Conversation Pieces - Sarah E.K. Smith

Conversation Pieces

Museum diplomacy has come to new prominence in the contemporary moment. Museums have increasingly global agendas, advancing diverse international partnerships across the world. Moreover, they hold the potential to advance cross-cultural education and foster mutual understanding at a moment when we are beset by global challenges.

The edited collection Museum Diplomacy: How Cultural Institutions Shape Global Engagement recognizes the pivotal contributions of museums’ global work, while also grappling with the significant issues, questions and possibilities that these activities raise. The collection features examinations of museum diplomacy by fifteen leading scholars and museum practitioners. These texts address global case studies that speak to museum practices related to objects, collections, and people, and charting foundational concepts and ideas.

Through these wide-ranging contributions, Museum Diplomacy calls on the sector to rethink their perceptions of cultural diplomacy and embrace an expansive understanding of the diplomatic practitioner.

Contributors: Lee Davidson & Leticia Pérez Castellanos, Anthony Alan Shelton, Henry McGhie, Patricia M. Goff, Da Kong, Simona Bodo & Anna Chiara Cimoli, Linda Grussani, Karen Exell, Melissa Chiu, Liz Tunick Cedar, Chen Shen, Anaïs Aguerre, and Simge Erdogan-O’Connor.

Published in 2023 by the American Alliance of Museums and Rowman & Littlefield.

Etherington House, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2008

Conversation Pieces presented new media works exploring acts of communication. United by their basis in forms of conversation found in daily social interaction, the works relate to both private and public spheres of life. By critically manipulating verbal communication, the art lays bare the ways in which we forge connections, make meaning and gain understanding, while highlighting artistic investigations of audio media. Presented in Etherington House, the historic foundation of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, these pieces populate the rooms of this domestic setting with verbal exchanges. Visitors contemplated and participated in works by Linda Duvall, Germaine Koh, Deirdre Logue, Matt Rogalsky and Laurel Woodcock. A radio-based component of this exhibition, Conversation Pieces on Air, was broadcast on CFRC 101.9 FM.

Press Coverage in the Queen’s Journal.

Image Credits: Conversation Pieces, installation views, Etherington House, Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Photos by Nigel Barnett.