Notice Board

Elizabeth Diggon is a PhD candidate in the Cultural Studies Program at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Her dissertation examines the mobilization of art as a means of cultural diplomacy in the Canadian context from the mid-to-late twentieth century. She also currently holds the research position at the Esker Foundation in Calgary. She has an article forthcoming in the Journal of Curatorial Studies and her writing has been published in the Journal of Canadian Studies, as well as in exhibitions catalogues for the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery and the Union Gallery in Kingston.

Art and visual culture can be used as a powerful tool in the facilitation of international relations and the promotion of state policies and initiatives. In this lecture, Elizabeth Diggon will examine some of the ways in which Canadian state institutions have utilized art as an expedient for cultural diplomacy from the postwar era onwards, drawing attention to the existence of a broader system of Canadian cultural diplomacy and its connections to networks of cultural and political power in the Western world. She will lend particular focus to the ways that Canadian institutions have attempted to leverage the symbolic capital of contemporary art to foster improved relations with other geopolitical areas while simultaneously negotiating a Canadian cultural identity for international consumption.

Image courtesy of the speaker.