growth rate in the economy as a whole. These statistics have greatly encouraged those who point out the economic benefit of museums.

URBANIZATION AND THE SOFT POWER OF MUSEUMS In the accelerating process of urbanization, highlighting urban culture and helping to shape its image are two important ways that Chinese museums use their soft power domestically. In the first decade of the 21st century, China’s urbanization rate increased dramatically, from 30 percent of the population living in cities to around 47 percent today, a figure expected to reach 70 percent by 2050. This wave of urbanization is bound to bring about new kinds of urban competition, with a new focus on the creation of attractive urban design. In the past decade, 10 cities, including Shanghai, Nanjing, Xi’an, Chengdu, Kunming, Suzhou and Nantong, each announced the goal of becoming China’s “city of museums.” It is worth noting the similarity of objectives: they all hope to uncover and present the most profound and attractive elements of their urban histories and establish their city brands by developing their museums. We can observe the thought and practice of museums in improving regional soft power from the following three cases. The design of the new Suzhou Museum was launched in 2002 and finished in October 2006. It was led by world-famous, Chinese-born American architect and Pritzker-Prize winner I.M. Pei, whose family originates from Suzhou. The design and

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construction followed the basic ideas of tradition and modernity, humanity and innovation, leisure and culture and adhered to an overall idea described as combining “innovation with Chinese style and creativity with Suzhou style.” This remarkable museum sits beside the World Heritage Site of the 16th-century “Humble Administrator’s Garden” in the historic district of Suzhou. This is a museum that integrates intelligence, elegance, comfort and modernity, and is popular with Chinese and foreign visitors. The museum not only expresses Suzhou’s rich cultural atmosphere, but also differs from Suzhou’s traditional gardens. As the saying goes, “Up above there is Paradise, down here there are Suzhou and Hangzhou.” The Suzhou Museum is clearly a place maker of local urban culture. Ningbo History Museum opened in December 2008. It was created by another celebrated Chinese architect, Wang Shu. He was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2012 for his design of the museum, making him the second Chinese-born architect to receive the honor. From a distance, the whole building looks like a ship sailing through historical time and space. This not only symbolizes the port city of Ningbo, but also highlights the city’s adventurous spirit. The design of the building integrates Ningbo’s regional cultural characteristics, traditional architectural elements and modern architectural forms. The shape of the building is simple and flexible, rigorous and creative. The exterior walls are composed of more than 1 million pieces of old bricks and traditional tiles left from the reconstruction of the old city of Ningbo. The museum sets an important precedent in the large-scale use of recycled waste material in China. Ningbo’s unique cultural spirit is present in this remarkable building, described as the city’s “cultural landmark, foreign cultural exchange center and spiritual and cultural paradise for citizens.” The 2010 Shanghai World Expo brought valuable opportunities for the cultural development of this modernized city. In the eight years from winning the bid to hosting the World Expo in 2010, museums and the city’s whole system of cultural heritage provided valuable input. Museums were established that characterized Shanghai’s urban style. For example, in Puxi where the Jiangnan Shipyard was once located, large old factory buildings were transformed into the World Expo Historical Museum. Other buildings at the former shipyard will be transformed into modern industrial museums mainly for large fairs and cultural exchanges, such as a museum of the shipping industry, a museum of commerce and a museum of energy.1

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CULTURAL DIPLOMACY In deepening international cultural exchange, museums play an active role in promoting understanding among countries, nations and cultures. This is an important component of China’s citizen diplomacy. Chinese museums help promote cultural exchange by participating in international exhibition tours. China’s first large overseas exhibition of cultural heritage was the “Unearthed Cultural Relic Exhibition of the People’s Republic of China” in 1973, which toured 15 countries over four years and received over 6.5 million visitors. While this exhibition was born of political and diplomatic needs of the time, overseas exhibitions of cultural heritage in the last 20 years demonstrate more distinctive features of cultural and citizen diplomacy. China’s largest organization of overseas exhibitions, Art Exhibition China, was established 43 years ago. It has worked with museums across the country to create more than 200 international exhibitions in 40 countries on five continents, including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. In 2012–13, it presented 24 exhibitions, including the “Chinese Great Civilization Exhibition” in Japan from October 2012 to September 2013, and drew 364,000 visitors. Ironically it was during the exhibition’s tour to four Japanese cities that Sino-Japanese political and diplomatic relations experienced their most troubled period since the normalization of bilateral relations. Later the exhibition “China’s Western Regions—Legends of the Silk Road” was held in Japan from February 2013 to January 2014. The exhibition attracted 139,000 visitors in Nagasaki, an example of the unique soft power of museums in promoting international communication and understanding. Since 2014, China’s international cultural heritage exhibitions have focused on Chinese traditional culture, inviting people from all around the world to learn about Chinese culture in depth. Han and Tang dynasties are two periods when China’s ancient cultural characteristics are most distinctive. Tea culture is an important component of Chinese culture. “China’s National Treasures Exhibition Tour,” mainly reflecting the cultural characteristics of the Han and Tang dynasties, was launched in 2014. At the same time, “The Fragrance of Tea: Sino-Monaco Tea Culture Exchange Exhibition” achieved great success in Monaco. Some leading Chinese museums are exploring new ways to promote international communication and understanding. In 2010, the Palace Museum, China’s largest museum with the country’s richest collection of cultural heritage, signed a

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strategic agreement with Beijing Capital International Airport, the busiest airport in Asia. They jointly carried out a series of displays and promotional activities, including the exhibition “Cultural Gateway to China: Impressions of the Imperial Palace” in the Capital Airport. The program extended the museum beyond the walls of the Forbidden City, using interactive devices to present a digital version of the Imperial Palace for Chinese and foreign passengers. Shan Jixiang, director of the Palace Museum, said that the nonprofit cooperation between the museum and Beijing Capital International Airport aims at showcasing traditional Chinese culture. He also joked that the airport might have to warn passengers not to miss their flights if they become too absorbed in the displays. The 22nd General Conference of ICOM was held in Shanghai in October 2010, attracting nearly 3,500 representatives from 134 countries. Two former heads of state and scholars from five continents shared ideas and exchanged cultural perspectives on this global stage. The ICOM conference also saw the emergence of the Shanghai Declaration, which China’s museum community helped to draft. This document, formally approved by the conference attendees, calls for recognition of and respect for cultural differences, the mutual sharing of museum knowledge, museums as cross-cultural ambassadors, the importance of museum culture in a global age and the development of new international cooperative agreements among museums. Since China’s entry into ICOM in 1983, it has played an active role as a member of the international family of museums. The soft power of museums is not only a key element in cultural diplomacy but also encourages people to learn about the cultural values of others. As China moves toward becoming a more urban society and establishes new relationships with other cultures around the world, the soft power engine of Chinese museums is helping to drive the process forward.

ENDNOTE 1 Lu Jianchang, Shanghai World Expo and Shanghai’s Future Development (Shanghai: Shanghai University Press, 2013), 46. This publication features research based on the perspectives of cultural heritage and museology.

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he use of the term “civil rights” in the English language rose dramatically in the 1970s and has continued to rise.1 We are in a period that has been characterized as the rights revolution, an era ushered in by the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the ratification of successive international human rights conventions, covenants and codes by nations around the world. Cities too are involved in human rights, often establishing commissions and ombudsmen to ensure that citizens are equitably treated. The museum sector has responded to the growing human rights culture with specialized museums, such as the Tenement Museum in New York and the Musée de l’immigration in Paris (both about immigration), the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco (concepts of race), the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles (civil rights) and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati (freedom and history), to name just a few. The German city of Osnabrück proclaimed itself City of Peace by creating remarkable museums in memory of two of its most famous citizens: the Remarque Center, devoted to the life and work of Erich Maria Remarque, author of the antiwar epic All Quiet on the Western Front, and the Nussbaum Haus, dedicated to one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, Felix Nussbaum, who painted masterpieces about the horror of the Holocaust and was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz. In 2014, something remarkable happened. Two cities, one in Canada and one in the US, decided to become human rights cities in partnership with new museums: in Winnipeg, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights; in Atlanta, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. Each city is the capital of its state or province. Each is challenged with issues of race, poverty and marginalization. Each city is determined to change, using education as its primary tool, and each city plans to exercise soft power as an engine for social change. Each city will serve as a platform for the promotion of human rights, nationally and internationally. And in each, this will be an engine that drives building and developing the city.

WHY ATLANTA? At the turn of the last century, Margaret Mitchell romanticized Atlanta in her book Gone with the Wind, giving sympathetic treatment to Confederate causes. The story was quickly immortalized in the movie starring Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable and Hattie McDaniel, who would later win an Academy Award for her performance as

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the slave, Mammy. But McDaniel was not allowed to attend the 1939 premiere in Atlanta’s Loew’s Grand Theatre, due to the city’s segregation laws. For decades the city traded on the legacy of Gone with the Wind, the people, places and stories made famous by the book. But the region’s plantation-economy past meant that the city, in fact, had another story. Away from the fictional lore of the screen, descendants of formerly enslaved African American plantation workers had been arriving in Atlanta since the end of the Civil War. These new arrivals started religious and educational institutions,2 opened businesses and created communities at all levels—prosperous, impoverished and in between. Atlanta’s population of African Americans grew from 20 percent of the city’s residents in 1850 to 45 percent in 1870, then increased steadily until it peaked at 61 percent in 1960 and remained there until 2000. Enter one of Atlanta’s most famous residents, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., born and raised in the city. His father had been pastor of one of the oldest and most prosperous congregations in the city, Ebenezer Baptist Church. Dr. King attended Morehouse College, one of the first African American higher education institutions in the country, and made a name for himself as the leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. He returned to Atlanta and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the group that conceived and executed acts of civil disobedience in cities across the southern United States to systematically dismantle segregation. Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolent action, modified from the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, was an effective response to the brutal assaults by police in numerous cities and the lynching of black and brown people that had plagued the country for years. In 1961, as head of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, Sidney Smyer was visiting Tokyo, Japan, when Birmingham Police Chief “Bull” Connor allowed a violent mob to attack the Freedom Riders at the Birmingham Trailways Station. Representing the city in front of worldwide delegates to Rotary International, Smyer acknowledged that the racial incidents “have given us a black eye we’ll be a long time trying to forget.” Learning from this experience, Atlanta’s business leaders slowly began to engage the African American community leaders, starting with “the Birmingham Truce,” which ended some of the overt, public displays of segregation. Positive change had finally taken root. Over the years, Atlanta became the educational center for strategic thinking and action against civil and human rights abuse. In addition to the civil

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Across the American South, African Americans protested segregation by sitting down at “whites only” lunch counters. The Lunch Counter Simulator at Atlanta’s National Center for Civil and Human Rights immerses the visitor in what a protester would have seen, heard and felt. Photo © Studio Fitz.

rights-era organizations SCLC and SNCC (the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee), the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum, founded in 1986, promotes its mission of “waging peace” around the globe and highlights former President Jimmy Carter’s diplomatic initiatives. The National Center for Civil and Human Rights was first imagined by civil rights legends Evelyn Lowery and former United Nations Ambassador and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, and was launched by former Mayor Shirley Franklin in 2007. The effort gained broad-based corporate and community support to be the bridge between the American civil rights movement and contemporary human rights movements around the world.

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IT MUST BE WINNIPEG Winnipeg is the gateway city bridging the Canadian West and East. Its greatest human rights hero is undoubtedly Louis Riel (1844–85), who was born in the French-speaking city of St. Boniface across the river from Winnipeg, within sight of today’s Human Rights Museum. Riel is known to many Canadians as the leader of the Métis3 people (half indigenous, half Francophone) who twice led rebellions, the first in Manitoba in 1869 and the second further west in Saskatchewan in 1885, against the new Confederation government of Canada. In fact, Riel was fighting for the civil and human rights of the Métis, first for language rights in Manitoba and then for their rights to the land they had been promised in Saskatchewan. In 1885, he was tried and hanged after one of his followers murdered a Confederation supporter. In retrospect he may be seen as a martyr to the cause of the human rights and self-determination of the indigenous and Métis people of Canada. Today the Métis comprise half of Winnipeg’s aboriginal citizens. At 10 percent, Winnipeg’s aboriginal population is the largest in Canada. A recent study4 reveals that aboriginal people in Winnipeg suffer from many forms of discrimination impacting their health, sense of self-worth and economic status. This study also found that the perception of aboriginals improves through three processes: personal relationships between aboriginals and nonaboriginals, perception of progress and education. Enter the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. This museum fulfills the dream of Winnipeg philanthropist and entrepreneur Israel Asper (1932–2003). In 2000, Asper first brainstormed the idea with Moe Levy, executive director of the Asper Foundation, and museum planner Gail Lord. Canada’s first national museum outside the country’s capital city and the world’s first national museum dedicated solely to human rights started as a civil society project led by the communitybased “Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.” When Asper died suddenly, his daughter Gail Asper, an accomplished lawyer, took on the leadership of the campaign, inspiring 8,000 people to make donations large and small. The City of Winnipeg, the province of Manitoba and the Forks Corporation all played key roles in working with the federal government to establish the museum as a Crown Corporation. A unanimous vote of all parties in the Canadian Parliament

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demonstrated how closely Canadian values are linked to international human rights. Construction started in 2008 and the museum was inaugurated in September 2014. The visitors’ experiential journey through the museum is an upward one, progressing from darkness to light through 11 galleries that engage people of all ages and abilities through artifacts and advanced media. The many points of view on human rights are represented, including indigenous perspectives, Canadian stories, the Holocaust and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Rights Today, bringing visitors face to face with contemporary human rights issues and encouraging them to get involved. Aboriginal Canadians have been engaged throughout the 14-year development phase of the museum. They endorsed the use of Treaty One land for the museum site; they have been represented on the board by Chief Wilton Littlechild, commissioner of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission,5 and have advised on the curatorial process to ensure that their stories are told with accuracy and understanding. The museum exposes the years of broken treaties, missing and murdered women, and the residential schools where government and churches colluded to remove aboriginal children from their families with the goal of forced assimilation. The result was abuse and even death of many indigenous children, a trauma that impacted generations of native people, as it does to this day. In the museum, the vitality of indigenous Canadians is celebrated through works of art by aboriginal youth from every province and territory, highlighted by the installation “Human Traces, Human Stories” by acclaimed Anishinabe artist Rebecca Belmore. On Human Rights Day 2014, aboriginal people from across Canada streamed into the museum as the Assembly of First Nations celebrated its national conference in the museum’s Grand Hall. The City of Winnipeg has played a leadership role from the earliest days of the museum project when then-Mayor Glenn Murray endorsed it. More than a landmark building that animates the landscape with its soaring Tower of Hope, the museum is a place maker where people meet to dialogue, to explore and even to protest. Early on, the Friends organization advocated for Winnipeg to declare itself a human rights city. Stuart Murray, the museum’s first president and CEO, initiated a move to focus on human rights education as the unique “city brand,” building on the collaboration with Winnipeg’s distinguished universities that have developed human rights graduate programs. The University of Manitoba will be the

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Award-winning recording artist Tracy Bone performs in the Canadian Journeys Gallery. Photo courtesy of Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

repository and research institute for documents from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Winnipeg will become a national and international destination for lifelong learners and a center for those who seek training in human rights, such as law enforcement personnel, educators, health professionals and others on the front lines of human rights. The city’s tourism and economic development agencies actively promote the museum and are leveraging the museum’s presence in the city to attract businesses and human rights organizations. Gail Asper expressed her hopes for how Winnipeg can exercise its soft power: Winnipeg should strive to become a true human rights city—to end homelessness and violence against women, to be the city most engaged in municipal elections, to become the gold standard for accessibility and to be a clean green city—because all these are human rights issues that cities can lead in. The museum’s message is that we have freedoms but they are very fragile and we have to stand on guard for them. The

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tens of thousands of students who visit this museum will be the future business leaders, educators and citizens. This is also how the museum and Winnipeg will impact future policies and agendas.6 While Winnipeg’s 260,000-square-foot museum towers over the prairie, Atlanta’s 24,000-square-foot National Center for Civil and Human Rights is dwarfed by its Pemberton Plaza neighbors, the World of Coca-Cola and the Georgia Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the world. But the museum has inner greatness. The majority of the permanent exhibitions chronicle the story of the struggle for basic civil and human rights through the lens of Dr. King. After conveying the assassination of Dr. King, a part of the permanent exhibition leaves space for the civil and human rights movements today. Here the true power of the museum is expressed. Through a partnership with CNN and the James Weldon Johnson Center for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University, the museum hosts CNN Dialogues for the Atlanta community to highlight diverse ideas and perspectives on issues and events shaping our time. In this way, the museum creates a space for everyone—visitors, residents and tourists walking by—to explore the fundamental rights of all human beings. The city of Atlanta was a major funder of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, with a $40 million investment through its economic development agency. The city continues its support by highlighting the center as a major force in innovation for Atlanta and the region. The center is featured in promotional materials, is the must-see experience for prominent and influential visitors and groups, as well as a backdrop for key events, meetings and speeches. This level of support highlights the center as a prime example of the kind of city Atlanta aspires to be. The city, through the leadership of Mayor Kasim Reed and the City Council, continues to showcase the center and all that it represents. Douglas Shipman, the center’s CEO, explained how Atlanta is exercising soft power: The Center will play a role in setting the agenda for public discourse through exhibitions, programs and other initiatives. We will be a place where major events are convened or come to Atlanta.… The Nobel Peace Laureates Summit is coming to Atlanta in 2015 and the final

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‘pitch’ prominently featured the Center as an example of Atlanta’s commitment to human rights. The Center also attracts other conferences and events that allow Atlanta to increase in prominence, such as the International Women’s Forum, which recently hosted its opening event here. Additionally, the Center will help define issues of human rights for younger folks, which will manifest in the majors they pursue, jobs they obtain and priorities they set, professionally and civically. Our educational agenda also influences the donor base. Many donor organizations have brought senior leaders for visits and events, which may change the way they set the course for their organizations’ futures. 7 More than a decade ago, the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) found that 87 percent of Americans viewed museums “as one of the most trustworthy sources of objective information.”8 A few years later, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) corroborated the statement, concluding that “museums evoke consistent, extraordinary public trust among diverse adult users.”9 In communities across North America, these findings were already proving true. Once city leaders might have simply created a monument or dedicated a day to a significant event. Today they articulate a narrative for their city through the creation of museums. These spaces—such as San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute—were conceived by city leaders to be places of healing. These museums send a signal to residents, businesses and tourists alike that the city has turned a corner and is constructing a new image and a new history. Cities like Atlanta and Winnipeg point the way for urban centers around the world. Cities increasingly turn to soft power as a way of exercising influence within their own countries and beyond. In doing so, they find that museums are ideal instruments for achieving that influence. If need be, as in Atlanta and Winnipeg, cities will invent new museums and new cultural institutions to shape and convey the stories they need to tell. Sometimes subversive, sometimes supportive of national policies, the soft power of cities and their museums has the potential to change our world in the 21st century.

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ENDNOTES 1 Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined (New York: Penguin, 2013), 381. 2 Atlanta University, the nation’s first historically black graduate school, was established in 1865. 3 As defined by the Métis National Council of Canada, Métis are descendants of mixed Native American and European ancestry who self identify as Métis. The Métis of the Red River are recognized as a First Nation. 4 Urban Aboriginal People’s Study, Winnipeg Report, Environics Institute, 2011. 5 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada as established will prepare a complete historical record on the policies and impacts of residential schools, to encourage healing through truth telling and to establish a national research center at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. 6 Interview with the authors. 7 Interview with the authors. 8 Study done by Lake Snell Perry & Associates for the American Alliance of Museums, 2001. 9 Jose-Marie Griffiths and Donald W. King, IMLS National Study on the Use of Libraries, Museums and the Internet (Washington, DC: IMLS, 2008).

