What Museums Can Show Us About Soft Power
In 2004, the American academic Joseph Nye defined ‘soft power’ as ‘the influence and attractiveness a nation acquires when others are drawn to its culture and ideas’. This power creates sentiments of self-identification or aspiration in others, attracting them to the source wielding the soft power. Museums act as a beacon of these cultures and ideas. In short, they possess the ability to be powerful agents in the realm of international soft power.
Museums contain an abundance of soft power resources which are not limited to paintings, texts, and relics depicting a narrative. The narrative transmitted is controlled by museums through a process of curation and display. These resources and the narrative they create induce the same sentiments through which the persuasive power of public diplomacy operates. This narrative is delivered en masse to those who visit the museum in person and online, transmitting messages in ways that set agendas and persuade people to think about many ideas and issues. This mass-scale delivery is particularly important as according to the American Alliance of Museums nearly twice as many people visit museums in the United States each year (almost a billion) as attend all major sporting events and theme parks combined.
Museums do not just create narratives but are also active in place-making. This refers to interactions between peoples and places in the creation of social capital. The prime example of this is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. The soft power of museums in place-making transformed an entire city from a small industrial town to a flourishing hub for culture and tourism. Known as the ‘Bilbao Effect’, the museum revived the economy, boosted tourism, and stimulated the growth of hotels, restaurants, and shops as well as libraries, marketing, and the arts. This demonstrates how museums possess sufficient power to exert influence over the system and present meaningful spaces vital to the societies and economies in which they operate. The soft power ability and influence of museums is further reflected through the international work they conduct. Globally popular museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art possess considerable influence and therefore an ability to collaborate internationally to obtain and display exhibitions. This reflects a certain type of international diplomacy cultivated through years of positive channels of communication created outside the confines of conventional forms of diplomacy. In doing so, museums are able to dissociate from governmental propaganda and build trust. This creates mutually beneficial relationships in which cultural treasures can be shared for the mutual benefit of the institutions involved. Museums engage in a form of political relationship building when they participate in international diplomacy.
Lastly, museums are directly involved in security and power issues in the international system. If culture is integral to soft power, then culture is a political entity. This is seen through the wartime weaponisation of culture such as the destruction of heritage sites in Afghanistan, Mali, Iraq, and Syria by Islamist terrorists. In response to the destruction of cultural heritage, which in combination with violence presents a security risk, museums have pursued a frontline approach which includes support to institutions in conflict zones and preservation initiatives. This shows museums taking conscious steps to mediate an issue of international concern.
Museums therefore operate under a liberal institutional framework as international actors who possess the ability to influence the international system. The agency they have in this international system is due to the soft power they hold. This soft power is a direct result of international relationships they create independent of government processes. These in turn are based on a system of good faith between institutions and mutual trust with the public which allows them to amplify civic discourse and act on issues of global importance, such as forms of global insecurity.
Image courtesy of [no author provided] via Wikimedia, ©2005, some rights reserved.
Additional Attributions:
Nye, Joseph S. Soft Power: the means to success in world politics. (New York, Public Affairs, 2004).
