‘Contact zones’ of heritage diplomacy: transformations of museums in the (post)pandemic reality

ABSTRACT

Tracing transformations in the museum agency under the pressure of the pandemic crisis in 2020, the article conceptualizes museums as dynamic ‘contact zones’ of heritage diplomacy. It explores two foundational components of a contact zone, such as building a social space for a cross-cultural encounter, negotiation and debate as well as offering a platform to address transnational concerns on the heritage decolonization agenda. Drawing on desk research, document analysis and semi-structured interviews with museum professionals, it analyses the case studies of the livestreaming bilateral museum diplomacy and metaverse live heritage pandemic diplomacy, followed by a discussion on the processes of museums decolonization that started to unfold in response to the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement. The research argues that the impact of the digitalization pressures did not only affect the ways, forms, and structures of cross-cultural communications in museums, but also moved them a bit forward in their decolonization processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage diplomacy
• museum diplomacy
• cultural digital diplomacy
• decolonization
• transnational museology

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Natalia Grincheva

Natalia Grincheva is an internationally recognized expert in innovative forms and global trends in contemporary museology, digital diplomacy, and international cultural relations. She received many prestigious international academic awards, including Fulbright (2007–2009), Quebec Fund (2011–2013), Australian Endeavour (2012–2013) and SOROS research grant (2013–2014). In 2020, she was awarded a Fellowship for her visiting research residency at the Digital Diplomacy Research Center at the University of Oxford. Her publication profile includes over 45 research articles, book chapters and reports published in prominent academic outlets. Her most recent publications are two monographs: Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age (Routledge: 2020) and Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy (Routledge: 2019). Currently she is working on a new co-authored monograph, Geopolitics of Digital Heritage (Cambridge University Press: fcorthcoming 2023). Dr Grincheva’s professional engagements include her dedicated work for the International Fund for Cultural Diversity at UNESCO (2011) and International Federation of Coalitions for Cultural Diversity (2011–2015), her research industry placement at ACMI X creative hub at the Australian Center for the Moving Image (2017–2019) as well as service for the international Cultural Research Network (CRN) (2018–2020).