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Cairo and Its Museums: From Multiculturalism to Leadership in Sustainable Development Mohamed Gamal Rashed



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owerful cities often have powerful museums. But there are tensions surrounding the expression of identity, culture and social awareness in such museums. As a society changes, its culture changes. Museums have the potential to shape and reshape the future of society even as they preserve and exhibit its cultural and social memory. Our museums present the long history of Egyptian culture and civilization. Some contemporary Egyptian cities are very much like large, open museums. Cairo is the best example: a highly cosmopolitan city with a hybrid culture where, for more than a thousand years, soft power has exerted an influence on its inhabitants and visitors. But now Cairo faces challenges in reshaping its social and cultural profile after the Revolution of January 25, 2011. The waves of change are powered by young Egyptians, who represent the majority of Cairo’s population. They believe, as I do, in the museum’s role in shaping the future of our societies through cultural, social and educational development. I see the city of Cairo seeking a new movement of change that will help reposition the city as a leader in cultural development—the role that Cairo played during its long history, not only in Africa and the Arab countries, but throughout the world. The city of Cairo is one of the most ancient and multicultural cities in the world. Just a short walk along its historic streets is enough to give you the impression of traveling back in time. Here you can discover the periods and civilizations that Cairo passed through, their influence still very much alive. Its archeological sites and buildings range from ancient Egypt through Ptolemaic, Roman, Coptic, Islamic and modern Egypt—7,000 years of history. The uniqueness of Cairo is not just in its historic profile, but also in its culture, reflecting a long history of enlightenment and variety that survives today in the city’s contemporary life. Travelers and scholars were often influenced by this culture, as evidenced by centuries of literature by great writers and storytellers who expressed their fascination with the city. For over a thousand years, merchants, traders and travelers carried the culture and lifestyle of Cairo with them to their home cities the world over. This has always been a culture of influence, never one of coercion. Museums continue to play a key role in this cultural influence. They are among the most effective players in social change and development. Museums are safe platforms for a discussion of social issues, as well as places that inspire us and celebrate creativity. Museums enable us to have contact with original objects that link the past with the present. In this way,

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a museum is a direct medium for education, experience and entertainment, unlike indirect media, such as reproductions, films or computer animation. Museums are formal and informal schools for the public and scholars. Visitors, regardless of their education or cultural backgrounds, can easily find here what they desire, from scientific research to informal education and entertainment. Although museums have existed in Cairo for more than two centuries, they functioned in conventional ways, concentrating on preserving and exhibiting collections. During the first half of the 20th century, the colonial system created museums largely as tourist destinations for foreigners. Postcolonial Egyptian rulers kept museums as governmental entities. The concerns of surrounding Egyptian communities were seldom addressed. In truth, these museums neglected their Egyptian audiences. But gradually our museums turned toward the tasks of contextualizing their collections, bridging heritage and present-day culture and engaging their visitors more fully. This was a change that had been long overdue: to reimagine how the museum interacts with its visitors and to make its Egyptian audiences a priority. To accomplish this, the colonial mentality had to be overcome. Change would not come easily to museums that are government institutions. But three national museum initiatives in Cairo demonstrate that change is taking place: the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) being constructed in Giza near the pyramids; the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC) in the Foustat area of Cairo; and the historic Egypt Museum in Tahrir Square. In the new GEM and NMEC, there will be many opportunities to engage the surrounding communities through programs for children, students, adults and people with special needs. Permanent and temporary exhibitions will address Egyptian audiences, connecting them with their history and heritage. The education programs are tools for social development, encouraging dialogue that may help resolve social problems and lead to a better understanding of Egyptian heritage. This in turn will increase the likelihood that Egyptians will recognize their responsibility to protect, sustain and invest in their museums, historical buildings and archeological sites. In December 2014, the The Egypt Museum of Cairo opened a new exhibition on King Tutankhamun that focuses for the first time on social context and thematic display.1 Its core idea reproduces Tutankhamun’s life story in a “fly-with-theyoung-pharaoh” journey. The gallery was arranged in sequential stories through Tutankhamun’s life, starting with Childhood, The King Under Divine Protection,

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Kingship and Legacy, Life Inside the Palace, Fun and Entertainment. My aim through this exhibition was to create a thrilling display where the objects are the storytellers, illustrating the values of the collection. Throughout the gallery, a direct communication and interaction are built between the visitors and the stories. The new NMEC has been planned to tell the entire story of Egyptian culture. The museum building has been constructed in the Foustat area of Cairo, but the interior and exhibits have not been completed. NMEC is to be a national space where the identity of Egypt and the long history of Egyptian civilization will be presented, focusing on themes of everyday life rather than only exhibiting masterpieces. NMEC is scheduled to open in 2017, but a temporary exhibition highlighting the museum approach will open before that date. The museum has already begun to hold regular activities programs within and outside its walls. And the Grand Egyptian Museum currently in construction in Giza within view of the pyramids is a major step forward: a professional, world-class museum designed to attract young, talented professionals inspired by the challenge and the promise of this extraordinary project. The Grand Egyptian Museum will take its place among the leading global museums. In doing so, it will represent a revolutionary change in Egypt’s museum profession, reflecting the major changes in Egypt’s social, political and economic development after the January 25th Revolution. The GEM will lead the way for other museums, reconceptualizing the image of museums as institutions that are willing and able to be part of a wider social movement for the 21st century, generating knowledge and inspiration for Cairo and for the entire country. The GEM will serve as the bridge that connects Egyptians with their past, instructs them in their rich heritage and connects them with the world of museums. The GEM is not just a space for exhibiting artifacts in context or for telling the stories that reveal the depth of past and present culture. Nor will it be only about its state-of-the-art facilities or even the spirit of this extraordinary place, the most famous archeological site in the world, with its panorama of the Pyramids to the south and the promise of the present, Greater Cairo, to the east. The new museum also symbolizes rich opportunities for future investment and urban development. A feasibility study for the museum and related investment cites figures of more than $1 billion US and the potential for hundreds of thousands of new jobs with the establishment of hotels, recreational parks, tourist attractions, cultural centers and

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The GEM Conservation Center, opened in 2010, is one of the world’s largest and best equipped facilities for Egyptology conservation and research. Photo courtesy of GEMCC.

similar recreational facilities. Tourism is expected to increase by 30 percent with the opening of the GEM, along with a demand for almost 40 new hotels and some 60,000 new jobs in the expanded tourism industry. Proposals include a number of five-star international hotels, resorts, health spas and golf clubs to be developed in the northern section of the GEM site. The full investment zone covers approximately 4 million square meters. The GEM will help to enhance Cairo’s soft power, nationally and internationally, as we introduce international visitors to our city and its people, creating opportunities to explore the fascinating urban landscape of Cairo, meet its residents and discover their culture in context. It will be an inspiring and exciting journey. Initially the GEM was planned as an extension of the Egyptian Museum of Cairo, which was crowded with its rapidly increasing collections. The intent was to use modern methods of museum display in presenting the history of ancient Egypt. But the idea soon expanded to build a new museum with the cultural and educational framework that could serve national and international audiences, because ancient

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Egypt, one of the world’s earliest civilizations, is such an integral part of human history. The GEM was planned as the world’s hub for Egyptology, a leading global educational and research center. The GEM Conservation Center (GEMCC), opened in 2008, is designed to be one of the world’s largest and best equipped facilities for Egyptological conservation and research, serving as a regional and international center for conservation activities. As the first phase of the project, the GEMCC allows for the artifact collection to be conserved, photographed, documented and prepared for exhibition while the main museum building is under construction. The GEM is currently the world’s largest museum and cultural institution under construction. When completed, it is expected to take its place among the top museums in the world, based on the annual number of visitors, projected to be between 6 and 8 million. This large scale presents challenges. How can GEM, together with the two other major museums, successfully engage the Egyptian people in exploring its collections and participating in its activities, creating an interactive relationship between Egyptians and their heritage? The answer: by helping to create sustainable communities. It is their community, not ours. We can advise, we can assist and we can choose not to assist, but the decisions about development priorities and policies must be reached by that society at large, not us.… Let us start with that basic truth … too often in the past, we in the development business have acquired a stake in a project we designed and our procedures make it difficult to modify. Sustainable development means that the local recipients have the only stake that counts.2 During the January 25th Revolution, with vast crowds gathered in Tahrir Square, the Egyptian Museum of Cairo appeared to be threatened. Young Egyptians formed a human shield in front of the museum to protect it from violence and looting. This demonstrated to us the commitment of a new generation of Egyptians to our long heritage and proud history. It is now our turn, as museum professionals, to build on and strengthen this relation in all our museums.

 Ancient Egypt holds a special place in Western memory. From the time of the ancient Greeks to the modern era, a sense of mystery and awe surrounds ancient

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Egyptian society and culture. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the West began to distinguish between ancient Egypt and the modern nation. This was sometimes used as a means of justifying Western removal of antiquities from Egypt, suggesting that somehow after the coming of Islam, Egypt was no longer equipped to safeguard the treasures of its own past. These and other misconceptions will be addressed in the GEM’s exhibition programs and related activities. Narratives of Ancient Egypt should be contextualized within the full picture of Egyptian history and reflect a continuum of Egyptian life, as opposed to temporary fixations, such as “Egyptomania.” The phenomenon of Egyptomania, however, is real, as evidenced by the elaborate Egyptian collections in hundreds of museums around the world. These are often a museum’s most popular exhibits. Traveling exhibitions of Egyptian antiquities have also proved to be great crowd-pleasers, drawing record numbers of visitors. The Tutankhamun traveling exhibition, first in the 1970s and later in the 2000s, attracted millions of visitors. The last King Tut exhibition toured for seven years, traveling to more than 50 cities around the world. These and similar traveling exhibitions of Egyptian antiquities are among the most popular museum exhibitions ever organized. When it is completed, GEM will set a new standard for museology as well as Egyptology. It will include the exhibition galleries, archeological study storage and education center, a library and mediatheque, a children’s museum, a school and outdoor recreational gardens, a special-needs cultural and educational center containing a 3D cinema, theater and arts and crafts workshops for adults and children. Retail shops, food, beverage and recreational areas are included. There is also a museum rooftop garden with a panoramic view of the city of Cairo. The landscape parks include Recreational Park, with a total area of 45,000 square meters, enclosed on two sides by the Translucent Stone Wall. This area will be a public garden serving the entire capital and the Giza community. The “Land of Egypt Park,” 35,000 square meters, will feature a café, ancient Egyptian flora and a traditional irrigation system. The Nile Park extends for a length of 2.5 kilometers. It is the water element representing the River Nile as the source of life in Egypt. The Nile Park is made up of reflective pools, fountains, green areas, indoor lounges and outdoor shaded seating. The Esplanade links the GEM to the Pyramids Plateau, extending for 2.5 kilometers and surrounded on both sides by cafeterias and other eating areas under the shade of palm trees, with souvenir stores, boutiques, arts and

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crafts, and handicraft sellers scattered throughout this 98,000-square-meter area. In addition, the Temple Garden and Piazza will feature the GEM outdoor display, with reconstructions of Egyptian temples, shrines and statues. The GEM is dedicated to displaying the culture and artifacts of pre-pharaonic and pharaonic Egypt up to Ptolemaic-Roman Egypt. The museum will illustrate the broad story of Egyptian history, focusing on the ancient Egyptians as the builders of one of the world’s first civilizations. The narrative will illustrate the strength and greatness of the Egyptian civilization in its various aspects. The Tutankhamun collection and new discoveries will be highlights of this display. The stories and themes will lead the exhibitions, rather than relying solely on the individual objects as aesthetic or historical masterpieces. The Grand Egyptian Museum is a truly visionary project. Interpreting a glorious ancient past, the museum also connects to the future of one of the world’s most intriguing and diverse cities. The museum and city work together, increasing the soft power potential of each, as they work to shape a better, sustainable future for Cairo, Egypt and our world.

ENDNOTES 1 Mohamed Gamal Rashed, “‘Ankh-Wedja-Senb,’ Life, Health and Prosperity for Tutankhamun,” Antike Welt 1/15, Germany 2015, http://www.antikewelt.de/index.php/ankhw-da-snb/). 2 Brian Atwood, Statement of Principles on Participatory Development (Washington, DC: US Agency for International Development, 1993), 2, http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/ PNACF577.pdf.

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Global and Local: Fairs and Biennials, Temporary Urbanism and Pop-Up Museums Lourdes Fernández Translation: Marina Ramirez



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BILBAO IN CONTEXT

BILBAO IN CONTEXT

INTRODUCTION Improving life in cities is a vision that everyone can share. It is a key to ensuring the success of our coexistence in the future. Because of this, thinking of the city as a platform for creative possibilities is more than just a need, it is a cornerstone of a better life. For this to occur, we must rethink culture from a totally open perspective. Culture is a laboratory of possible dialogues. However, with the increase of global networks, it is every day more essential to ensure that the uniqueness of each local region is not consumed by globalization. Creativity plays a leading role in these dialogues. In the mid-’90s, the Treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam required the

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European Union to commit to including culture in all of their major initiatives. They advocated the development of a cultural plan throughout the European Union. This plan was to be one of the largest and most important responsibilities of accountable governance. It required a methodology: the direct action of specialized personnel in charge of the cultural and strategic action plan, along with a commitment to the present-day cultural fabric of cities—museums, associations, independent agents, foundations, etc. In this 21st century, with our vulnerability to economic crises, cities of the Western world have developed a new strategy. Political and economic leaders have shifted their attention to an easily accessible everyday resource: people. Consequently the role of the governing leader is different. The mere placement of resources and the allocation of a significant percentage of funds to culture is not enough. The process should include listening to local people and sharing future ideas and challenges with them. Within this context, Bilbao is an example of a place where transformation in the last decades has been spectacular. The new challenge now is this: What is the next step? Through this and other international examples, we will see how the transformation of a city is increasingly linked to the development of its creative industries. More and more, these are playing a significant and integral part in the well-being of cities.

FAIRS AND BIENNIALS If we had to define a contemporary art fair and compared it to a biennial, that seems straightforward enough. Fairs are markets featuring works of art where the main purposes are to make sales, introduce artists to the art market and promote them while at the same time promoting their respective galleries. Biennials, on the other hand, are international shows where the primary purpose is not sales. Biennials are trend setters. They show the present-day situation and the art world’s current progression. This allows artists to position their works within a given framework. In this way, biennials can also be seen as temporary, pop-up museums. This seems like a simple distinction, but it really is not. Art Basel, that city’s historic contemporary art fair, was created to rebuild the art market after a war that had left Europe without art market references. The art markets of Paris and London were destroyed during that period, which left Cologne with the only great fair during

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Alhóndiga Bilbao (Bilbao Cultural Center) combines arts, sports and a library with social and meeting spaces. Renowned French designer Philippe Starck created the swimming pool to function as a live art installation when viewed from below in the main lobby. Photo courtesy of Alhóndiga Bilbao.

the years up to 1970. The Basel fair appeared as a response to the very exclusive “celebrated Cologne Art Fair,” hitherto the model of an art market. In response to the huge success of the Swiss initiative, the organizers of the Cologne Art Fair went so far as to call for the boycott of Art Basel. By 1973, Art Basel took the title of the most important art show in the world, a status it retains to this day. The launch, more than 10 years ago, of a new section in Art Basel called Art Unlimited has allowed Art Basel to remain the benchmark in the industry, beyond just a commercial positioning. This fact is crucial to understanding the phenomenon. Art Unlimited is almost a biennial in itself. It consists of a rigorous selection procedure. It does not permit just any gallery or any artist to be represented. The presentation format also allows for art of large dimensions, however difficult it is to sell these large-scale works of art. At the same time, at Art Basel there is the presence of certain artists who are also represented in the Venice Biennial, the great Dokumenta or the prestigious São Paulo Biennial (where the esteemed associated curators guarantee a rigorous selection process each year). Priority is given to selected artists whose works are positioned to meet market demand and are suitable for temporary exhibitions or acquisition by prominent museums.

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Where are the limits? Who really creates trends? This is the great dilemma. Fairs are clearly commercial in character, but they increasingly demand a dialogue, project a personality and include a set of expectations—even ones that they sometimes cannot meet. Biennials, while less commercial, want to appear to be the creators of trends. They wish to be theoretically profound and promote a genuine dialogue between artists and the public. Increasingly, however, biennials elevate the status of artists and curators to a privileged position, which in turn is what really influences the market. Nonetheless, art fairs and biennials achieve international attention. They are visited by millions of people, many of whom are not there only to buy. They both seek to have value and influence beyond the commercial. The cities that host them put a great deal of time and effort into the events, and the media response is enormous. They become must-see events not only for art lovers, but also for tourists passing through the city. Aside from the competition between events, sometimes commercial (fairs) and at other times discursive (biennials), another phenomenon is the increasing internationalization of these events—which also occurs with museums, as we will see later. Headquarters bearing the same name appear in other parts of the world. Art Basel Miami Beach and Art Basel HK (Hong Kong) were the first of this kind. The Frieze art fairs of contemporary art, established with great success in London and New York,

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have expanded to include Frieze Master, with galleries showing old masterworks. Frieze New York is widely viewed as the best show of its kind in that city. The art fair Miami Design is an example worth noting. Its purpose was to initiate a significant urban makeover of the Buena Vista neighborhood of Miami, known today as the Design District. The successful revitalization of this neighborhood, a former industrial area of low-rise warehouses that had been abandoned or fell into disrepair, occurred at the same time as the arrival of Art Basel Miami. Worldrenowned design firms, architects and others established offices here. The private development that transformed this section of Miami would not have occurred without the appeal of a strong cultural presence. There are other examples, such as the fair organized by TEFAF, The European Fine Art Foundation, in the Dutch city of Maastricht. This is an example of decentralization from the established art centers such as London or Paris. Maastricht is very popular with tourists and has its own gastronomic appeal. After 40 years, TEFAF has become a model in the international art market scene. In fact, Maastricht provides a yearly report on the status of the art world. The Maastricht Fair has shown that consumers, especially those in China, have become more trusting since the recent financial crisis has eased. Chinese collectors’ groups and visitors have become an important presence at Maastricht and elsewhere. These newly formed circles of collectors are given special attention. International collecting, with varying influences from different countries, especially Latin America and emerging Asian countries, now forms one of the great drivers of the fairs. There is an increasing association with national collecting and its contribution to the recovery of the global art market. This is a sign of the revitalization of the creative industries and the international art market, not only for contemporary art but also antique art and even the latest in design. Although there still remain the traditional biennials and meeting places, such as Kassel, Venice or São Paulo, biennials and fairs have increasingly found common ground. They receive greater financial support from municipal, regional or government organizations and are seen as prime growth hubs for cultural tourism. It is also true that the proliferation of these events has increased competition, which has raised the bar for quality and innovative programming. This in turn has resulted in the constant search for highly acclaimed organizers, another element in the marketing of fairs and biennials. It is clear that these events have a greater effect

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on commercial strategy than control over the art being exhibited. Significant among the newer biennials is Manifesta, the roving European Biennial of Contemporary Art that begin Rotterdam in 1996. Now planning for its 11th event, Manifesta has become an acclaimed event in Europe. Its fifth edition in 2004 was held in the small Basque city of Donostia-San Sebastián. Manifesta’s unique European spirit was evident in the selection of this small city of some 200,000 inhabitants, a move that was admired throughout Europe. Manifesta 5, with its international participation of more than 50 artists and the excellent programming by co-curators Marta Kuzma and Massimiliano Gioni, attracted more than 100,000 visitors from around the world over three summer months. Manifesta 5 was also held in a very specific sociopolitical context in a region that still advocates its independence from Spain. But the possibility of change in daily life was well represented by the art and the artists during this international event. Once again, the influence of culture as a vehicle for the transformation of society and a source of new ideas was evident here, an example of its soft power potential.

