The Power of Culture

"Art must first be presented in the corner of the eye. Then it gradually slides into main focus," says Guus Beumer. He is the director of Marres, a centre for contemporary art in the dutch town Maastricht. Early in May, he and about a dozen other curators from the Netherlands went to Senegal’s capital Dakar and Johannesburg and Cape Town in South Africa for a working visit.

Stimulating the mobility of artists and artistic productions is one of the policy objectives in the international cultural policy of the Netherlands.

What is the value of culture and the arts in international cooperation? The recent publication Culture at the Heart of Transformation delves into the experience of seven countries.

Overseas cultural legacy is gaining significance in the Netherlands. But would developing countries not prefer to forget reminders of the Dutch slave trade and colonialism? Secretary of state Atzo Nicolaï: "Most Dutch people are completely unaware of the monuments that we have left in other parts of the world."

On 22 March of this year, World Water Day was celebrated in Mexico City. The ceremonies took place during the fourth World Water Forum, where for a week under Unesco’s leadership people exchanged ideas about water and cultural diversity.

One of the outcomes of globalization has been a greater engagement with art from non- Western centers. The cultural specificities of these locations and issues related to the process of assimilation into the mainstream were the focus of a recent seminar held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.