More Thoughts on Museums as Foreign Policy Agents (UPDATED)

After I sent NPR the link to my post this morning, they changed the mischievous headline. It no longer reads: “State Dept. Museums Plug Cultural Diplomacy.”
Now it’s: “State Department Funds World Museum Exhibits.” That’s nothing new, and it doesn’t capture what’s dicey about the new Museums & Community Collaborations Abroad program. Better would have been: “State Department Encourages Museums to Plug Cultural Diplomacy.”
In any event, though I’m tempted to respond at length to Erik Ledbetter‘s BlogBack today on behalf of AAM, I’m going to (mostly) restrain myself: I don’t like to discourage thoughtful dissent from readers.
I will only say that MCCA’s suggested project descriptions for Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Pakistan and Peru make it explicitly clear that they are specifically intended to “promote U.S. foreign policy objectives.”
That may make perfect sense to the State Department funders, but it’s not the proper mission of independent U.S. museums.
UPDATE: None of my readers, aside from Ledbetter, have yet seen fit to comment on AAM’s new program. Maybe the readers of this recent CultureGrrl-inspired commentary, just posted in “Give and Take,” the Chronicle of Philanthropy‘s roundup of blogs about the nonprofit world, will be more outspoken.