TOWN PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT Bilbao, the economic capital of the Basque Country, is the center of a metropolitan area of 1.2 million people. It is a modern, efficient and attractive city to live and work in, invest in and enjoy. Bilbao has become a cultural ecosystem that fosters vibrant encounters with art and culture for its citizens and visitors alike. The city’s name has become associated with art, technology, design and creativity since its remarkable economic and urban transformation. Bilbao proves that culture can boost economic development and the welfare of citizens while increasing the level of innovation and creativity. It remains an example of integral urbanism, with city planners and artists working together in a cultural public-private partnership devoted to the improvement of conditions for its citizens. The success of the Guggenheim Bilbao is undeniable. But it is important to remember that the museum is only one building. Twenty-five years of urban transformation have taken place in Bilbao, including the restoration of the Bilbao estuary, which cost six times more than building the Guggenheim, and the Bilbao Metro, enabling residents of outlying areas to get to the city center in just 10 minutes. Bilbao has been fortunate, of course, to be host to the most iconic piece of architecture of the late 20th century, probably architect Frank Gehry’s finest project. The

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city has capitalized on this, enabling it to shape its future with creativity. Bilbao shows that in only a few years, a city can change its way of thinking and vision, and can reinvent itself. In many cities, architecture has been a reference point; however, that alone does not guarantee success. Architecture needs to be accompanied by an innovative vision and a creative transformation of the city, where art, design, universities and tourism join together.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD HUBS Bilbao’s neighborhoods became integral parts of the city’s transformation and investment, generating numerous public spaces and amenities. The city has recognized neighborhood hubs as a fundamental concept. They are a combination of public space, public amenities (municipal centers, schools, etc.), commercial spaces, sports zones, outdoor spaces and indoor multipurpose spaces, managed in a comprehensive and integrated way, using the model of public/private partnership. Art serves as a base that allows different approaches to come together. Alhóndiga Bilbao, with its dedicated vision and experimental dimension, is one of Bilbao’s three most important cultural infrastructures. It is a multipurpose venue that also contains a leisure component, an added draw for the public. It was designed by French designer Philippe Starck and opened in 2010. The existing building, originally a wine warehouse, was fully restored and

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made universally accessible. It now features attractive and flexible public spaces that are also available for use by the private sector. It is located in an upperclass area, is owned and managed by the city, and has its own investment and maintenance budget. The success of Alhóndiga rests on a number of factors. It is a shared place that transcends traditional political objectives. It is a meeting space where the pertinent social issues are discussed, such as the viability of current economic models, relationships between the sexes and the collaboration between cultures and communities, including information about how tourists use cities. Alhondiga also functions as a think tank: How do we want to live in the 21st century? What political actions are most effective? How might we create a viable cultural plan for the city? Alhondiga’s strategy is based on integrating an international network of art centers and having a strong communications campaign online and offline that raises awareness of its initiatives among art and technology institutions, as well as the general public.

MUSEUMS For several decades now, due to the efforts of different public and private institutions, networking has become increasingly essential. But museums—the institutions that house art masterpieces—help construct our memories and catalogue our past and present, still responding to parameters set in the past. There is a need now for new working models and relationships between institutions. Networking brings about distinct advantages and could lead to a new, global museum plan. Networking proposes the creation of a universal dossier, where all documents are shared. It advocates a pluralistic history and the formation of a common assembly. It allows new forms of collaboration and production, pooling efforts and resources. In essence, networking proposes a new perspective on art and culture and how to transmit it. Networking enables museums to combine their expertise and exert long-lasting influence on their communities and on the world. In short, it unleashes their soft power for the future. Although museums are seen as unique institutions that have the ability to transform cities, as museum networks they will support a more comprehensive transformation. Each organization interacts with many others, allowing greater mutual enrichment that transcends borders and forces governments and elected

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officials to consider new forms of creative change. The capacity of culture to give voice to the residents of a city, a country, a continent will play a central role in meeting the challenges we all face, now and in the future. Public and private leaders should expect—in fact, demand—smart, contemporary, nonsectarian, populist civic participation. Museums can play a central role in making a broader, shared culture a reality. This too is how museums will realize the potential of their soft power.

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1. PREMISE In 1976, Sir Nicholas Pevsner said that in the first 30 years after the war (1946–76) “many museums have been built … [but] no new principles have turned up, except that the ideal of the museum as a monument in its own right has been replaced by the ideal of the museum as a perfect place to show, enjoy and study.”2 The opening of the Centre national d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou on January 31, 1977,3 marked the end of the “30 years’ peace” described by Pevsner. The Centre Pompidou rebooted the 20-year cycle of the design of “generational archetypes” (1939 MoMA, 1959 Guggenheim New York, 1977 Centre Pompidou, 1997 Guggenheim Bilbao) and saluted the advent of a second 30-year period (the “30 years’ war,” 1977–2007) of giddy, exciting and sometimes reckless growth. The museum world experimented with all and everything and produced an unprecedented building boom.

2. A FEW NUMBERS In order to quantify and contextualize the building boom, we have to resolve two preliminary issues: How many museums are there around the world? How many were built in the last 20 years, namely after 1995? The first is not an unsolvable enigma compared to more complex questions, such as how many bugs live in a duvet?4 How many holes can be found in Emmental cheese?5 How much nonsense can you write before readers give up on you? However, some answers are required, since there are no surefire, accurate data. In 1975 Kenneth Hudson and Ann Nicholls listed about 25,000 museums worldwide.6 Of all the random figures frequently expressed, we are struck by the total— 55,097 museums in 202 countries—quoted in the 19th edition of the Museums of the World series, published by De Gruyter Saur in August 2012.7 It is a staggering figure, but one that underestimates the real number. NEMO, the Network of European Museum Organisations, claims the existence of 35,000 museums8 in the 27 nations of the European Union. The Institute of Museum and Library Services in the US once said that there were 17,500 museums in the United States.9 Together these amount to 52,500. But five continents are missing (Antarctica has four splendid museums), home to 174 countries where the remaining 89 percent of the world’s population lives. Careful verification clearly reveals the underestimation. Let us take three

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random countries, Germany, Italy and the United States: Museums of the World lists 6,057 museums in Germany, 3,182 in Italy and 8,258 in America. The German figure is not greatly different from that provided by the Institut fur Museumsforschung, which, in 2011, counted 6,304.10 But the Italian total is far removed from that reported by the Istituto Nazionale di Statistica, which in 2012 recorded 6,150.11 And the American one is well below the 35,000 museums now estimated by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.12 Projecting these deviations onto the world total would produce a figure close to 80,000 museums, a number that I consider realistic as we await future research. It is not unrealistic to estimate that 50 percent of this astonishing total was built and/or extended in the last 40 years, with a thousand new museums each year.

3. NOT SLEEPING IN PROCUSTE’S BED Such numbers were fuelled by converging pressures and desire. On one hand, we had the drives of multiculturalism, accessibility, technological innovation, the digital culture and gender/cultural studies. On the other, competition with mutant institutions such as theme parks, children’s museums, visitor centers and theaters. Caught in the crossfire, museums nevertheless continued their work to preserve memories, reinterpret traditions, decipher the meaning of change, shore up teetering collective identities, replant uprooted communities, provide comprehensible visions of the world and narratives of the past, present and future, and govern centrifugal forces—all while meeting the financial and media obligations dictated by the tyranny of the spectator, the demands of sponsors and philanthropists, and the rhetoric of efficiency and perfect competition. All this in a context filled with many new subjects striving to gain attention—the asset coveted by all museums, especially those with global stature, status and appetite. Spurred on by volume and numbers—the billions of people eager to visit— museums accepted the challenge, albeit not without falling victim to performance anxiety. This has prompted a fascinating debate on new missions, functions and identities,13 featuring hypertrophy, mutation, frenzy and gigantism—visible most clearly in museum architecture. The Louvre tripled its space and its visitor numbers in 30 years after investing more than €1 billion in the “Grand Louvre” operation (not far off the €1.2 billion of Berlin’s Museumsinsel). According to a London School of Economics impact

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analysis, in its first five years, Tate Modern created “between 2,000 and 4,000 new jobs, about half of which are located in the Southwark area.”14 An impact analysis commissioned in 2006 claimed that the reopening of MoMA between 2005 and 2007 would generate a financial impact of $2 billion in New York City.15 According to the accounting firm KPMG, the Guggenheim in Bilbao increased the local GDP by 0.47 percent between October 1997 and January 2000, creating 3,816 jobs and increasing visitor flow to the Basque Country by 54 percent.16 Methodical visitors in St. Petersburg who cover every inch of the Hermitage end up walking 31 kilometers.17 According to the latest statistics, between 2000 and 2011, China built 1,359 museums, with another 4,773 expected by 2020.18 The Saadiyat Cultural District in Abu Dhabi has already swallowed up more than €2.5 billion19 and the construction of the local Louvre was expected to cost €653.4 million. Meanwhile, franchised museums20 pursuing global economies of scale and size (Tate, Pompidou, Getty, Paley Center, Reina Sofia, Guggenheim, Imperial War, Louvre, Hermitage, Caixaforum or Ludwig) have multiplied with varying degrees of success, experimenting with merger and acquisition (MoMA-PS1) and with coproduction/codistribution agreements (Hermitage Amsterdam, Vienna, London, Las Vegas and Ferrara; Louvre Atlanta or Denver). Multiyear traveling exhibitions have been launched (the Barnes Foundation began the trend) and strategic agreements worth €1 billion were signed (Louvre Abu Dhabi), with exhibition calendars set for a decade to come.

4. A GLOBAL PHENOMENON References to Middle or Far East are not by chance. In the last 20 years, museums have gone global,21 victims of the urban-development model22 summed up as “McGuggenisation” by McNeill and Mathur23 or tagged with the mottos “From Prado to Prada” by Graeme Evans24 and “From Pork to Porcelain” by Elizabeth Strom.25 Museums were rapidly erected in countries and regions that had lacked them for centuries or decades. Simply think of the growth recorded in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the Orient and the Middle East, in Central and South America and in the former Soviet Bloc republics. In some cases, the development was carefully planned at the national level, where the museum is seen as an accelerator of modernization and the symbolic locus of postmodernity. In others, development was caught up in the strategies

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Venice’s M9 will be a contemporary museum devoted to the history and culture of the 20th century. Photo © Fondazione di Venezia / Sauerbruch Hutton / Archimation.

of big cities that have been subsequently imitated by smaller places.26 In yet other cases, the growth of museums was prompted by individuals, foundations and companies27 eager to develop their own cultural projects. Building or extending a museum was one surefire way for countries, regions, cities and districts to boost their appeal and entice big-spending tourists or weave the spell of urban creatività—more culture, more ideas, more creativity, more money and more happiness. For more than 20 years, the museum was the panacea to every city’s ills, the Viagra that could raise morale and revive the sex appeal of old and unattractive places, the philosopher’s stone that would turn the bricks and concrete of districts without history or meaning into gold.28 These far-from-subliminal messages have found faithful followers everywhere—think of the hundreds of contemporary art museums opened in the farthest corners of the planet—anxious to step onto an increasingly crowded global stage. This is how museum-mania became global, by virtue of an epistemic rhetoric

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that has claimed that economic and cultural development go hand in hand.29 It is a quest for Westernization that conceals different reasons and goals, later revealed by the nature and type of these new museums. In China and many former Soviet/Communist countries,30 the recherche du temps perdu has often featured a nationalistic slant and a desire for redress, bringing a rediscovery and appreciation of cultures, traditions and identities that had been eliminated, humiliated or silenced for decades. In the Gulf states, the development of new museums has been encouraged to promote the local cultural heritage and to attract international tourists.31 The tension between global and local has led to national and/or regional tensions, triggering an action-reaction mechanism. As the metropolises invested capital in modernizing and extending existing museums (which explains the large number of renovations and expansions in the EU and the US32), or erecting new ones (predominantly art or specialized museums), so too local policies fueled an antimetropolitan proliferation of museums in outlying areas—culture for everyone, everywhere. These justifiable aspirations took the form of very large museums in small and medium-size provincial towns or isolated locations gifted with the virtue of site-specificity to celebrate “local cultures,” reassure communities threatened by globalization or attract large numbers of national and international tourists. This was very new. Museums ceased being metropolitan institutions and spread to suburban, uninhabited or deprived locales. These were communities once neglected by cultural policies more attentive to the needs and desires of the urban classes.33 Consider the museums opened in numerous small and medium-size European towns,34 such as those in the reunified Germany35 and in post-Franco Spain.36 In this last, exemplary case, the museum explosion was triggered by a combination of factors: demand for autonomy and pro-local policies, an ambitious young ruling class eager to distance itself from the marginalization suffered during the long dictatorship, the economic growth of a country that had edged its way into the G20, the financial pressures of speculative building and the property bubble, EU contributions to urban-regeneration projects and finally the global success of Bilbao.37

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5. DISSENTING OPINIONS Museum architecture has found itself centerstage, smug protagonist or reluctant victim of plans that have assigned it the role of leading lady, like it or not. As Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani pointed out when commenting on art museums: “It is not the art, but the architecture that is the real attraction here. And the architecture is not behaving subserviently, but acting as the protagonist.”38 Museums and architectural design have always had an intricate relationship, one that has, in recent years, developed a greater degree of complicity or conflict than ever before. In 1951 Hendrik Enno van Gelder noted that “museum designers often try to modernize old formulae instead of cutting adrift from what is old and attempting something entirely new; they visit existing museums to see how something particular is done. In future it will be better if they spend their time looking round the larger towns and inspecting the most modern type of shop, office, factory, station, theatre, restaurant and even residence.”39 Fifty years later, Luis Fernández-Galiano ironically observed that “in the new panorama of McVillas and McBuildings, where architecture and entertainment are fused in museums and malls, downtowns and strips, theme parks and parking lots, what has vanished is gravitas.”40 Although neither the popular nor the majority view, Fernández-Galiano’s criticism was shared by other observers. In the same years, a disheartened Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani observed that “the museum is now a place in which culture is exploited in order to create turnover and architecture has become an instrument in this process—an iridescent, agreeable costume for a machine which, not unlike Jean Tinguely’s fountain next to the Centre Pompidou, cheerfully chops up culture (and not only bourgeois culture) into attractively presented, bite-sized pieces, providing an easy diet for the inattentive, pleasure-craving masses.”41 However the museum building boom originated, it is hard to disagree with Michaela Giebelhausen when she states that “during the last quarter of the 20th century, the museum became increasingly popular and diverse. Its architecture explored a range of stylistic modes and social roles, attracting the attention of urban planners and star architects alike, and spawning a gargantuan literature.”42 She even titled an essay “The Architecture Is the Museum.”43 After the recent proliferation of museums and the rabbit-like growth of museum districts,44 we are now in a position to weigh what has happened over the

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last 30 years and to identify those who have helped, in good faith or bad, to drive this expansion movement. What is striking in the museum-building process is that museums serve other objectives. In some projects, far from being the ultimate end, the museum has become a mere tool, the means adopted in the pursuit of other, more ambitious or cynical objectives. This has translated into a divestment of traditional design roles and an explicit or implicit requirement that museums perform functions different from those previously assigned to them—acting as tourist draws, urban landmarks, iconic totems, symbols of civic reconquista, lay cathedrals, public condensers, audience magnets, city regenerators and economic resurrectors, all in a crescendo of triumphalist metaphors that, to paraphrase the title of a brilliant essay by Hans Belting, have transformed museums from places of reflection into places of sensation.45 However, the sincere enthusiasm for the presumed virtues of cultural flagship projects expressed by some urban and regional economists in the early 1990s (shortly before the EC URBAN I Community Initiative),46 and ignited by the triumph of creative and cultural economics and urban marketing47 in the following decade, has now waned (in the academic press at least) following the 2007 recession, given the failures witnessed over the last eight years and confirmed by data gathered by the more scrupulous researchers.48 After years spent on the sidelines, several critics have raised their voices against the excess and illusion of design-led urban regeneration. Now these voices acknowledge that certain forecasts were groundless and some logical formats inadequate, swept away by our enduring economic recession. This has allowed the reconstruction of a history that has failed to produce a successful exchange of views or a synthesis of ideas. Although this building phenomenon initially drew the attention of some neutral architectural commentators,49 decades would pass before an ear was lent to the dissenting opinions,50 long drowned out by the roar of a global communication that did not want to heed those who pointed to the intellectual void behind the shining figures, hot testimonials and glossy renderings. Far from being a passing cloud, the recession experienced in the last eight years has raised issues of awareness, consistency, intellectual honesty and responsibility. The architect Matthias Sauerbruch has pointed out that “architects and clients

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building for a community of consumers that participates in a critical role, at best … are challenged to provide an appropriate spatial and architectural setting … to express what people might consider to be the essence of contemporary culture, and they need to invent formats for content yet to be found.”51 Nonetheless, the explosion in museums in the past 30 years is a phenomenon that transcends the merely professional dimension, despite having altered its aims and hierarchical values: a museum is not a hospital, a university or a court of law. It is a construction type that has taken upon and sometimes overloaded itself with meaning and expectations. The design theme now occupies a space that is ever less technical and increasingly social. It is important to ask what meaning museum design has today for an architect. The context has changed radically during the past three decades. Prerecession design philosophies responded to design principles, functional layouts and management forms that are often unsustainable today, and different people are involved in the debate and design process. A time when increase in public funding, private contributions, visitor numbers and retail income could be taken for granted is no more, at least in Europe and the United States, home to 90 percent of the world’s museums. It is no coincidence that after decades of indifference, policy makers and researchers are now focused on the sustainability of the impressive number of new cultural institutions. Their dignified survival remains in serious doubt.

6. FINAL Meanwhile at least two facts worthy of analysis have appeared. The first is a shift in the axis of intervention from conservation to production. Today museums are focused on the production of new content, meaning and interpretation,52 reflecting the values of those operating in the new era of the knowledge and creativity economy. This trend has triggered radical changes in investment, with a net shift of resources from traditional activities to those that result in this cultural “production.” This is the response to the radical change in the concept of culture that has taken place in the last 10 years: hierarchies were abolished, disciplinary boundaries disappeared, genres of expression mixed. These changes have radically altered the tastes and expectations of the latest generation of museum visitors who are more inclined toward a fusion of experiences and are sensitive to new ideas, temporary events,

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educational initiatives and “flow production.” The second fact is this: if these new activities are to be properly conducted, they will need more and more resources. The “content provider” museum, the “publisher” museum and the “producer” museum will increasingly be expected to make dramatic decisions. They will have to distribute meager resources among competing programs. This poses a dilemma: What is the sense of living in highly prestigious but costly buildings requiring maintenance that eats up many of the resources that could go into production? Do we have to choose between bricks and ideas, concrete and sentiment? These are not prosaic dilemmas. True sustainability will require maintaining an equilibrium between two competing choices: the creation of functional museum buildings that are welcoming and can be maintained in the long term, and the production of cultural content that is new, varied and full of meaning.

