International

Germany’s new culture minister, Claudia Roth, has taken office pledging to continue her predecessor’s work in decolonising museums, to set up a central “green culture” desk, to boost funding for the arts and to rethink both the Humboldt Forum and a planned new 20th-century art museum in Berlin.

"#Occupy; #BlackLivesMatter, #TimesUp – hands up if you are familiar with these movements. Le Balai Citoyen, Lucha, Y’en a Marre or Abahlali baseMjondolo. How many have heard of these?" Halima Mahomed, an independent philanthropy consultant, begins that way an article in Alliance Magazine in which she wagers that "unless you're directly involved in funding in their geographies," you won't know about them.

The Orontes Guitar Quartet are the first group to be brought together in a safe country, in this case, Canada, by the Artist Protection Fund (APF), the New York-based program that supports threatened artists around the world, reported The Globe and Mail.

The opportunities to connect communities through culture and to use that cultural engagement to educate one another are simultaneously compelling and challenging to cultural foundations and philanthropists. Recent reports and research provide strong arguments and preliminary insights into ways that culture can advance engagement across boundaries, both geographic and societal. But the most challenging efforts may be those intended to connect the United States to Muslim populations abroad.

The Jerome Foundation, St. Paul, Minnesota, and the Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France, are now operating under a single governance and integrated management structure.

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   “Only Connect the Prose and the Passion” (12 Mb)

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   Public and Private Cultural Exchange-Based Diplomacy (2.2 Kb)

2010, 98 pages, The Cleveland Foundation, 1422 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH, 44115, (216) 861-3810 http://www.clevelandfoundation.org

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In 2007, with the Bush administration’s aggressive foreign policy looming large in the world’s perception of the United States, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation expanded its arts research agenda to include a major in-house project aimed at shedding light on the recent history of public and private support for international arts and cultural exchange as an instrument of public diplomacy.