Museum diplomacy: exploring the Sino-German Museum Forum and beyond

ABSTRACT

In an age of globalised neoliberalism, prestigious museums have become a diplomatic milieu and their collections a significant token to manifest diplomatic ties between the West and China. This paper explores the ’clash’ between ‘universal museums’ and returning cultural objects to their ‘countries of origin’ presented in and by the Sino-German Museum Forum. Both countries are seen to use ‘the past’ for current foreign affairs, not only with regards to each other but also, respectively, towards Africa and Southeast and Central Asia. Germany, for example, utilises the Berlin Palace Humboldt Forum, while China has the One Belt and Road project. Because national museums and their collections are often embedded in colonial histories and are commonly used to forge collective memory, cultural identity and nationalism, to engage critically with museum diplomacy becomes important as it can help to ‘reconcile’, as well as to provoke new tensions regarding neo-colonialism.

KEYWORDS:

• Museum diplomacy
• political economy
• international relations
• intercultural communication
• universal museum
• repatriation
• One Belt and Road

Acknowledgement

Genuine gratitude should be paid to the editor professor Oliver Bennett and the annonymous reviewers of the International Journal of Cultural Policy. Without their important comments this paper would not have been possible to take the shape as it is now. Besides, professor David Gill and professor Laurajane Smith shall be thanked as well for their kind opinions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation [grant number 00151029].

Notes on contributors

Shuchen Wang

Shuchen Wang is a DA candidate in Digitisation and Cultural Heritage at the Aalto University in Helsinki. Prior to that she worked as a manager and director of a contemporary art gallery in Beijing. Besides, she earned a DEA in Museology of Natural and Human Sciences at the MNHN in Paris, and a MA specialised in Exhibition Design and Education. She has also had an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York.