ENDNOTES 1 This article has been extrapolated from my essay in Guerzoni, 2014. For this and all references not fully cited in these endnotes, I invite the reader to consult the bibliography provided in this volume. 2 Pevsner 1976, 136. 3 See Baudrillard 1982, 3–13. 4 Discovered by Prof. Johanna E. M. H. van Bronswijk, Eindhoven University of Technology; the discovery earned her the Ig Nobel prize for biology, 2007. 5 Mirade 2007, 697-726. 6 Hudson and Nicholls 1975. 7 Museums of the World 2012. 8 http://www.ne-mo.org/index.php?id=123. 9 http://www.imls.gov/about/default.aspx. 10 Institut für Museumsforschung 2012, p. 85. 11 Istat 2012, 2. 12 http://www.imls.gov/about/default.aspx. 13 With a huge amount of literature on the subject, I refer readers to the bibliography: Genoways 2006; Storrie 2006; Janes 2009; MacLeod, Hourston Hanks, Hale 2012; Sandell, Nightingale 2012. 14 Tate Modern: The First Five Years, 2005. 15 MoMA 2006, 4. 16 KPMG 1998. These values were plausibly revised by Plaza 1999 and 2000 and more than halved. Nonetheless, the so-called “Guggenheim effect” has also produced a new field of discipline—“Bilbao studies” (not a joke, unfortunately)—comprising hundreds of

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academic publications. Those interested can source and download the most important ones at www.scholars-on-bilbao.info. 17 While awaiting the OMA master plan for the 2014 bicentenary, we can presume that the potential extension will enable the Hermitage to organize the first indoors Museum Marathon in history. 18 According to ChinaCulture.org (a government entity of the Ministry of Culture) as reported by ChinaDaily (“Reviving the Cultural Power of China’s Museums,” November 23, 2012), “official statistics show that the number of museums registered in the country increased from 2,200 to 3,589 in the 10 years up to the end of 2011.” This means that 1,389 were built between 2000 and 2011. The present total “means that there is now one museum for every 400,000 Chinese people. And it is predicted that there will be one for every 250,000 Chinese by 2020.” Assuming that the Chinese population continues to grow at the present rate (0.481 percent) over the next eight years, this means that another 4,773 museums ought to be built through 2022, reaching a total of 8,362 museums. 19 The figure is drawn from data published in Abu Dhabi’s TDIC (Toursim Development & Investment Company) report, 2011 (“Project Costs Incurred as at December 31, 2011 by Development Type”), 21 and (“Total Assets, in Consolidated Statement of Financial Position at 31 December 2011”), 57. 20 See McNeill 2000 and Sorkin 2005. 21 See Prösler 1996; McNeill 2000, 474–5; Yudice 2003; Mathur 2005, 701; Rectanus 2005, 385–90. 22 See Gonzalez 2011, 1398–9. 23 See McNeill 2000, 480–2; Mathur 2005, 698–9. 24 See Evans 2003. 25 See Strom 2002. 26 Today no global city can afford not to have museums, as we are repeatedly told by the reports and ratings that large consultancies devote to global urban competitiveness. 27 A gap I intend to fill concerns the nature of the owners, something not easily determined with the necessary precision because the new forms of governance increasingly require the participation of a number of private and public stakeholders, creating uncertainty as to the attribution of the title public/private property. This occurs, for instance, in private foundations with public stakeholder majorities. 28 The literature is boundless; see Bianchini, Dawson, Evans 1992; Sternberg 2002; Kirchberg 2003; De Frantz 2005; Hamnett, Shoval 2003; Grodach 2008 (2), 2010 and 2013. 29 For some of the most attentive critics, see Zukin 1996; Miles 2005; Miles, Paddison 2005; Roost, Sassen 1999; Sklair 2010. 30 See Pierantoni, Tali 2011. 31 See Hazime 2011, 4736–41. 32 For the US situation see Set in Stone 2012 and Woronkowicz 2011 (1), (2) and (3). 33 See Foord, Evans 2008. 34 See Selwood 2006; Grodach 2008 (1). 35 Of the 67 projects recorded in Guerzoni 2014 in Germany, six are in Berlin and nine in cities that were in the GDR until 1989.

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36 In the sample described in Guerzoni 2014, Spain appears with 26 new builds and 24 expansions, occupying second place in Europe. 37 The literature is so abundant that it has generated a new field of discipline called “Bilbao studies.” See the contributions by Baniotopoulou 2000; McNeill 2000; Zulaika 2003; Plaza 1999, 2000, 2006, 2008 and 2013; Curtis 2013. 38 Magnago Lampugnani 2006, 248. 39 van Gelder 1951, 181. 40 Fernández-Galiano 2000, 36. 41 Magnago Lampugnani 2006, 252. 42 Giebelhausen 2006 (2), 223. 43 Giebelhausen 2006 (1). 44 A few examples: the Museum Mile in New York, the Golden Triangle Museum District in Denver, the Museum District in Houston, the Museum Quarters in Vienna and Utrecht, the Saadiyat Cultural District in Abu Dhabi, the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, the Museumplein in Amsterdam, the Museum Park in Rotterdam, the Museumsinsel in Berlin and the Museum Bank in Frankfurt. 45 See Belting 2001. 46 See for instance Bianchini, Dawson, Evans 1992. 47 See van Aalst, Boogaarts 2002; Hamnett, Shoval 2003; García 2004; Kunzmann 2004; De Frantz 2005; Grodach, Loukaitou-Sideris 2007; Grodach 2008(1) and 2008(2). 48 See Vaessen 1993; Roost, Sassen 1999; Eisinger 2000; Bell, Jayne 2003; Miles, Paddison 2005; Miles 2005; Filler 2008; Grodach 2010 and 2013; Sklair 2010. 49 See Herreman 1989; Nacher 1997; Sirefman 1999; Hourston 2003; Pes 2007. 50 See Hogrefe 1999; Stephens 2004; Morris 2005; Russell 2005; Davidts 2006 (1) and 2006(2); Shiner 2007 and 2011; Freudenheim 2010. 51 Sauerbruch 2013, 17. 52 On these aspects see Davidts 2006 (1 & 2); Caiger-Smith 2011.

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Thirty-two Ways for Museums to Activate Their Soft Power Ngaire Blankenberg and Gail Dexter Lord



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hether they embrace it or not, museums have soft power. In the best instances, it can become an active, transformative power—welcoming, transparent and open to many stories. We have seen how the rapid growth of urbanism in the 20th and 21st centuries has led cities to increase their active soft power. This concluding essay explores how the basic functions of museums can be better adapted to the exercise of their soft power. We have organized the essay in terms of traditional museum functions, despite the fact that the institutional form of museums is changing and should change to better suit their role as leading civil society institutions. Therefore we focus on strategies rather than departments. Most of the strategies address ways that museums can enhance their own soft power and the soft power of cities, too. We invite cities to take more notice of their museums by developing policies, plans and processes to support soft power in museums. Because soft power is a function of the empowerment of people, museums must do a better job of empowering their employees, interns and volunteers, as well as visitors. While museum exhibitions merit attention for their soft power impact in increasing contextual intelligence and sparking new ideas, the lower-profile world of museum governance, operations, research, publications and public programs may have the greater potential for soft power. Technology is woven through all these strategies because most would be mere dreams (and were dreams in the museum of 20 years ago) without the Web and digital technology. Through networks and broad-based participation, technology has vastly enhanced how power is diffused. This is a basis of soft power for museums and cities. The examples and strategies here are not intended to be proscriptive. Cities and museums are places of ever-changing complexity. The projects and processes that will emerge when cities and museums truly work together are not known. Our proposals are guideposts for those who want to undertake the journey. It is a journey that will engage museums in a delicate balancing act: to seek out relevance and influence but to avoid propaganda and one-sidedness; to be inclusive and participatory but to remain legitimate; to support new forms of citizenship and belonging without alienating the old; to consider the global without sacrificing the local; to diversify funding but to remain independent. No one ever said museum work would be easy!

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I. GOVERNANCE AND HUMAN RESOURCES: POWER DIFFUSION Museum governance can be understood as a continuum: on one end are museums that are 100 percent government owned; on the other are those that are 100 percent privately owned. In the center is a range of civil society museum types, including museums that are

• owned by government but operated as nonprofit associations • owned by government but operated as “arm’s length” (semi-independent)

agencies with boards that have policy-making and fiduciary power • owned and operated by charities or nonprofit organizations (such as universities, religious organizations and trusts) with separate museum-purpose boards • fully independent, nonprofit museums Civil society institutions have the greatest capacity for soft power because they share power. Power diffusion is to soft power what power concentration is to hard power. In the past 30 years, there has been a significant shift from government-owned and operated museums to independent, civil society museums. This trend toward power diffusion in museums started in the US and has spread to English-speaking countries and Europe, where even national museums have independent boards or governance structures at “arm’s length” from government. This has much to do with how wealth has shifted to the private sector, just as governments have reduced so many other public services. But it is also a result of a global trend toward democratization and the diffusion of knowledge and influence. Civil society museums come in all shapes and sizes. In addition to fulfilling the fundamental functions of collection, research, education and display, these museums are characterized by independent governance; multiple sources of funding, including government grants, visitors, private donors, foundations, sponsors and service fees; and budgetary control and accountability. Here are seven governance and human resources strategies available to museum leaders who wish to activate their museum’s soft power.

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1. Diverse, Networked Boards Museums require diverse boards whose members have extensive networks and the expertise to engage those networks to participate in and support the museum. Increased participation can enhance financial support. A more widespread participation is also the trigger for soft power. For the museum to exercise influence, it needs to engage meaningfully with people of all ages, genders, abilities, education and financial capacity.

2. Advisory Councils Advisory councils, such as teen and community councils, can be established to advise the museum’s leadership. Broad-based advisory councils with clearly defined roles provide transparency and legitimacy while helping the museum to solve problems.

3. Outward-Looking Policies Power concentration makes government and corporate-owned and -operated museums look inward. In an effort to make government museums more outward looking and more attractive to private funders, many national, state and provincial museums have adopted hybrid models. The State Museums in New Mexico have a broad-based foundation that raises additional financial and community support for the four state museums in Santa Fe. This greater independence is reflected in a more outward-focused mission, vision and mandate, as well as collections and exhibition policies that focus on community relevance.

4. Inspired Leadership It is often said that leadership is about doing the right thing, while management is about doing the thing right. Most museums are focused on conducting their professional work in the right way. But to be institutions of influence, museums need inspired leaders who strive to do the right thing within the mission and mandate of the museum. Initiating programs to integrate new residents into the city or working with a board to engage new funders requires inspired leadership. In the face of decreased government support for museums, the updated Cultural Heritage Blueprint from the Museum Association in the UK1 recommends strengthening leadership and entrepreneurial skills in the sector.

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There are some notable projects that support the development of inspired leaders in museums. The Getty Leadership Institute (GLI) in Claremont, California, is probably the longest running, offering executive education since 1979 and developing “thought leaders” in the museum field. GLI partners with PADEM (Progammes d’Aide et de Développement destinés aux Enfants du Monde) in Mexico, an intensive program for professionals at the management level in museums and cultural institutions. The London-based Clore Leadership Program aims to develop creative learning among cultural leaders through fellowships offering workshops and residential courses, extended placement, individually selected training, mentoring and coaching, as well as board development. This group is now working with the University of Hong Kong to create Asia’s first Advanced Cultural Leadership Program. The Women’s International Leadership Development (WILD) of the Balkan Museum Network supports female leaders in the cultural sector of six western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia). Its goals are to enhance cultural understanding, develop staff competence, facilitate the exchange of ideas and exhibitions, and make the museums more inviting to the public. They are also working on a series of major projects around access for the disabled. To exercise soft power, museums need to develop a deep understanding of what it means to be a civil society institution and to train leaders at all levels of the museum organization to do the right thing while not compromising professional museum standards of objectivity and balance. Change is challenging and museums looking to strengthen their soft power can be met with deep internal resistance. Strategic planning2 can help museum board and staff to become more effective and inspired leaders.

5. Opportunities for Hiring and Advancement Reflecting the Diversity of the City Museums with their vast collections from many cultures should be magnets for women, people of color, youth, the disabled, indigenous people and immigrants. Museums could be places where people who are marginalized and even excluded from public life go to build their confidence and their resumés. Yet museums reflect most of the inequalities in the work world outside their walls. Women museum

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employees in the US, for example, who form the majority in most museums,3 still earn on average less than men in the same positions, and are largely excluded from top, higher-paying positions in the larger museums. As of 2014, women led just a quarter of the biggest art museums in the United States and Canada, and earn about a third less than their male counterparts.4 Among midsize and smaller museums with smaller budgets, women dominate the leadership. Museums also fall short when it comes to hiring marginalized people. Eighty percent of the museum workforce in American museums is white, while 12 percent are African American, 5.2 percent “other” including multiracial, 2.9 percent Asian/ Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and 0.8 percent American Indian/Alaska Native.5 When seen in the context of the urban demographics, this is a poor standard. Proactively hiring people who reflect the demographics of the city where the museum is located will empower museum workers to boost the museum’s influence and credibility in such arenas as social inclusion, poverty reduction and intercultural understanding.

6. Meaningful Volunteer and Internship Programs In the knowledge economy, jobs are complex and there is a very high premium on work experience. There are three ways of gaining work experience: formal internships associated with academic programs, volunteering and unpaid, nonacademic internships.6 The latter category is subject to controversy, as these people are seen as exploited labor taking the place of what should be paid staff. Museums should recruit nonacademic interns when they can provide a structured program of training that benefits the interns as well as the museum. The same can be said about volunteers. Volunteers have always played significant roles in the museum sector and this strengthens the museum’s role in society. Volunteering is a recognized engine of the social commons, creating social capital, sustaining lifelong learning and skills acquisition, fostering social inclusion and expanding networks.7 As institutions of informal learning, museums offer volunteers unique opportunities. In the US, 95 percent of museums use volunteers, with approximately six volunteers to every paid staff person. The latest Canadian study found that there are three volunteers for every paid museum position. Philip Katz and Elizabeth Merritt estimated that somewhere between 1 million and 3 million people volunteer in US museums, providing an estimate of $3.28 billion of

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contributed labor per year.8 While volunteering is unpaid, it is not without cost. Museums need to provide orientation, training, supervision, evaluation, recognition, records keeping and risk management. As institutions of informal learning, museums benefit not only participants but also cities. The paradox is that those who could most benefit from volunteering and internships often cannot afford to take on unpaid work. Volunteers in museums tend to be those who are not the primary earners in a family or who have independent sources of income. Can cities and museums work together to develop volunteer and nonacademic intern programs for greater social inclusion? In so doing, can they exercise their soft power to influence other organizations to follow?

7. The Best Employers in the Creative Economy Today museum work has been professionalized in many but not all parts of the world. Museum workers often have specialized degrees in a particular discipline, such as art history or archeology, plus a generalist degree in museum studies. This is a marked contrast to the museums of a few generations ago. These were staffed mainly by “amateurs,” people who love their work. Despite the highly educated nature of many museum workers (an AAM survey showed that 90 percent of US museum employees have attained at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to about 30 percent of the general US population), museum jobs are too often characterized by low pay, long hours and a high degree of job insecurity. Quality of working conditions, from life-work balance to benefits such as parental leave, health care and retirement, are important components of all work. Museums as knowledge leaders should aspire to achieve high standards in this area. All museum positions from conservation and curatorship to security and maintenance have the potential to be creative, whether full time, part time, contract, intern or volunteer. To fully exercise soft power, museums should be recognized among the city’s best employers. Museum workers are on the front lines of community and professional service as citizen diplomats, innovators, educators, conveners and problem solvers.

II. OPERATIONS: THE SOCIAL COMMONS The idea of the social commons is based on the historical practice of reserving part of the village land for free use by everyone for purposes as varied as grazing animals,

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washing clothes and community festivals. The social commons has become a symbol for today’s voluntary, nonprofit sector, an image of free, public-spirited, selfgoverning collaboration, whether in physical facilities or in the virtual world. Jeremy Rifkin has developed the concept of the “collaborative commons” to describe how this phenomenon has translated into the 21st century. With the exponential growth of the third sector, the social commons is increasingly a source of soft power in cities. Are museums part of the social commons? The answer is a definite maybe. Libraries are a well-recognized element of the social commons, providing knowledge, connectivity and meeting space, all for free. And libraries exercise significant soft power in promoting literacy, social inclusion and community collaboration. Museums—with their beautiful collections, changing exhibitions, social spaces, knowledgeable staff, online presence and central locations—have many of the attributes of a social commons. Yet the very people museums seek to influence are systematically excluded by high admission charges, awkward operating hours and perceptions that museums are not a place for “people like me.” For those museums choosing soft power, it will be important to review operating policies to become more like a social or collaborative commons and less like an exclusive club.

8. Free Admission With museum admission charges rising to very high levels, especially in larger cities, museums are becoming too expensive for families, students, artists, unemployed and underemployed people. Even the well employed think twice about paying a hefty admission charge. When asked about the high cost of visiting their institution, museum professionals will often point to the economy of their membership scheme. But that just reinforces the image of the museum as a club, not a commons. The Dallas Museum of Art recently made not only its admission free but also its membership program, resulting in a 300 percent increase in members.9 Many American museums are taking note, and there is even a network of museums aspiring to free admission. There is a significant literature on the strategy and impact of museum admission charges.10 There are five macro-findings worth reviewing here: • Admission charges account for only 10–15 percent of most museums’ revenue. • Extensive studies on the results of the UK dropping admission charges to national museums in 2001 demonstrate that attendance has increased

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dramatically, including the breadth of attendance in terms of social class, ethnicity and age. • This finding applies to Asia, where museum charges are lower but still high relative to income: when China introduced free admission to over 1,800 museums in 2009, attendance levels increased on average by 50 percent, attracting visitors such as poor urban migrants11 who had not previously attended a museum. • The strategy of free admission to the museum and its permanent collection but charging for special exhibitions has been accepted by the public. • People do not attend museums because they are free. Therefore free museums need to offer an excellent meaningful experience and communicate it. If they expect that free admission will attract new visitors, they need to reach out to those communities and invite them in.12 Is the museum a club or a commons? How museums, their boards and their cities address admission charges will be decisive in answering that question and in predicting how effective the museum can be in activating its soft power.

9. Responsive Operating Hours  Most museums are open when city residents are at work or at school. The result is that about 50 percent of attendance is on weekends and holidays. There are many people who could visit during weekdays if they saw a reason for doing so. Cities are home to knowledge workers with flexible working hours, an increasing number of retired and semiretired people in the global North, large mobile student populations and growing numbers of unemployed or underemployed people and out-of-school or out-of-work youth in the global South. When the museum chooses to become a collaborative commons, people will participate for different reasons and at different times—to enjoy a favorite exhibit, meet friends, conduct research for a school project, develop a hobby or to learn a language. The model of weekend attendance with or without admission charges is based on the idea of a “full-day experience” or social outing. But this is not the only model. Museums can coordinate with cities to make opening hours work for city dwellers. Late-night or all-night museum events in many cities around the world attract hundreds of thousands of tourists and residents to enjoy the museums and the city streets as a social commons. Toronto

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regularly attracts 1.5 million participants to its 24-hour Nuit Blanche, which also delights restaurants, bars, taxis and hotels. The City of Sydney has adopted the Open Sydney policy13 that seeks to diversify its nighttime offerings beyond bars and restaurants. It is urging museums, libraries and others to consider expanding their operating hours and supporting cultural engagement within the nighttime economy. Museums can be available to more people simply by changing from the standard 9–5 or 9–6 hours to 12–8 p.m. or 2–10 p.m., while still allowing school groups to enjoy the museum in the otherwise quiet mornings.

