Cultural diplomacy under the “digital lockdown”: pandemic challenges and opportunities in museum diplomacy

Abstract

The article analyzes the case of museum diplomacy during the Covid-19 global outbreak to illustrate two important trends that were reinforced in the condition of the pandemic. First, it argues that digital innovations achieved by cultural institutions in their international communication in the conditions of mass closures and national lockdowns significantly accelerated and even further legitimized digital diplomacy (Bjola et al. in Hague J Dipl 14(1–2):83–101, 2019). During the Covid-19 crisis, for instance, the volume of digital cultural production and its global consumption rate have dramatically increased (UNESCO in Report “Culture & COVID-19: Impact and Response Tracker.” https://bit.ly/3iQLN74, 2020b), paving more reliable avenues for digital communication and even diplomacy. Second, the pandemics prompted cultural actors to take institutional initiatives and complement official cultural diplomacy exchanges, which due to the travel boundaries either temporarily ceased to exist or considerably slowed down.