Book presentation 'Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy'

The School of Media at the Faculty of Communications, Media and Design will hold the book presentation Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy (Routledge: 2019) by Natalia Grincheva, Associate Professor, School of Media.

When: Friday, March 6, 2020

Time: 19.00 – 21.00

Address: 11 Pokrovsky Boulevard, Room R502 (fifth floor)

Abstract 

In this talk Natalia Grincheva’s will present the key insights of her recently published book Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy (Routledge 2019). The book traces the transformation of museums from publicly or privately funded heritage institutions into active players in the economic sector of culture. Exploring how this transformation reconfigured cultural diplomacy, the book argues that museums have become autonomous diplomatic players on the world stage. In her presentation, Grincheva will set out to explain two strategies of global expansion: museum franchising and global corporatisation, introduced and implemented by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. She will demonstrate how these strategies were adopted across museums around the world by giving examples from China and Russia: the K11 Art Mall in Hong Kong and the International Network of Foundations of the State Hermitage Museum. These cases from more authoritarian political regimes evidence the emergence of alternative avenues of museum diplomacy that no longer depend on government commissions to serve immediate geo-political interests.

Bio

Dr Natalia Grincheva is a 2020 Research Fellow at the University of Oxford in the Digital Diplomacy Research Center and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Digital Studio of the University of Melbourne. Most recently, she was appointed to the Associate Professor position in the Department of Media at the National Research University “Higher School of Economics” in Moscow, Russia. She pursues her career in the field of digital humanities focusing on development of new computational methods to study museums as important players in creative economy and actors of soft power. Dr Grincheva is also a Lead CI and Conceptual Designer of the award-winning digital mapping system Museum Soft Power Map. She is holder of numerous academic awards and fellowships, including Fulbright (2007–2009), Quebec Fund (2011–2013), Australian Endeavour (2012–2013), SOROS (2013–2014) and others. She has successfully implemented a number of research projects on new forms of contemporary diplomacy developed by the largest internationally recognized museums in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Her publication profile includes over 30 research articles, book chapters and reports published in prominent academic outlets. Her most recent publications are two monographs: Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy (Routledge: 2019) and Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age (Routledge: 2020).

 

The presentation will be held in English and will be followed by a discussion with the author.

The presentation is part of the course Art, Politics and Ideology organized by As. Professor Panos Kompatsiaris and is open to the public.

If you need a pass to the HSE, please contact Elena Rymanova via email: erymanova@hse.ru