10. Inviting More People In For people who see the museum entrance as a threshold that they are reluctant to cross, free admission and flexible operating hours are not enough. Many people need to be welcomed or even invited by the museum to gain the confidence to venture through the doors. The Institute for Canadian Citizenship, a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the integration of new citizens into Canadian life, gives every new Canadian a Cultural Access Pass that entitles their family to a year’s free admission to more than 1,000 museums, parks and heritage sites across the country. The culture passes issued by New York City give much needed basic identification information to undocumented immigrants while providing free access to museums and other cultural places.14 The Vale Cultura in Brazil is a state-issued cultural coupon. In return for a tax break, employers provide 90 percent of a monthly stipend (of about $20 US) for Brazilians who earn up to five times the minimum wage. Brazilians can use the coupon for widely defined culture, including books, movies, dance lessons, tickets to theaters, cinemas, museums and circuses.15 Museums can reduce invisible barriers to entry by producing material in multiple languages or in language accessible to second-language speakers,16 ensuring clear way finding and signage and promoting the museum programs and resources across diverse platforms. Museums can appear to be places of privilege for the privileged. Inviting people in not only counters that perception, it also establishes a broader base for the museum, widening its influence.

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“Coexistence: The Art of Living Together,” Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem

A “Coexistence” exhibit outside the Bundestag, Berlin. Photo courtesy of Museum on the Seam.

“Coexistence” is an outdoor art exhibition developed by Museum on the Seam, a private contemporary art museum in Jerusalem, in response to ongoing violence in the region. The exhibition consists of 60 large-format images by 42 artists from 18 countries, chosen by an international jury. It was first exhibited in 2001 on the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, linking the gates from the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Quarters. Since then, the month-long exhibition has been displayed in a central location in over 24 cities worldwide facing their own issues of coexistence. The exhibition includes quotes in four languages from leading thinkers, philosophers, writers and artists. “Coexistence” invites a broad cross-section of people to discuss ways in which they can contribute to an environment of tolerance and peace through the exhibition itself as well as accompanying activities tailored to the host city’s context.

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III. COLLECTIONS AND DOCUMENTATION: ADAPTIVE STRATEGIES Collections and their management are the most fundamental functions of museums, representing about two-thirds of museums’ direct and indirect operating costs.17 These functions are often seen as being solely about the past. But museum collections have always been part of an adaptive strategy for managing social change, reinforcing what a culture and its elites considered to be of value and promoting standards of science, esthetics, historical analysis and language.18 Today museums help people adapt to change by revealing the many facets of meaning in their collections and by stimulating a deeper understanding of the complex historical and contemporary processes these collections represent. The broader the collection, the greater the range of collection documentation. The more research that is conducted into museum collections, the more evident it becomes that there are many stories to be told about each object. Museums display only a small percentage of their collections; as much as 95 percent may be kept in storage for future exhibitions, loans and research. Yet it is apparent that there are gaping holes in collections of mainstream museums in relation to people of color, colonized people, minorities, women and the working classes. Even when the collection includes objects and works of art from these groups, sufficient research has not been conducted. Given the difficult past of museums with respect to collecting, it is right to approach this function with suspicion. Can museum collections, many of which have been built over time on the spoils of war and assumptions of cultural superiority (the soft edge of hard power), be transformed into soft power tools that recognize the knowledge of the many rather than a few, and are more egalitarian and transparent than in the past? Here are two adaptive strategies: collection development for social equity and tagging for participation and accessing data.

11. Collection Development for Social Equity Many new types of museums have been created to acquire and preserve collections that were once thought nonexistent or insignificant. Feminist artist collective The Guerilla Girls, for example, has been taking on the art establishment for years, protesting the absence of women artists in the collections of many major museums. Reflecting the rising influence of women, museums have responded. In 1987, the

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National Museum of Women in the Arts opened in Washington with an international collection of more than 4,000 works by women artists and a database of 18,000 women artists. In 2005, the Brooklyn Museum of Art inaugurated The Study Center for Women’s Art, where Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party is on permanent display among changing exhibitions by women artists. And in 2009, the Pompidou Center reinstalled one of its huge floors to display work by women artists from its collection of modern art and called the exhibit “Elle.” The distinguished curator Okwui Enwezor has been one of the leading voices demanding that museums include anticolonial perspectives with more focus on artists of color, something he himself has achieved in numerous exhibitions, including “The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994.” History museums, science museums and art museums have the opportunity to expand their collections to reflect the ideas and styles of living in the city around them. Yet as much as global cities are sites of a growing and alarming inequality, they also present opportunities for alternative forms of citizenship to emerge. Museums can be strategic in collection development and reach out to new communities to collect objects replete with new meanings and ideas, particularly in the realm of intangible heritage like stories, songs, dance and performance, which were previously impossible to capture but now can be digitally recorded, stored and displayed.

Rapid Response Collecting Strategy, Victoria and Albert Museum, London The V&A initiated its Rapid Response Collecting Strategy to acquire and display art, design and architecture-related objects that reflect global events, new technologies, political change and/or pop culture. Rather than wait for these objects to be accepted as good design over time, as is typically the case with their collections, the Rapid Response objects are collected and displayed at the time that they are relevant in the news. The exhibits include contextual information about the impact and significance of these objects. The first acquisition was the Liberator handgun, the world’s first 3D-printed weapon, which raised questions about the benefits of this technology and the unregulated sharing of design through the Web. Other collection items include a computer that workers wear on their wrists, allowing employers to allocate, monitor and verify tasks (causing concern about privacy and personal data)

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and a pair of Primark jeans made near the Plaza factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which collapsed in 2013, resulting in 1,129 deaths. This display raises questions about our responsibilities as consumers toward the conditions in which “fast fashion” is created. The objects expand the V&A’s collection of the material culture of the 21st century and provide new research and perspectives on contemporary life around the world.

The Liberator handgun, the world’s first 3D-printed firearm, acquired by the V&A. Photo courtesy of Defense Distributed.

12. Social Tagging for Participation The ways in which content is documented and tagged in a museum collection enables people to search it for their own use, whether to tell their stories, explore their past or solve problems. Documentation and tagging are in the professional competence of registrars and curators who document the collection through a written description of each item, its provenance, its significance and condition. Before the digital revolution, tags were key words recorded in a museum’s collections

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database. With the digitization of collections, tagging has come to the fore, referring to the ways keywords are assigned to an object to aid in classification and searchability. In the early 2000s, there was a lot of activity around the potential of “folksonomies” and “social tagging,” ways to engage visitors and nonprofessionals by assigning descriptive tags to online collections. The idea was that museum knowledge could be made more useful for and by its end-users, so tags were assigned using the hashtag symbol, #. Although the social tagging movement has yet to take hold, there remains a need for people with little knowledge of the subject matter to be able to search collections. The Smithsonian, the Getty and the Brooklyn Museum have led the way by developing folksonomies that seek to make their collections more useable for a broader public.

13. Museums as Infomediaries: Accessing Data Because of their expertise in communicating complex ideas, museums help people adapt to an environment awash in increasing quantities of data. Museums can make use of new technologies in order to enhance these core skills. Successful museum collaborations with platforms such as Google Art Project and the GLAM-Wiki initiative—in which museums and Wikipedians (those who contribute to Wikipedia pages) develop Wikipedia entries using museum resources—are powerful combinations that use the Web to distribute new knowledge. Museums, as with other civil society organizations, are also bridges between government and citizens, particularly when it comes to understanding and interpreting data. Museums can stage exhibitions, for example, that communicate government initiatives. In South Africa, museums have been effectively used to communicate health and behavior information relating to HIV/AIDS. Such use of independent museums to push a government agenda may seem risky, but as major sources of data, both government and museums can work together to respond to such medical challenges. There is a movement towards linked open data among Western museums. All museum data (mainly digitized collections) and metadata (information about the collections) is free to the public for any purpose and is made available on the Web in a way that can be easily transformed by software developers for their own purposes. This means that millions of archival photos, maps, images of artwork,

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3D models of artifacts, sculpture and craft, texts, sheet music and recordings, films and videos are being made available in high resolution to anyone for any purpose. App developers, researchers and artists can access such material to innovate new products and services. Europeana, the digital library of Europe, holds digital copies of 30 million objects from more than 2,300 cultural institutions from 36 countries. It released all of its metadata in 2012 under a creative commons waiver, making it freely available for reuse. In 2013, 4 million visitors from 229 countries came to the Europeana website. Visits using smartphones and mobile are growing four times faster than visits from desktop computers.

IV. RESEARCH AND PRODUCTION: THE SHARING ECONOMY Museums that produce and disseminate new knowledge are part of the sharing economy that produces goods, services and ideas to benefit society. This is a strong soft power platform. Knowledge plus creativity applied to present challenges is the most important currency in the creative economy of cities. It is also an area with great potential when it comes to developing soft power. Museums and cities are not only workplaces but also resources for the creative class. As places of informal learning, they are the ultimate creativity booster. They help people make new connections between disciplines, between the past and the present, and between different ideas or modes of expression. Museums are expanding their role beyond the keeper of treasures and information about them. They can also be producers within this creative economy, drawing on the deep knowledge that is information plus history, context and perspective.

14. Developing Cultures of Creativity How can museums nurture a culture of creativity throughout the organization? Google, Facebook and Amazon are well-known examples of companies that encourage a culture of creativity through playful workplace design, game rooms, collaborative and flexible work spaces, and minimizing hierarchy.19 Risk and failure are fundamental to creativity. Without embracing both, it is difficult to be truly creative. For the most part, museums have avoided both creativity and instrumentalism, preferring to expand knowledge in their specific fields

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of expertise. Museums that wish to foster creativity among others must themselves adopt a culture of creativity that requires new forms of management and administration. In their book Creativity in Museum Practice,20 Rainey Tisdale and Linda Norris identify ways that museums can be more creative: • Network inside and outside the museum field and look outside museums for inspiration. • Share what you are learning with people around you. • Facilitate open communication and access to information. • Creative processes consist of five steps: preparation, incubation, insight, elaboration and evaluation. • Tinker and prototype: put many ideas into the pipeline. • Reward success and failure, punish inaction. • Question rules and reframe problems. • Avoid hoarding, territoriality, silos, hierarchy and lack of attention. In addition to (and even as a result of) transforming their institutional practice, museums can create catalyzing environments for the city’s creative workers. The Innovation Lab for Museums was launched in 2012 as a partner program between the American Alliance of Museums and EmcArts. Museums are invited to submit a proposal, and successful applicants are taken through an 18–24-month, four-step facilitated process based on an innovation lab model of researching, prototyping, evaluating and disseminating innovative responses to organizational challenges. As part of the program, each museum is awarded a $40,000 grant to help accelerate the prototyping of its project. The first round of proposals indicated that barriers to creativity were within the structure of museums themselves, and that museums are apprehensive to take on risky projects.21 In Europe, the Cultural Innovation International Prize is a biennial competition launched in 2014 by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB). The goal is to stimulate innovation in the field of culture, focusing on the importance of research.

15. Collaboration and Exchange The soft power of civil society is based on the strength of its networks and the extent to which it is able to collaborate for the greater good. Innovation in cities

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is created by “combinatorial innovations” created at the intersection of different disciplines and ideas.22 International exchange programs, visiting scholar programs and conferences are ways to create opportunities for exchange and collaboration among museum staff. However, museum leadership should also encourage staff to join city-focused networks outside the museum sector, such as public health, poverty reduction, immigrant assistance and affordable housing.

IDEAS CITY, Biennial Festival, New York City

Storefront for Art and Architecture’s “Spacebuster,” an inflatable mobile structure used during Ideas City. Photo by Ryan Collerd..

Founded by the New Museum in 2011, IDEAS CITY explores the future of cities and how arts and culture can enhance and create vitality in “today’s metropolises.” The festival includes a conference, a workshop, a StreetFest (artists, architects, poets, technologists, historians, community activists, entrepreneurs and ecologists share their ideas for the city) and the presentation of more than 100 independent, site-specific collaborative projects from

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cultural, educational and civic organizations investigating new forms and concepts to engage the public. These include a competition for the design, management and construction of an innovative temporary outdoor structure that creates new ways for people to gather and engage in urban public activities. In 2013, 240 cultural partner organizations and 65,000 visitors participated in the four festival platforms. “The cultural sphere is still a relatively untapped source of enormously powerful creative capital, especially in its potential to stimulate economic development and foster greater innovation in other fields. The IDEAS CITY initiative is an unprecedented step in expanding both our institution’s mission and its potential as a community hub, drawing the creative population together as agents for change.” —Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director, New Museum23

16. Platform for New Research and Production Many museums have introduced spaces where people can make things. Variously called maker spaces, hacker spaces, media labs, FabLabs or incubation spaces, they offer a collaborative area, expertise, access to research and collections and equipment—3D printers, scanners, digital drawing tablets, video equipment, sewing machines, tools such as drill presses, soldering irons and cutters, etc. This reflects a broader trend in businesses and universities towards a design-thinking methodology, characterized by research involving hands-on discovery and rapid prototyping, which brings an idea to its end-users quickly and then improves it, based on their responses.24 Science museums in particular have gravitated towards creating opportunities for people to “tinker” and make things as a way to learn science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Museums that have invested in such maker spaces find that benefits for visitors include increased motivation and persistence, enhanced skills in process or problem solving, storytelling and sharing and an increased understanding of context.25 “Making” also fosters agency, empowering participants to consider themselves as people who produce, particularly at the nexus of technology and physical materials.26 Less frequently, these maker spaces are yielding new innovations that are being picked up outside the museum. Innovations from the ArtScience Labs at Le Laboratoire in Paris resulted in a plant-based air filtration device awarded

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a 2008 Invention of the Year by Popular Science magazine. Real innovation can happen when museums partner with private-sector companies, universities and other organizations. Museum research projects are another opportunity for museums to leverage their collections to generate new knowledge. Research of the past can give insights about the future, as seen in the Museums for Climate Change project, in which science museums, universities and others are coming together to find ways of predicting and possibly influencing climate change. Cities can take advantage of the relative permanence of museums, linked with other civil society anchor institutions such as universities to conduct long-term research projects that can then be communicated by the museum.

Science Gallery, Dublin, Ireland Science Gallery at Trinity College, Dublin, specializes in programs and exhibitions that combine art and science. The gallery is participating in three research projects as part of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7): the StudioLab, 13 centers of scientific research, arts and experimental design from 12 European countries working together to develop new approaches to environmental, technological and social challenges; the KiiCS project (Knowledge Incubation in Innovation and Creation in Science), which gathers scientists and artists to bring science closer to society in order to stimulate new ideas in science communication and “improve quality of life across Europe”; and the Places City Partnerships (PCPs), which seeks to develop effective scientific communication policies in partnership with local policy makers. The PCPs program is coordinated by Ecsite, the European network of science centers and museums. Science Gallery founder Michael John Gorman is determined to further exercise scientific soft power by creating an international network of art/science galleries and universities—the Global Science Gallery Network—using seed funding from Google to create spaces where people can actively engage with cutting-edge science, technology and art.

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Oscillator at the Science Gallery, Dublin. Visitors explore the ways in which science, technology and art converge. Photo by Freddie Stevens.

17. Mobile and Knowledge Diffusion Mobile is fast closing the digital divide, giving more people than ever access to networks and information. The Web may be for countries, but mobile is for cities. Cities are leading the way in terms of “connected governance,”27 using mobile as a way to connect with residents, particularly in facilitating service delivery and opening up forms of engagement. As a result of Dubai’s smart government strategy, people can extend parking tickets, carry with them their medical information, find and apply for jobs, complain about poor service and suggest improvements, all on their mobile phones. In Ghana, the “Our City, Our Say” and the IncluCity projects use Citizen Report Cards and text messaging to enable citizens, especially poor people and women, to identify gaps in service delivery at the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly. Cities worldwide are using mobile to explore new ways of building relationships with people. Museums should be doing the same.

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V. EDUCATION, PUBLIC PROGRAMS AND EXHIBITIONS: CULTURAL ACCELERATORS In the city, the museum can remain a sleeping giant or become a cultural accelerator, converting the passive experience of rapid change into the capacity to actively manage change. If it chooses to be a cultural accelerator, then public programs, education and exhibitions, the public face of museums, would be the principal strategies. In 2000, the then-Department of Culture, Media and Sport in the UK linked museum funding to social inclusion targets. Concurrently, cities formed networks, such as Cities of Migration and Cities for Active Inclusion, that promote social inclusion.28

18. Bridging and Bonding Sociologist Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) identifies two behaviors that are important in building social capital, by which is meant the ability for people to solve problems together: bonding and bridging. Bonding is when people in a homogenous group come together to support one another. For vulnerable people in particular (indigenous peoples, youth and new immigrants), becoming a member of these groups can be an important form of empowerment. The flipside of bonding is group cohesion to the exclusion of others, exclusive patronage (only supporting people from the same group) and destructive or antisocial group behavior, such as gangs or vigilante groups. Bridging, on the other hand, refers to social networks among socially heterogeneous groups. Groups that bridge share and exchange information and ideas and can build consensus among people with different backgrounds. Putnam identifies cultural activities as highly effective for both bridging and bonding. Museums and cities have a strong role to play together in bridging and bonding. They bring people together at similar life stages (such as families in children’s museums) or with identity in common (African Americans in first-voice museums) where they can share experiences. Museums also bridge among identities, offering a public place to bring different groups together around similar interests. Both bridging and bonding are important components of soft power because they are activities that create strong networks and communities that are empowered, have agency, create change and attract others.

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19. Connected Learning The advent of digital technology has fundamentally changed many things, not least the ways in which we learn. Information can be accessed anywhere and everywhere. This does not mean that learning always happens organically, however. Connected Learning is a pedagogical approach that seeks to guide, facilitate and enhance learning across the spaces where it already happens (schools, the Internet and at informal learning institutions). It supports learning that is interest powered, peer supported and academically oriented, and emphasizes production, networking and social connections.29 Museums and libraries are considered important informal learning places within these networks. Connected Learning is itself a network of academics and researchers who engage in thorough evaluation and knowledge sharing of connected learning initiatives through a common Web platform, webinars, YouTube videos, an active Twitter presence, and conferences and meetings among projects following the same methodology. Connected Learning projects are a strong example of soft power in action. They seek to influence the way learning is facilitated through civil society networks within cities, a strong degree of participation by all stakeholders, continuous evaluation and feedback. Hive Learning Networks and Communities operate along Connected Learning principles. These have been set up in seven North American cities and are currently being set up in India and Indonesia. They comprise museums, libraries, informal learning spaces and afterschool programs that work together to prepare young people for school, work and civic life. Established in 2009, the Chicago Hive Learning Network has 57 local member organizations across Chicago, of which 20 percent are museums, gardens, a zoo and an aquarium. Recent projects include a program at the Field Museum that paired teens with the museum’s research scientist and its Grainger Digital Studio in a project that produced geolocation-based games, catapults and musical instruments. Another project was the NVAM (National Veterans of America Museum) “Out Loud!,” a website that seeks to foster intergenerational connections among the voices of veterans, youth and the community. “From Here to There: Embodied Conversations with Teens” is another project bringing together teens from Chicago public schools, the Chicago History Museum Department of Education and the College of Education of the University of Illinois at Chicago to identify, design and support learning pathways for youth, including maps and employing mobile technologies to engage with the city.

