Click here to read NACDI Co-Founder Dr. Sascha Priewe’s issue in CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy, titled Museum Diplomacy: Parsing the Global Engagement of Museums

Museums are increasingly recognized as significant actors in public and cultural diplomacy. They have become one of myriad actors in the “network” of diplomatic players that complicate and intervene with diplomacy exercised by the “club” of  nation-states. With the resurgence of academic interest in cultural diplomacy, there has been an attendant growth in interest in the diplomatic role of museums. In recognition of museums’ agency and diplomatic potential, this book speaks to developments in the diplomatic landscape to one that is increasingly wider, more level, and host to a greater number of actors. In this contribution to the field, Museum Diplomacy: Parsing the Global Engagement of Museums reflects a study of the internationalization of museum work, and demonstrates the ways in which this work is better understood as bridging the local and the global than as purely international. This position establishes a theoretical framework for museum diplomacy within the context of the “new diplomacy.” The publication promotes a better understanding of the international and global work of museums and greater awareness of museum diplomacy as a practice in its own right, which can occasionally, and at times deliberately, be aligned with foreign policy priorities of nation-states, but one that is deeply rooted in the principles, values and interests of the museums themselves.

Dr. Sascha Priewe is 2019–2021 CPD Research Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy and Associate Vice President, Strategic Initiatives & Partnerships, Royal Ontario Museum