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20. Learning for a Lifetime Museums have been leaders in lifelong learning for the past generation. In the context of soft power today, the magnitude of need for skills and knowledge development has increased greatly. Thomas Piketty identifies investment in training and skills as the main motor for productivity growth and the reduction of inequality.30 This is a major concern for cities, which produce 80 percent of the world’s GDP. Cities need all the help they can get to increase the skills of their residents. Museums, libraries, schools, colleges and universities are natural allies and increasingly work together to create learning spaces. These open learning environments address specialized needs, such as those of knowledge workers who are economically and socially active for a longer period of time and who, on average, change careers and move more often in their lifetimes than previous generations. Cities in the global South are looking to ensure the continual up-skilling and education of their citizens, particularly among young people 13–24 years old. In the global North, where populations are aging, museums are developing programs that have a positive impact on the mental health and well-being of senior citizens, as well as strengthening forms of agency and empowerment among a sector of the population that is often excluded.31 An example of engaging people of all ages in museum learning is the Voluntarios Culturales Mayores para enseñar los Museos de España a niños, jóvenes y jubilados (Cultural volunteers to raise awareness of Spanish museums among children, teenagers and retired people). The program was established in 1993 as part of the European Year of the Elderly and Solidarity between Generations. Over 20 years later, it involves more than 1,200 older volunteers (55 years and over) who teach children, teenagers and retirees in 130 museums across Spain and serve 100,000 people each year. The profile of volunteers includes psychologists, doctors, economists, engineers, lawyers, professors of different disciplines, administrators, housewives, etc., with medium or higher levels of education.

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MuseoPambata, Manila, Philippines

Outreach storytelling at the Museo Pambata, Manila, the first interactive children’s museum in the Philippines. Photo by Jiana Defensor, Museo Pambata.

MuseoPambata opened in 1994 as the first interactive children’s museum in the Philippines. The museum encourages children, families and school groups to use all of their senses to explore themes, concepts and ideas at their own pace in a fun and collaborative way, an alternative to the formal classroom. The museum has seven rooms on themes that include Kalikasan (Environment) and Karagatan (Under the Sea), Maynila Noon (Old Manila), Paglaki Ko (Career Options) and Katawan Ko (My Body Works), as well as an outdoor theater, education programs and a mobile library, a reading campaign with books, learning aids and storytellers for economically disadvantaged children and out-of-school youth. The museum was started by early childhood educator Nina Lim-Yuson and her mother, former secretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development. The City of Manila provided space, and the museum’s board raised funds from private sector foundations. The museum serves 200,000 children and adults a year.

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21. Engaging with All Forms of Tourism Tourism is an important global force not only economically but also in spreading influence and ideas and building reputations. The impact of leisure tourism in terms of cross-cultural understanding is well documented, and museums are in general well positioned when it comes to leisure tourists, and more specifically cultural tourists (those motivated wholly or in part by culture). However, other forms of tourism may be equally important when it comes to soft power. Business tourism, VFR tourism (Visiting Friends and Relatives), Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) tourism, learning tourism, “voluntourism” and creative tourism are all forms of tourism with implicit forms of engagement, not only with what countries display (their brands), but with the residents who build the country’s identity from within. Although museum professionals are often themselves MICE tourists when they attend an international conference or meeting, museums in general are less adept at connecting with these other forms of tourists than they are with the traditional leisure or cultural tourist. Museums and cities can work together to create ways to reach out and engage with the entire range of tourists.

22. Encouraging Contextual Intelligence Contextual intelligence is a skill that helps people figure out what tactics are the most appropriate for objectives within new situations. Joseph Nye identifies it as essential to “smart power,” the ability to know when to deploy soft or hard power in any given situation.32 This form of intelligence is crucial in city-based knowledge economies. Contextual intelligence requires that people evaluate trends, draw on past knowledge and experience, be flexible, be able to assess the strengths and weaknesses of various stakeholders, and ask the right questions. It requires cultural insights, emotional intelligence and excellent analytical capacity. So how do people, whether new or established in the city, gain contextual intelligence to help them thrive in a dynamic environment with fast-changing rules of engagement? Museum exhibitions that draw on deep knowledge gained from an analysis of events and behavior over time (a rare form of knowledge in the “immediate” Internet information age) help people gain contextual intelligence, understanding how ideas have developed, who is in power, which strategies have worked and why. For exhibitions to support contextual intelligence, they need to be planned

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as such. Museum curators, interpretive planners, designers and education staff should consider how an exhibit can enable all visitors to learn about present-day circumstances and, equally important, build their skills in analysis, assessment and emotional intelligence. Rather than simply gazing, visitors should be challenged to think and experiment in new ways, thus enhancing their potential to create contextual intelligence.

23. Presenting Useful Ideas in Useful Places A criterion of usefulness implies a deep consideration of the visitors and the ways in which they are likely to encounter such ideas. Pop-up museums and temporary exhibitions seek to go to where people are, presenting ideas that may be useful at a moment in time. This is different from a museum’s strategy of outreach in which existing exhibitions or collections travel to people away from their sites. The soft power approach to outreach is how cities and museums can work together to conceive of exhibitions at their core that may not have a permanent home in a museum, but that aim to be exciting and engaging wherever they may be. Useful places are also not necessarily physical places. The mainstream media continue to be where many people encounter ideas, whether radio, television and webTV or print and online news. Cross-media exhibitions that involve museums, a media outlet and other civil society organizations ensure that people find museum content useful and relevant in their daily lives. The often cited example is the hugely popular 2010 radio program, A History of the World in 100 Objects,33 a cross-media series that the British Museum produced for Radio 4 of the BBC, later published as a blog, a CD package, a DVD and a book.

Vaeggen (The Wall), Copenhagen and Cairo “The Wall” is a multimedia pop-up museum housed in a former shipping container that the Museum of Copenhagen toured to neighborhoods in the capital city. Four multitouch plasma screens 12 meters long and 2 meters high invited visitors to discover Copenhagen through a 3D digital model of the city, comprised of thousands of images from the museum’s collection crafted into a multilayered cultural landscape. Approximately 4,000 visitors per day explored the digital cityscape by

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A visitor explores the digital cityscape of Copenhagen using The Wall’s four multitouch plasma screens. Photo courtesy of Museum of Copenhagen.

neighborhood, historic period and theme, adding their own memories, recollections and photographs to the wall by uploading them from the specially designed website, their mobile phones and card-reader stations. One of the most popular aspects of the wall was the personalized postcards. Almost 500 postcards per day were sent out by visitors to friends and family. This innovative approach has been adopted by the Danish Egyptian Dialogue Institute in Cairo. Building on the core technology and concepts of the original, the Cairo Wall will democratize the production of collective memory, history and knowledge. It will create its own public platform for the production and celebration of the cultural and natural heritages of Cairo in a way that is unique to the Middle East and Arab World.  

24. Making Space for New Perspectives: Reframing the Agenda Soft power in international relations relates to the way that someone can “frame the agenda.” Museum exhibitions frame agendas when they present ideas by including or excluding objects.

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Museum exhibitions of art, history or science (or a combination of all three) can be an important space for contested ideas. Museums should not be seen as merely exhibiting “safe” ideas but presenting balanced and well-researched viewpoints. This balance is the basis for public trust. The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) hosted a unique project called Gapuwiyak Calling,34 a mobile-based project from the Yolngu clan (an Australian aboriginal community) that brought American mobile audiences new forms of song, dance and contemporary collages reflecting more traditional forms of aboriginal art. The AMNH made space for new perspectives by reframing the agenda of both traditional aboriginal and contemporary art.

Gallery of Conscience, Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico “Empowering Women: Artisan Cooperatives That Transform Communities,” an Opening Gallery Talk with Kenyan artist Rebecca Lolosoli at the Gallery of Conscience in 2010. Photo by Bob Smith.

Folk arts have long been key to the economic and cultural vitality of Santa Fe, with its unique confluence of Native American, Spanish Colonial, EuroAmerican and more recent immigrant and refugee heritages. The impact of the arts on the city’s economy is six times the US national average and twice that of the next-ranked city. The Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe has recently capitalized on this strength by placing both local and global folk artists at the center of its plan to revision itself as a new kind of civic gathering place. It started in 2010, with the inauguration of The Gallery of Conscience, an innovative space designed to incubate experimental and collaborative community-based exhibitions,

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programs, residencies, mentorships and other programs that draw on the words and works of both local and global folk artists to explore social justice or human rights issues at home and abroad. Its inaugural exhibit, “Empowering Women: Artisan Cooperatives That Transform Communities,” opened in conjunction with the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market in 2010, and featured the stories of 10 artists whose folk art cooperatives offer direct service on significant issues, including women facing domestic violence, healing after genocide, becoming leaders, battling illiteracy and preserving dying heritages across generations.—Suzanne Seriff, Ph.D, director, Gallery of Conscience, Museum of International Folk Art

VI. COMMUNICATION AND MARKETING: POWER CONVERSION The process of turning soft power resources into behavioral outcomes is called power conversion. Communication and marketing have strong roles to play in power conversion, looking beyond brand to forms of more interactive engagement. Whereas brands are a one-way message, social media offer a conversation. Museum marketing departments need to consider the conversation carefully. The issuing of an active invitation to encourage diverse people to cross the museum threshold (digitally and virtually) is a collaborative project that the museum’s marketing department, visitor services, programming and outreach can assist. A similarly collaborative effort is needed to encourage action among a museum’s constituents. Soft power can best be developed through a communication strategy that focuses equally on making museums known, accessible and relevant.

25. Participative Stakeholder Communication Museums seek to ensure that they communicate effectively with elected officials and civil servants in order to press their case for support. In the soft power stakes, all museum supporters are stakeholders, and the practice of stakeholder communication may be more effective than those of commercial marketing and branding, requiring more networking and less messaging. The core of participative stakeholder communication is a detailed and nuanced understanding of audience and an acknowledgment that different people or stakeholders require different forms of communication. Other best practices of stakeholder communication include

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transparency, as results both good and bad need to be communicated in timely and responsive ways. For museums, this means that programming, Web and marketing need to work seamlessly together with a commitment to evaluate impact. Stakeholders can grow to become partners, and partners can extend the museum’s soft power by sharing space and platforms on matters of mutual interest.

26. Museums Giving Context and Depth to the News Museums are more relevant than ever to people’s lives, yet they are rarely represented in the media. The public broadly believes that museums should exist, but many do not feel the benefit of museums in their daily lives. Museums need to be proactive in ensuring that not only is the value of museums understood, but also that it is regularly referenced in the forums where people learn about the world, whether in the mainstream media via traditional broadcast channels (print, radio, television), via Web-broadcast platforms or social media. People need to see museum spokespeople talking not only about museums or culture or heritage, but also offering perspectives on society, human rights, the economy, the environment and other pressing issues in the news.

VII. SOFT POWER FUNDING Museums have never had enough money to fulfill all their aspirations. Today many museums are supported by a complex mix of funding that varies by museum type and board structure, location, mission, stakeholders and partners. There is a general rule of thumb that about two-thirds of museum operating funds come from the combination of government and endowment, while one-third is earned from service fees, retail and food services, rentals, events and admissions, grants, sponsorship and donations. Since the cost of acquiring, maintaining and preserving collections accounts for about two-thirds of the operating costs of many museums,35 it is necessary for museums to receive stable funding for about two-thirds of their operating budgets. In the last decade, many museums have been challenged by reduced government and corporate support. In the UK, according to the Museum Association there, almost half of all museums experienced a funding cut in 2013, 37 percent of museums had to reduce staff and increase the number of volunteers and interns,

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and 31 percent experienced a decrease in school visits. In the US, many museum endowments lost value in the 2008 recession, causing a decline in revenues and staff reductions.36 The trend is for continuing declines in government funding and corporate donations but increases in personal and foundation support. Capital expansion projects are on the upswing but larger facilities will inevitably increase operating costs. Some museum leaders are seeking to create more stable funding by using the soft power of their museums to attract more wealthy board members who will make significant commitments to the museum’s operating funds. To this end, board size is being increased to as much as 75 members in larger museums.

27. Impact Investment A new generation of philanthropists and private foundations are attracted to support museums because of the ways that museums can positively impact society. This philosophy is referred to as impact investment and is directly related to the soft power of museums. The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles successfully solicited two supporters to each donate $1 million so that the museum could offer free admission for four years. The Frye Art Museum in Seattle received an unsolicited donation to support its imaginative Here and Now program for persons suffering dementia. As museums become more successful in community engagement and more effective in exercising their soft power, they will attract more impact-oriented private and social investment.

28. Crowd Sourcing and Participatory Forms of Income Generation Museums have proven to be innovative in developing new sources of income. While the capacity for donating a work of art may be limited to those of great financial means, people of modest means can enjoy adopting a painting in the art museum or adopting an animal in the zoo while contributing to the conservation of art or the preservation of a species. Like crowd funding, these are participatory ways to raise money and build awareness of the museum’s values.

29. Public-Private Partnerships By expanding their influence in the city, museums can build deeper relationships with stakeholders and partners. Business for the Arts is an international network

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that promotes businesses of all sizes to participate in supporting museums and the arts. A flagship initiative at Business for the Arts, artsVest aims to help broker new relationships between arts organizations and business sponsors in Canada. With invested funds from the federal government, as well as participating provincial and city partners, the national initiative provides matching grants and free sponsorship training workshops, as well as community building and networking events that catalyze cross-sector partnerships. Since its launch in 2011, the program has provided 123 cultural organizations with artsVest matching grants that have leveraged close to $2 million in new private sector investment. Participating cultural organizations partnered with 461 businesses, of which 320 were first-time business partners and 134 were long-term sponsorships. Artsupport programs from the Australian Council for the Arts focus on growing philanthropic support primarily for small to midsized arts enterprises with annual budgets of under $1 million. The programs have facilitated over $77 million in philanthropic income for over 200 artists and 600 arts organizations in Australia for a government investment of just over $5 million. To achieve such exceptional results, Artsupport works with both arts and philanthropic sector players including individual artists and arts organizations, as well as individual philanthropists, and private and corporate foundations to encourage new donor support for the arts. Museum partnerships with the nonprofit sector, public education and human services can be fruitful for building the kind of soft power that attracts impact investment. Many foundations want to be assured that the best use is being made of their contribution by seeing that the museum is cooperating with others.

30. Rewarding Urban Development The rise and rapid growth of cities has created a real estate boom in cities worldwide that has dramatically increased property values, often pricing families and artists out of the city center. Whereas in the past having a museum for a neighbor was not seen as particularly advantageous, in this knowledge-based economy, a museum enhances the urban fabric and helps to brand developments in the area, giving them higher value. A dental clinic across from the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto proudly advertises itself as “Museum Dental.” At one time this would have connoted outdated procedures; today it reads chic.

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Museums generally have not been the beneficiaries of the urban land boom. Some cities and states have incentives for developers to build museums or other cultural facilities in order to obtain planning concessions, such as greater density on their development sites. While these capital investments may be beneficial in creating a more vibrant city, this does not help new or existing museums to pay their increasing operating costs. Cities should work with developers to create a business model whereby condominium and apartment owners or developers would pay a small additional “common area charge” for the stability and landmark status that a museum brings to a neighborhood. Local business owners, who are already accustomed to paying a small additional tax to support their Business Improvement Area, should pay a modest additional tax that would go directly to the museum in recognition of potential customers attracted to their area by the museum.

VIII. THE ROLE OF CITIES: THE SOFT POWER EMBRACE It takes at least two to embrace, and cities have demonstrated a remarkable reluctance to embrace their museums. A quick review of the literature on urbanism reveals that very few of the books even list museums in the index. This means that urban planners learn very little about museums in their course of study. Many museums pay property taxes that were imposed when they received city funding. That funding has been reduced, but the property taxes have increased. There are state and federal-level funding programs in the US, such as the Community Preservation Act37 that enables cities to acquire significant funds for cultural and heritage preservation. This requires a referendum, which is yet another reason for cities and museums to exercise their soft power together. The overall trend in the US, however, is toward closing down the urban redevelopment zones that were able to use federal and state funds to create great spaces, places and museums in so many cities. Museums and cities need to work together and use their soft power to overcome these and other challenges.

31. Planning Culturally Planning Culturally is the method of bottom-up, comprehensive cultural planning that was developed for the 2013 Cultural Plan for the City of Chicago38 under the leadership of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Commissioner Michelle Boone. All city neighborhoods were invited to state what culture means to them. Their needs and

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wishes were translated into projects and plans that were tested against the reality of city budgets and private-sector support. The 36 recommendations and over 200 initiatives in the Cultural Plan39 were seen as initiatives to be owned by all city departments and commissioners, including sanitation, housing, education, health and human services. Planning culturally means that every department plans its development with an awareness of its actual and potential cultural significance. In this way, the entire city is engaged with history, heritage and the arts not only as isolated events or capital projects, but in every aspect of city life.

32. From Cultural Hubs and Heritage Districts to Cultural Commons Cities and museums can work together to identify and preserve the heritage (built, tangible and intangible) that makes a city unique and creates a cultural commons where people meet, social spaces freely accessible to all. Cities are recognizing the value in their histories as a way to boost their reputations and attract creative industries, investment, new residents and tourists through heritage and arts districts, adaptive reuse of heritage buildings and cultural tourism. These special districts provide a sense of place, linking past, present and future in a complex, changing city. Cities are bridging between preservation imperatives that seek to maintain the fabric of the past and the need for housing and places for work or sport. Preservation efforts in the city that empower residents to celebrate their stories both local and global, and that care for art and artifacts on their own terms, are more likely to be successful and sustainable than top-down initiatives. By designating heritage areas, working with citizens and grassroots organizations to find funding and enable these groups to be self-governing, cities and museums can create dynamic, meaningful and enduring cultural commons.

Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia Federation Square is situated on top of a working railway at the busiest intersection in central Melbourne. It is the size of a city block and incorporates attractions such as the National Gallery of Victoria, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and the BMW Edge Amphitheatre. Federation Square hosts more than 2,000 events a year, including cultural festivals, exhibitions, event launches, performances, forums, films, concerts and fashion shows, most of

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Thousands gather in Federation Square to dance their protest, calling for an end to violence against women. Photo by Tamar Spatz.

them free. A key feature of the plaza design is the Big Screen, a large fixed public screen used to broadcast major sporting events and key moments, such as the telecast of the parliamentary apology to the Aboriginal Stolen Generations. Federation Square operates around the clock with security and cleaning staff present 24 hours, meaning it is a safe and welcoming place at all hours. The significant investment into Federation Square (AD$450 million by the Victorian State Government, City of Melbourne, the Commonwealth Government and the private sector through private tenancy fit-outs and major sponsorship alliances) is indicative of Melbourne’s commitment to creating civic spaces for public use. Federation Square opened in 2002 and more than 9 million people visit annually.

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AFTERWORD The harried city manager finds this book in

A museum educator comes across this

a plain brown envelope. She or he is not in

book at a conference. She enthusiastically

the mood to hug any of the local museum

buys it and thrusts it into the hands of her

directors. Reluctantly the city man-

director, who has spent the day working on

ager sends a quick e-mail to the heads of

the museum’s budget. “Soft power? I prefer

culture, economic development, planning,

hard currency just now, but let’s discuss.”

human services and transportation. “Ever heard of soft power? Let’s discuss.”

Let us know how it goes.…

ENDNOTES 1 http://www.museumsassociation.org/download?id=969394 2 Gail Lord and Kate Markert, The Manual of Strategic Planning for Museums (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2007). 3 National Comparative Museum Salary Study (American Alliance of Museums, 2012), surveyed 524 institutions with reports on 4,344 full-time employees. Of the respondents, women outnumbered men in 40 of the 48 full-time positions, ranging from 95 percent of the administrative assistants and 92 percent of the volunteer coordinators to 60 percent of the CFO/controllers and graphic designers. Men significantly outnumbered women in just a few areas of museum practice, including IT, exhibit installation, facilities, and security. Very few positions demonstrated a true gender balance; the closest were coordinators of exhibitions, Web managers and director/CEOs. 4 “The Gender Gap in Art Museum Directorships,” AAMD and the National Center for Arts Research (NCAR), released March 2014, https://aamd.org/our-members/from-thefield/gender-gap-report. 5 Study commissioned by the Center for the Future of Museums, http:// futureofmuseums.blogspot.com.es/2011/11/workforce-of-future-starts-now.html. 6 http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.com.es/2014/10/po-tay-to-po-taa-to-on-unpaid. html 7 The benefits of volunteerism are explored thoroughly in State of the World’s Volunteerism Report 2011, United Nations, http://www.unv.org/fileadmin/docdb/pdf/2011/ SWVR/English/SWVR2011_full_%5B08%5D_chapter5.pdf. 8 http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.ca/search/label/Working%20in%20Museums citing Philip Katz and Elizabeth Merritt, 2009 Museum Financial Information (Washington, DC: American Alliance of Museums, 2009). 9 Barrons, November 29, 2014.

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10 Barry Lord, Manual of Museum Management (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2009). 11 Xinhua English News, 2012. 12 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sce.21133/full, Emily Dawson, “Not Designed for Us: How Science Museums and Science Centers Socially Exclude LowIncome, Minority Ethnic Groups.” Article first published online September 11, 2014, quoting Ipsos Mori (2003). The impact of free entry to museums, London: https://www.ipsos-mori. com/Assets/Docs/Publications/sri-the-impact-of-free-entry-to-museums-2003.pdf. 13 http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/132224/2013054826-OPEN-Sydney-Strategy-and-Action-Plan-FINAL-version-February-2013.pdf 14 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/18/us-usa-new-york-identificationidUSKBN0HD2H120140918 15 http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazil-offers-new-handoutto-the-poor-culture/2014/02/05/bb04299e-8d06-11e3-95dd-36ff657a4dae_story.html; http://www.cultura.gov.br/valecultura 16 Without being able to read signs or ask for directions, Mama Kamara and Mama Sesay felt not only that the whole institution was inaccessible for them, but that they were themselves out of place, anxious, unsure of what to do and unable to return without support. The institutional reliance on English left Mama Kamara and Mama Sesay with a sense of not being sufficiently educated, linguistically deficient and profoundly uncomfortable in the museum. This example suggests that language has the power not only to prevent people from being able to access cultural capital, but also to contribute to an impression of ISE institutions as spaces of privilege through use of dominant language and as a resource for certain groups rather than others. 17 Barry Lord, Gail Dexter Lord and John Nicks, “The Cost of Collecting” (London: HMSO, 1989). 18 Ibid. 19 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/perks-for-employees-andhow-google-changed-the-way-we-work-while-waiting-in-line-8830243.html 20 Linda Norris and Rainey Tisdale, Creativity in Museum Practice (Walnut Grove: Left Coast Press, 2013). 21 http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.com.es/2012/01/innovation-ignites-announcing2012-lab.html 22 Institute for the Future- http://www.iftf.org/maps/20-combinatorial-forecasts/ 23 http://www.ideas-city.org/about 24 These refer to the design-thinking process developed by Ideo. Others may be slightly differently in terminology but broadly cover the same process. http://www. designthinkingforeducators.com/design-thinking/ 25 http://informalscience.org/images/research/2013-05-24_Making%20Meaning%20 Report.pdf 26 http://informalscience.org/research/wiki/Making-and-Tinkering-Programs 27 Various UN reports, http://www.unpan.org/egovkb/global_reports/08report.htm 28 http://www.eurocities-nlao.eu/

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29 http://connectedlearning.tv/what-is-connected-learning 30 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21stt Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 31 http://www.lemproject.eu/WORKING-GROUPS/museums-and-the-ageingpopulation-1/creativity-lll-and-ageing-population 32 http://www.europeanfinancialreview.com/?p=1854, but should be attributed to the latest book by Joseph Nye. 33 http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/british-museum-objects/ 34 http://gapuwiyakcalling.tumblr.com/a 35 Lord, Lord and Nicks, “The Cost of Collecting.” 36 Barrons, November 29, 2014. 37 The Community Preservation Act (CPA) in the US allows communities to create a local community preservation fund for open space protection, historic preservation, affordable housing and outdoor recreation. Community preservation monies are raised locally through the imposition of a surcharge of not more than 3 percent of the tax levy against real property, and municipalities must adopt CPA by ballot referendum. The CPA statute also creates a state-wide Community Preservation Trust Fund, administered by the Department of Revenue, which provides distributions each year to communities that have adopted CPA. These annual disbursements serve as an incentive for communities to pass CPA. Each CPA community creates a local Community Preservation Committee (CPC) upon adoption of the act, and this five-to-nine-member board makes recommendations on CPA projects to the community’s legislative body. Property taxes traditionally fund the day-to-day operating needs of safety, health, schools, roads, maintenance and more. But until CPA was enacted, there was no steady funding source for preserving and improving a community’s character and quality of life. The Community Preservation Act gives a community the funds needed to control its future. 38 Chicago Culural Plan, http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/ cultural_plan.html/. 39 http://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/dca/Cultural%20Plan/ CCP2012FinalExecSumm.pdf

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Authors An Laishun holds a Ph.D. in Chinese History and master of arts degree in museology. He has served as executive editor-in-chief of Chinese Museum Magazine since 2003. He is a prominent thinker and innovator in the use of the “new museology” and ecomuseology for safeguarding the heritage of ethnic minority groups in China and Asia. He has played a role in founding four community museums in China and helped in developing exhibitions on the culture of different communities in China. He is the vice president and secretary general, Chinese Museums Association, deputy director of Luxun Museum, China, and a member of the Executive Council of ICOM. Ngaire Blankenberg is a principal consultant at Lord Cultural Resources. She has been a youth worker, jazz poet, cartoonist, documentary maker and television producer. She directed the award-winning documentary Morris Fynn Goes Native (SABC), was co-director of Nkosi’s Mission (SABC/BBC) and is co-founder of the Museum of AIDS in Africa. She has advised museum and cultural clients in Washington, DC; Patna, India; Dhahran, Dubai; Beijing; and Sydney. Ngaire grew up in Winnipeg, Harare and Christchurch, and has lived and worked in Johannesburg, Toronto, Paris and Barcelona. Joy Bailey Bryant is managing director, US, for Lord Cultural Resources. A cultural planning specialist, Joy led public engagement for the Chicago Cultural Plan 2013 and Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, reaching thousands of stakeholders. She unearthed untold stories of the Southwest Georgia Civil Rights Movement for the Albany (Georgia) Civil Rights Institute. Joy is a frequent speaker at museum conferences and is the author of “Planning for Community Needs” in the Manual of Museum Planning. Joy formerly worked at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). She received her MA in arts management from American University and her bachelor’s degree from Florida A&M University.

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Baillie Card is a researcher, writer and editor based in London. She holds a first class undergraduate degree in history of art from the University of Edinburgh and a master’s in history of art and visual culture from the University of Oxford. She has organized auctions in the contemporary art department of Sotheby’s London and worked on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project in New York City. Her current research projects focus on artists in urban development and how impact studies are reshaping arts advocacy. Lourdes Fernández is the general manager of AlhóndigaBilbao, a leading art and culture center in the Basque Country, and serves as a board member of the Reina Sofía Museum Foundation in Madrid. She has managed various international contemporary art projects, biennials and fairs, including Madrid’s contemporary art fair, ARCOmadrid and Manifesta 5, the European biennale of contemporary art, San Sebastián, 2004. Most recently she contributed to the catalogue on art and fashion for the Givenchy exhibition at the Thyssen Museum, Madrid. Guido Guerzoni has been involved in the economics and management of cultural institutions and their assets for 20 years. He has taught since 1996 at the Luigi Bocconi University in Milan, where he is in charge of courses in cultural heritage and art markets for degrees in economics and management in arts, culture, media and entertainment. He has written for approximately 100 publications in Italy and abroad while working with national and international institutions. He has supervised the Fondazione di Venezia’s M9 museum project since 2006. Javier Jimenez is a senior consultant at the museum planning firm Lord Cultural Resources. Javier has worked on a wide range of projects with museums, cultural organizations and local governments in Europe, North America and Asia, including the Strategic Plan 2008–2012 for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, project management for the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Saudi Arabia and the 2012 Chicago Cultural Plan. He holds a master’s degree in cultural management and is currently based in Barcelona.

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Gegê Leme Joseph is an architect, urbanist and production designer, and holds an M.A. in museum studies from the University of Leicester. Gegê develops exhibitions and experiences for heritage and culture, and strategies for the dissemination of heritage beyond museum walls, and works with museum planning. After 10 years in South Africa, she returned to Brazil in February 2013, where she runs a museums and heritage consultancy firm, and researches the current state of Brazilian museums and heritage sector. Gail Dexter Lord is co-founder and co-president of Lord Cultural Resources. With Barry Lord, she is co-editor of The Manual of Museum Planning (1991, 1999, 2012), and co-author of The Manual of Museum Management (1997 and 2009) and Artists, Patrons and the Public: Why Culture Changes (2010). She is co-author with Kate Markert of The Manual of Strategic Planning for Museums (2007). Gail has led cultural and tourism plans for cities as well as planning, management and exhibition assignments for museums, galleries and cities throughout Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, continental Europe, North America and Asia. In 2014, Gail was appointed Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the minister of culture of France. Hayfa Matar is currently the deputy head of mission at the Embassy of Bahrain in London. Her previous positions include advisor to the foreign minister and counselor to the president of the 61st Session of the United Nations General Assembly. She holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and economics from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in politics of the world economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Batul Raaj Mehta is a museum planner and has studied architecture and heritage management. Over the past 15 years, she has enjoyed an enriching experience working with private and public enterprises in developed and emerging markets in sharply different macro landscapes. She leads the Lord Cultural Resources team in developing the Bihar Museum in Patna, India, which seeks to introduce a new sensibility and audience engagement in one of the world’s oldest civilizations.

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Federica Olivares has designed a series of international public diplomacy projects, including the “United Nations World Television Forum” and “Italy in the US 2013: Year of Italian Culture in the United States.” She participated in the European Capitals of Culture 2019 program, selecting the Italian city of Matera. She teaches “Concept Design of Cultural Events” at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, where she is also director of the master’s program in cultural planning and founder of City Innovation Lab. She is a board member of the Council for the Arts at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Piccolo Teatro Theatre of Europe, Milan, Italy Fulbright Commission and the Scientific Council UNESCO, Venice. Robert Punkenhofer is founding director of ART&IDEA and is currently Austria’s trade commissioner in Barcelona, Spain. In his work, he transcends the boundaries of art, architecture, design and international business and diplomacy. He has been responsible for more than 100 exhibitions and special projects on three continents, including the visionary Mur Island with Vito Acconci for Graz European Capital of Culture and Vienna Art Week, and Austria’s participation at the World Fairs in Aichi, Japan, Zaragossa, Spain and Shanghai, China. He served as director of the Austrian Design Foundation and the Creative Industry Office at Austria’s Foreign Trade Organization. He is a member of the International Advisory Council at Princeton University/PLAS and visiting professor at New York University. For further information, visit www.art-idea.com. Mohamed Gamal Rashed is a curator and exhibition specialist with a Ph.D. in Egyptology, and post-doctoral study in museology. He serves as a curator and director of museum exhibition and archeological research at the Grand Egyptian Museum, Cairo. He is a lecturer in Egyptology and in the master of museum studies program at Helwan University, Egypt, and has published several articles on Egyptology and museology. Most recently he created the new permanent exhibition at the Egyptian Museum of Cairo entitled “Life, Prosperity and Health for Tutankhamun,” which opened in December 2014.

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Index A

aboriginal peoples, Canada, 6–7, 157–161 Abu Dhabi, economy, 190 accessibility, 134–135, 141 Acconci, Vito, 134, 138 Acuto, Michele, 10, 64 Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 109–110 admission charges, 208–209 advancement, diversity and, 205–206 advisory councils, 204–205 affordability, 135–136 African Americans, 154–155, 156 agency, 103–104, 112 civic, 112 agenda, reframing, 228–229 Ai Wei Wei, 109 Aichi, Japan, 138 Alhóndiga Bilbao, 178, 182–183 All Quiet on the Western Front, 154 Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Shaikha, 93 Al Qassemi, Sultan, 91, 92 Al-Sayeh, Noura, 94 amateurs, museum employees, 207 American Alliance of Museums, 217 American Museum of Natural History, New York, 229 analysis of referenda, 43 anchor institutions, 21–22 Anderson, Maxwell, 94 Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, 1 Anholt, Simon, 20, 73, 82 An Laishun, 24, 145–150, 241 apartheid, 107–108 Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg, 20 Archaeological Survey of India, 119 architecture, 193–195, 196 Armani, Giorgio, 53 Armstrong, Sally, 19 Around the World in 80 Days, 132 art, soft power of, 50 Art & Energy: How Culture Changes, 101

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Art Basel, 177–178 Art Basel HK (Hong Kong), 170 Art Basel Miami, 179, 180 Art Exhibition China, 149 art fairs, 175, 177–178, 180 art market, 177–178, 180–181 art museums, 10 Kuwait, 89 art objects, 50 artsVest, 233 Art Unlimited, 178 art world, stars, 139–140 Asper, Gail, 157, 159–160 Asper, Israel, 157 Atlanta, US, 154–156 audiences, building, 90 Australia, 110 Australian Council for the Arts, 233

B

Bahrain, 88–89 Bailey, Brett, 111 Balkan Museum Network, 205 Banco do Brasil, 76 Banco Santos, 75 Bangladesh, Independence, 124–125 Barbican, London, 111 Bargello Museum, Florence, 53 Baroda Museum, India, 123–124 barriers, 44, 208, 210, 238n.16 Basel, art fairs, 170, 177–178, 179, 180 see also Art Basel Beasley, Larry, 44 Beethoven, 132 Belgium, 111 Belmore, Rebecca, 158 Belting, Hans, 193 Berlin, 136, 211, 211 Biblioteca Reale in Turin, 55 Biennales, 133 Bahrain, 90, 94 Biennial Festival, New York City, 218

253

biennials, 94, 178, 179–181 Bihar, India, 126–128 Bihar Museum, Patna, 125–126, 127–128 Bihar Sharif museum, 126 Bilbao, Spain, 37, 178 Cultural Center, 178 Effect, 1, 38 neighborhood hubs, 182 tourists, 38 town planning and development, 181–182, 182 transformation, 177 Birmingham, US, 155 Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, 161 Blankenberg, Ngaire, 5–27, 99–115, 201–239, 241 blockbusters, 75–78 boards of directors, diverse networked, 204–205 Bologna Process of 1999, 140 Bolsa Família, 72, 73 bonding, 222 Bone, Tracy, 159 Boone, Michelle, 234–235 Boxer at Rest, 52, 54 brand-enhancement, 56 branding, 12–13, 20, 37, 44 Brasil +500, São Paulo, 75–76, 79 Brasil Connects, 75 Brazil, 24, 52 museums, 71–84 number, 73–75 Vale Cultura, 210 BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), 51 bridging, 215, 222 British Library, London, 60–61, 62–63, 65, 66 British Museum, London, 50, 60–61, 63–64, 65–66 Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, 105, 213 Brûlé, Tyler, 73 Bryant, Joy Bailey, 22, 153–162, 241–242 Buddha Smriti Park and Museum, Patna, 122, 127 Bundestag, Berlin, 211, 211 Business for the Arts, 232–233 business sense, 138

254

C

C40 network, 14 Cairo, 227, 228 museums, 165–172 California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, 20 Canada, 24, 110 human rights, 157–161 volunteers, 206–207 Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Winnipeg, 6–8, 24, 157–161, 159 Card, Baillie, 59–58, 242 Carter, Jimmy, 156 Catalonia, Spain, 133 Celant, Germano, 139 Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, 217 Centre national d’art et de culture, Paris, 188 Centre Pompidou, Paris, 188, 193 Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, 76, 77 Chicago, Judy, 213 Chicago Hive Learning Network, 223 children’s museums, Manila, 225, 225 China, People’s Republic of, 24, 51, 52, 109, 180 cities, 30 economy, 190 museums, 145–150 number, 147, 197n.18 Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn, 133 Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris, 20, 110–111 cities, 14–16, 100–101 challenges, 15 citizenship, trans-local, 16–17 communities, 100–101, 103 creative, 136 culture, 176 global, 16–17 growing importance of, 30 image and perception of, 44-45 location, 176 megacities, 14 museums and, 235 population, 14, 176 powerful, 17–20 soft power role, 14, 234–236 see also urbanization Cities of Migration, network of, 14 citizenship, 16 building, 43–44 cities, 16–17, 112 trans-local, 16–17

Cities, Museums and Soft Power

Civic Engagement in the Digital Age, 104 civic participation, 104–105 civic spaces for public use, 236 civil rights, 109, 153–162 civil society, 11, 112 institutions, networked, 19–20 museums, 203 organizations, 15 civilizations, museum objects and, 10 Clore Leadership Program, 205 CNN Dialogues, 160 coexistence, 211, 211 cognitive surplus, 103 Cold War, art funding, 10 collaboration, 217–219 collaborative commons, 208 collections, 126 Bangladesh, 125–126 Bihar, 127–128 building, 125 context, 122, 167, 231 India, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123–124 social equity, 212–213 strategies, 212–216 rapid response, 213–214 Cologne Art Fair, 177–178 colonialism effects, 17 India, 118–120 postcolonial city governments, 22 postindependence, 120–128 Colonial Museum of Haarlem, 111 communication, 230–231 global, 53 technology, 60 communities, 100 building, 1 disadvantaged, 81 see also cities Community Preservation Act, US, 234, 239n.37 compensation. See salaries conflicts, 17 Connected Learning, 223 Connor, “Bull,” 155 conservation, shift, 195–196 Constitution Center, Philadelphia, 20–21 Contemporary Art Museum, Aspen, 20 content, 196 context, 122, 167, 231 contextual intelligence, 24–25, 66, 226–227

Cities, Museums and Soft Power



contingent valuation method, 42 controversial subjects, 91 Copenhagen, 227–228, 228 costs, 135–136 Costa Brava, rural estate, 134–135 Creativ Wirtschaft Austria, 133 creative buzz, 136 Creative Cities, 136 creative class/sector, 60, 66, 133 power and energy, 137 creative economy, 14–15 employers, 207 Creative Industries IHK, 136 Creative Metropoles, 136 creative tourists, spending, 37 creativity, 176 effects, 41 fostering, 217 knowledge and, 216 value of museums, 41–42 Creativity in Museum Practice, 217 cross-cultural cooperation, 142 cross-media exhibitions, 227 crowd curating, 105 crowd sourcing, 21, 232 cultural accelerators, 24 Cultural Access Pass, Canada, 24, 210 cultural activities, participation, 23–24 cultural assets, impacts, 36 cultural commons, 235 cultural contact, 9–10 cultural diplomacy, 55, 149–150 China, 149–150 cultural economy, 133–134 cultural exchange, 50 cultural hegemony, 100 cultural hubs, to cultural commons, 235 cultural imperialism, 100 cultural infrastructures, 182–183 Cultural Innovation International Prize, 217 cultural memory, institutional, 22 cultural nomads/nomadism, 131–142 challenges, 134–142 concept and definition, 132–133 fostering, 134–142 cultural planning, 234–235 Chicago, 234–235

255

culture, 176–177 of anxiety, 101, 101 of consumption, 101 coupons, Brazil, 24 of creativity, developing, 216–217 EU and, 177 giving voice to the residents, 184 passes, New York City, 210 of transformation, 101

D

Dallas Museum of Art, 208 data, accessing, 215–216 De Gruyter Saur, 188 Design Center Berlin, 136 dialogue, 94 digital technology learning and, 223 tagging and, 215 diplomacy cultural, 55, 149–150 initiatives, 53 public, 49–56 diversity boards of directors, 204–205 museum employees, 205–206 documentation strategies, 212–216 Doha, Qatar, 37 Dokumenta 14, Kassel, 138, 178 Dubai, 6–8 knowledge diffusion, 221

E

economic power to soft power, 30 economy, 29–47, 51 Brazil, 72 China, 147 crises, 55 museum, 189–190 see also funding education, 12, 222–230 effects, 41 value of museums, 41–42 Egypt, museums, 165–172 Egypt Museum, 167–168, 170 Egyptomania, 171 elitism, 111 Emanuel, Rahm, 234–235 EmcArts, 217

256

EMP Museum, Seattle, 13 employers, creative economy, 207 employment, 34 see also job creation empowerment, 8, 20, 25, 203, 222, 229, 230 energy, renewable, 101 engagement, 105–106 entrepreneurial skills, 204 Enwezor, Okwui, 133, 213 Erasmus Program, 133 Erskine-Loftus, Pamela, 94 Ethnographic Museum of Götheborg, 111 The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF), 180 European Biennial of Contemporary Art, 181 European Capitals of Culture, 16 European Union, 134, 188 Europeana, 216 Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public Dimension of Museums, 11–12 exchange, 23, 217–219 exhibitions, 222–230 temporary, 227 experience, time-bounded, 13 The Experience Economy, 12 Expo 2008, 137

F

fairs. See art fairs Federation Square, Melbourne, 235–236, 236 Fernández, Lourdes, 21, 175–184, 242 Fernández-Galiano, Luis, 193 Ferreira, Juca, 75 festivals, Gulf region, 90 Field Museum, Chicago, 223 Florida, Richard, 1–2, 14–15, 15–16, 135 flow production, 196 Forbidden City, Beijing, 31 Foundation for Art & Preservation for Embassies, 50 France, 110 Francis Crick Institute, 63 Franklin, Shirley, 156 free admission, 208–209 Frieze art fairs, 179–180 Frieze Master, 180 Frieze New York, 180 Frye Art Museum, Seattle, 232

Cities, Museums and Soft Power

funding, 39, 139–141, 222, 231–234 Brazil, 73, 74–75 change in, 11 China, 31 see also economy

G

Gable, Clark, 154 Gaekwads, India, 123–124 Gait, Edward, 126 Gallery of Conscience, 229–230, 229 Gandhi, Mahatma, 155 gas, dependence, 101 gastro-diplomacy, 56 gay community, 135, 136 GDP, 14, 15, 133–134 Brazil, 73, 74 cities and, 30 training investment, 224 Gehry, Frank, 13, 134, 181 Germany, 136 opera houses, 1–2 Getty Leadership Institute, 205 Ghana, knowledge diffusion, 221 Ghubash, Rafia, 92 Giebelhausen, Michaela, 193 Gioni, Massimiliano, 181 GLAM-Wiki initiative, 215 Global Science Gallery Network, 220 globalization, 17, 30–31, 175–184 communication, 53 global vs local, 192 Goethe, 132 Gone with the Wind, 154–155 Google Art Project, 215 Gorman, Michael John, 220 governance connected, 221 museum, 203–207 governing leader, role change, 177 government policy, 73 Gramsci, Antonio, 100 Grand Egyptian Museum, Cairo, 23, 167, 168–170, 169, 171–172 Guerilla Girls, 212 Guerzoni, Guido, 21, 187–198, 242 Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi, 102, 109

Cities, Museums and Soft Power



Guggenheim, Bilbao, 13, 21, 53, 108–109, 134, 181–182 economy, 190 job creation, 35 return on investment, 39 tourists, 38 Guggenheim, New York, 102, 109 Guggenheim effect, 134 Gulf Cooperation Council, 88 Gulf region museums as signifiers, 87–97 soft power, 93–94

H

Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 232 hard power, 9, 119–120 Haus, Nussbaum, 154 heritage districts, to cultural commons, 235 hiring, diversity and, 205–206 A History of the World in 100 Objects, 227 HIV/AIDS information, 215 Hive Learning Networks and Communities, 223 Holden, John, 50 Holland, 111 Holocaust, 154, 158 Hudson, Kenneth, 188 human capital, 15 human resources, 203–207 human rights, 6, 153–162 Human Rights Education City, 6–7 human zoos, 110, 111 Hwang Sok-yong, 140

I

IDEAS CITY, 218–219, 218 ideas, spread of, 23 identity, 189 India, 118, 120–121 trans-local, 17 immigrants, 17, 24 China, 147 communities, 90–91 impact investment, 232 income, 38–39 generation, participatory, 232

257

India collections, 117–129 independence, 120–121, 122–128 Indian Museum, Kolkata, 119, 122 indigenous people, Canada, 6–7, 157–161 Influence and Attraction: Culture and the Race for Soft Power, 9 infomediaries, 215–216 information tacit, 65 technology, 17, 60, 65 Information Revolution, 9 Inhotim Institute, Brazil, 78 Innovation Lab for Museums, 217 innovations, 219–220 combinatorial, 217–218 Institute for Canadian Citizenship, 210 Institute of Government, 9 Institute of Museum and Library Services, 188 integration, management of, 14 International Council of Museums (ICOM), 150 international hot spots, 133–134 international relations, 54 Internet, 100, 103 internship programs, 206–207 Iran, diplomacy, 50 Italian Space Agency, 55 Italy, 51, 53–55

J

Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, 154 Jewish Museum, Berlin, 13 Jiminez, Javier, 29–47, 242–243 Jimmy Carter Library and Museum, 156 jobs, 35–36 visitor numbers and, 35 tourism, 36 Joseph, Gegê Leme, 22, 71–84

K

Katz, Philip, 206 Keller, Simon, 136 Kenya National Archives, 65 Khor Dubai, 6 King, Martin Luther Jr., 155, 160

258

King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture, Dhahran, 13 Klaas, Thembisile, 107 Knight Foundation, study, 2 knowledge creativity and, 216 diffusion, 221 economy, 60, 233 Knowledge Quarter project, 59–68 defined, 61 Koser, Khalid, 14 Krenz, Thomas, 53 Kumar, Nitish, 127, 128 Kuwait, 89 Kuzma, Marta, 181

L

labor class, 17 Lampugnani, Vittorio Magnago, 193 landmark museums, 38 landmarks, 20–24 Lara, Sanz, 42 leadership, inspired, 204–205 learning connected, 223 lifelong, 224–225 legislation, 140 legitimacy, perceived, 108, 109 Leigh, Vivien, 154 Lemos, 83n.27 Lemos, Gilka, 76 Lentin, Miki, 62 Leonardo da Vinci, 55 Levy, Moe, 157 Liberation War Museum, Dhaka, 125 Liberator handgun, 214 Libeskind, Daniel, 13 libraries information technology and, 17 social commons, 208 Toronto, 17 Library Parks, Medellin, 81 Lim-Yuson, Nina, 225 Littlechild, Wilton, 158 Liverpool, UK, 37 living-territory museum, 80

Cities, Museums and Soft Power

localism, 175–184 culture and dialogue, 78–80 engagement, 100 global vs, 192 identity, 43–44 Lolosoli, Rebecca, 229 London, knowledge quarter, 59–68 Lord, Barry, 101 Lord, Gail Dexter, 5–27, 22, 153–162, 201–239, 243 Louvre, Abu Dhabi, 51 Louvre, Paris economy, 31, 189–190 Lowery, Evelyn, 156 Luers, Wendy W., 50

M

M9, Venice, 191 Maastricht, 180 Maastricht Fair, 180 Mai bint Mohammed Al Khalifa, 89 Manifesta, 181 Manila, 225, 225 marginalization, 17 marketing, 13, 230–231 Marseille, France, 37 Matar, Hayfa, 87–97, 243 Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, 1 McDaniel, Hattie, 154–155 McGuggenisation, 190 Mehta, Batul Raaj, 22, 117–129, 243 Melbourne, 235–236, 236 Melquizo, Jorge, 81 MENA (Middle East North Africa) region, women, 18 Merritt, Elizabeth, 206 message, 100 Métis people, 157 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 52, 54, 106 Mexico City, 135 Miami Design, 180 migrants, 17, 24 China, 147 communities, 90–91 Mikdadi, Salwa, 94 Milan Expo 2015, 139 missions, 189

Cities, Museums and Soft Power



Mitchell, Margaret, 154 mobile media, 103, 221 audiences, 229 Modern Art Museum, Kuwait, 89 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, economy, 190 Monocle Magazine, 9 Monti, Mario, 53 moral authority, 108, 109 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 132 Msheireb Arts Center, Doha, 92 municipal identification card, New York City, 25 Mur Island, 138 Murinsel, 138 Murray, Glenn, 158 Murray, Stuart, 158 Musée de l’immigration, Paris, 154 Musée D’Orsay, Paris, 76, 77 Musée du quai Branly, Paris, 13, 20, 110 Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome, 54 MuseoPambata, Manila, 225, 225 Museo Patio Herreriano, Valladolid, Spain, 42 Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, 79 museum visitors, 79 Museu de Favela, Rio de Janeiro, 80 Museum of African and Oceanic Arts, Paris, 110 Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, 8 Museum of Copenhagen, 227–228, 228 Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, 229, 229 Museum of Man, Paris, 110 Museum of Omani Dress, Oman, 92–93 Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, 23, 154, 161 Museum of World Culture, Sweden, 111 Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, 211, 211 museums, 183–184 branded, 51 building boom, 187–198 costs, 38–39 data, linked open, 215–216 defined, 12 direct effects, 34 function, 42, 189 globalization of, 190–195 governance, 203–207 history, 42, 43 impacts, 31–32 income, 38–39 induced and indirect effects, 35

259

isolation of, 108 location, 15 long-run effects, 32, 40, 41 non-use value, 42–43 neighborhood, 38 numbers, 188–189 open, 105 perceptions of, 161 professions, 12 real estate value, 39–40 relationships with other organizations, 43 return on investment, 39 role, 19–20, 56 short-run effects of, 32–34 social, educational and creativity values, 41–42 state-run, Gulf states, 88–92 symbolic storytelling, 13 tourism, 36–38 transformation, 11, 13 see also jobs; salaries Museumsinsel (Museum Island), Berlin, 31, 189–190 Museums of the World, 189 museum visitors, 41, 106 Brazil, 75, 79 China, 147 expenditures, 34 Gulf region, 90 inviting, 210 race, 112

N

NASA, 55 National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC, 55 National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta, 154–156, 160 National Gallery, Singapore, 51 National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 53 nationalism, 192 National Museum, Bahrain, 88, 94 National Museum, India, 122 National Liberation War Museum, Bangladesh, 124–125, 128 National Museum of China, Beijing, 51 National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, Cairo, 167, 168 National Museum of Iran, Tehran, 50 National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, 213

260

National Museum Salary Study, 19 National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati, 154 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), 110 natural history museums, 10 neighborhood hubs, 182 Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, 54 Network of European Museum Organisations, 188 networking, 183–184 Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 53 New Museum, New York, 218–219 news, context and depth, 231 New World Symphony, Miami Beach, 1 New York City, 24 culture passes, 210 Nicholls, Ann, 188 Ningbo History Museum, China, 146, 148 non-use values, 42–43 nonprofit sector, 15 economy, 11 Gulf region, 92–93 Norris, Linda, 217 Nouvel, Jean, 13 nuclear power, 101 Nuit Blanche, Toronto, 209–210 Nye, Joseph, 9, 10, 60, 62, 66, 226

O

Obama, Barack, 53 objects, 10–11 oil, dependence, 101 Olivares, Federica, 23, 49–56, 243–244 Olympics, soft power, 52 Open Sydney, 210 operating hours, 209–210 oppression, museums and, 111 Osnabrück, Germany, 154 outreach and educational campaign, 91–92 owners/ownership, 197n.27, 203

P

Pakistan, independence, 124–125 Palace Museum, Beijing, 149–150 Palazzo Venezia, Rome, 51

Cities, Museums and Soft Power

parks, Cairo, 171–172 participation, 106, 107–108 social tagging, 214–215 Participatory Politics—Next-Generation Tactics to Remake Public Spheres, 104 partnerships, 55–56 US–Italy, 53 patrons, museums and the arts, 10, 11 Paz, Bernardo de Mello, 78 Pei, I.M., 147–148 people of color, 112 on display, 110 perception, city-museum relationship, 45 Persepolis Museum, Marvdasht, 50 persons with disabilities, access for, 12 perspectives, 100 new, 228–229 Pevsner, Nicholas, 188 philanthropic support, 233 Piano, Renzo, 40 Piketty, Thomas, 224 Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo, 79 museum visitors, 79 Pingtan Art Museum, Pingtan Island, China, 51 place making, 1, 20–24, 43–44 planning culturally, 234–235 plantation-economy, 155 policies, outward-looking, 204–205 politics, 135 see also diplomacy Pompidou, Georges, 188 Pompidou Center, Metz, 21, 213 pop-up museums, 175, 227 power conversion, 24–25, 230–231 power diffusion, 203–207 Prado, Madrid, job creation, 35–36 preservation imperatives, 235 Previous Possessions, New Obligations, 110 Prince of Wales, Mumbai, 122 producers, 196 production, 216–221 platform for, 219–220 shift, 195–196 Progammes d’Aide et de Développement destinés aux Enfants du Monde, 205 Provincial Treasuries of Biscay, 39 public investment, museums and, 40

Cities, Museums and Soft Power



public–private partnerships, 232–233 public programs, 222–230 publishers, 196 Punkenhofer, Robert, 23, 131–142, 137, 244 Putnam, Robert, 23–24, 222

Q

Qatar, 40, 52

R

racialized people, museums and, 110 Rapid Response Collecting Strategy, 213–214 Rashed, Mohamed Gamal, 23, 165–172, 244 rationale, 5–27 real estate values, museums and, 39–40 Red Location Museum, South Africa, 107–108 Reed, Kasim, 160 Remarque, Erich Maria, 154 Remarque Center, 154 remittance economy, 17 Renaissance Europe, museums, 42 reputation generators, 51–55 research, 216–221 platform for, 219–220 residence permits, 140–141 revenue, 136 Riel, Louis, 157 Rifkin, Jeremy, 11, 208 role, 19–20, 56 Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, 111 Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 233

S

Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi, 37 salaries, 43, 139, 237n.3 women, 19 Salford, UK, 37 São Paulo Biennial, 178 Saragossa, Spain, 138 Sassen, Saskia, 16, 17 Saudi Arabia, 93 Sauerbruch, Matthias, 194–195 Sayaji Rao Gaekwad III, 123–124 Science Gallery, Dublin, 23, 220, 221 science museums, 219, 221

261

segregation, 155 see also apartheid; civil rights The Shard, 40 Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa Centre, Muharraq, Bahrain, 94 Shan Jixiang, 150 Shanghai, 138 Shanghai Declaration, 150 sharing economy, 17, 216–221 Sharjah Art Foundation, 94 Sharjah Biennial, 94 Shipman, Douglas, 160–161 Shirky, Clay, 103 Simon, Nina, 106 site museums, Bahrain, 89 skills, 224 smart power, 226 Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, 31 Smyer, Sidney, 155 social capital, building, 222 social commons, 17, 207–211 women and, 18 social equity, collections and, 212–213 social hierarchy, 110 social media, 104–106, 111 social museums, 80 social networks, 138 social tagging, 214–215 social value of museums, 15, 41–42 Soep, Elisabeth, 104 soft benchmarks, 41–42 soft power, 1, 9 activation, 201–239 characteristics, 10 cities and, 234–236 complications, 99–115 culture and, 9 funding, 231–234 policy types, 81–82 rationale, 5–27 21st century, 60 Soul of the Community, 2 Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), 155, 156 Spacebuster, 218 spaces to make things, 220–221 Spain, 224

262

spending, 34 Brazil, 83n.27, 84n.31 sponsorships, 55–56 stakeholders, 197n.27 participative communication, 230–231 starchitects, 1, 51 Starck, Philippe, 178, 182 stereotypes, 110 stewardship, 106, 107 culture of, 22, 100, 101, 103 storage, 212 storytelling, 110, 225, 225 structure, cultural, 137, 142 Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 156 Suplicy, Marta, 73 sustainability, 196 communities, 170 maintaining, 139–141 Suzhou Museum, China, 147–148 Sweden, 111 Sydney, 210 Szymczyk, Adam, 138

T

tacit information, 65 transmission of, 65 tagging, 214–215 talent, 15 Tartaruga, Sydney, 80 Tate Modern, London, 13, 40 economy, 190 taxes, 234 tea culture, 149 technology, 15 TEFAF, 180 temporary exhibitions, 227 Tenement Museum, New York, 154 Terzi di Sant’Agata, Giulio, 53 third sector, 11, 15 Three Ts, 15 Tinguely, Jean, 193 Tisdale, Rainey, 217 tolerance, 15 Toronto, 233 Nuit Blanche, 209–210 tourism, 15–16, 36–38, 191, 192

Cities, Museums and Soft Power

cultural, 37 engaging with, 226 expansion, 36–37 trade, 133–134 transparency, 100, 108, 109, 110, 230–231 Treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam, 176–177 Troppenmuseum, Harlaam, 111 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Canada, 6, 158, 162n.5 Turning the Page: Forging New Partnerships Between Museums and First Peoples, 110

U

UK

funding, 222 Indian museums and, 119–120 UNESCO Creative Cities, 136 world heritage site, Dubai, 6 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Rights Today, 158 urbanization, 30–31 China, 147–148 development and planning, 60, 181–184 museums and, 30–31, 147–148 regeneration, 193 rewarding, 233–234 speculation, 40 temporary, 175 see also cities US, 53–55, 133, 234 cities, 30 human rights, 154–156 Italian culture in, 53–55 volunteers, 206 usefulness, 227

Verne, Jules, 132 Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 213–214 Victoria Memorial, Kolkata, 122 visas, 140–141 Voluntarios Culturales Mayores para enseñar los Museos de España a niños, jóvenes y jubilados, 224 volunteers, 11, 206–207, 224

W

The Wall, 227–228 Wang Shu, 146, 148 war trophies, 10 Water and Sustainable Development, 137 Web, 103 white privilege, 111 Winnipeg, Canada, 6–8, 157–161 Wolff, Noero, 107 women, 18–19, 212–213, 229, 230 MENA, 18 museum employees, 205–206 UK, 19 US, 19 Women’s International Leadership Development, 205 Women’s Museum, Dubai, 92 World Expo Historical Museum, Puxi, China, 148

Y

Year of Italian Culture in the United States, 53–55 Young, Andrew, 156

Z

Zugaza, Miguel, 35–36

V

Vaeggen, 227–228 Vale Cultura, Brazil, 210 values non-use, 42–43 spread of, 23 symbolic, 53 van Gelder, Hendrik Enno, 193 Venice, M9, 191 Venice Architectural Biennale, Bahrain, 90, 94 Venice Biennial, 178

Cities, Museums and Soft Power



263