Art In Embassies Announces Gift Of Movie Posters From Motion Picture Association And Geena Davis Institute
Share to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to LinkedinAmerica’s greatest export is culture.
Movies, music, fashion, literature, art.
Stevie Wonder and Toni Morrison and James Dean and Abstract Expressionism and jazz and Jack Kerouac and Air Jordans have done more to share America’s stated aspirational values around the world and positively shape opinions of Americans than anything else. President John F. Kennedy recognized this. When he became aware that the Museum of Modern Art had been informally loaning artworks to ambassadors headed overseas, a lightbulb went off. He wanted to expand and formalize the program. Offer all U.S. ambassadors access to the best of American art to share in their residences around the world. Not as décor. As diplomacy.
Art in Embassies was officially founded as part of the State Department in 1963. Today, when each new ambassador heads to post during each new presidential administration, they, along with curators from Art in Embassies, collaborate on an art exhibition for their residence.
“We tell our ambassadors when we sit down, think about who you are and what pieces of yourself–you’re trying to connect on a personal level–that you want to reveal in your exhibition, along with stories you want to tell about America,” Megan Beyer, Director of Art in Embassies, told Forbes.com. “If you want to talk about soft power tools, this is the most important soft power asset a diplomat has.”
She speaks from experience. Her husband, Don Beyer, was ambassador in Switzerland from 2009 to 2013 during the Obama Administration. At that time, the United States had a dreadful approval rating in Switzerland related to the environment resulting from eight years of George W. Bush Administration’s environmental regulation rollbacks supporting polluting industries, climate obfuscation, and intimate and pervasive connections to the oil industry.
“Without telegraphing a family fight, when you walk in as a diplomat and you’re making a real reversal (of policy), you don’t want to do that in a ham-handed way,” Beyer explained. “My husband liked the Appalachian Trail, so we curated Hudson River Valley paintings of the period of the residence we were in that looked perfectly appropriate, but they were all locations where he had camped on the Appalachian Trail. People would say ‘Oh, what a beautiful forest,’ and he’d say, ‘Well, actually, my tent was not too far from there,’ and so that brought us sideways through a personal story into the geopolitical which is exactly where you want to be with art.”
The Biden Administration’s ambassador to Switzerland has used Art in Embassies to highlight a different crisis effecting America, the world, and the world’s perception of America.
“We’ve got a Rothko (painting) in Switzerland, (and) juxtaposed to the Rothko, we have a Didier William. Whereas when we were there, the issue was the environment, (with the current ambassador), the issue’s immigration,” Beyer said. “He has all first generation (American) artists. He’s got a Wolf Khan, he’s got a Didier William, and nobody knows when they walk in that’s what it’s about, but then he gets to tell those stories.”
Beyer is unaware of any other nation operating a program like Art in Embassies.
“Every U.S. ambassador, after going through the 50 briefings that you get at the State Department before you head to post, the very first deliverable they have is to co-curate with my curators the art they want on the walls, to start the conversations, protect the values, and get things halfway down the runway before they walk down the stairs to go to dinner,” she said.
The MPA Geena Davis Collection”Thelma & Louise” movie poster.Sony Pictures Entertainment
Art in Embassies doesn’t have a large collection to draw from when assembling its exhibitions–more than 200 for every administration at U.S. Embassies, Consulates, and partner institutions around the world. From the Navy to the Federal Reserve to the White House, the General Services Administration, and the National Park Service, numerous departments within the federal government have robust art collections. Art in Embassies’ is puny by comparison.
The office leans on the Smithsonian art museums which, as a part of the federal government, have diplomacy included in their mission. Curators also cajole museums, galleries, artists, and private collectors around the country into loaning artworks. Loans make up more than 80% of pieces featured in ambassador residence exhibitions according to Beyer.
The program also relies on gifts. The Wolf Khan Foundation has gifted artwork in the past. Khan was a Jewish Kindertransport refugee from Frankfurt during the lead-up to World War II, eventually landing in the U.S. The Creative Growth Art Center in San Francisco, the world’s preeminent organization championing artists with disabilities, has gifted 200 artworks.
A new gift from the Motion Picture Association in partnership with the Geena Davis Institute being announced today by Art in Embassies offers incoming ambassadors the opportunity to display one of seven movie posters highlighting iconic female lead characters across Hollywood history.
The six movies and one TV series selected are “9 to 5,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” 2023’s remake of “The Color Purple,” “Wicked,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “The Diplomat” and, of course, “Thelma & Louise,” co-staring Davis and Susan Sarandon.
“I’ve had women all over the world tell me how empowered and inspired they felt by seeing those characters,” Davis told Forbes.com. “I think the reason is because Thelma and Louise were in charge of their fate and in control of their lives all the way.”
The Geena Davis Institute has been a leading advocate championing gender balance and inclusion in entertainment since being founded by the Academy Award winner in 2004. Its 20th anniversary celebration in December 2024 helped inspire the Motion Picture Association and Art in Embassies collaboration.
So did personal connections.
Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the MPA, was ambassador to France when Beyer’s husband was ambassador in Switzerland. Both of their residences had theaters where they’d host movie nights–“film diplomacy” in Beyer’s words.
“We talk about our art exhibitions telling the American story, and certainly our film (can do) that as well,” Beyer said.
Davis also visited Beyer in Switzerland to discuss gender equity.
This gift will be known as “The MPA Geena Davis Collection” and become part of the Democracy Collection, established by Beyer in celebration of Art in Embassies 60th anniversary in 2023.
“We, unlike any other democracy, had this potent diversity that allowed our cultural sector to deeply connect with people halfway across the planet because some of them were represented there in American culture,” Beyer said.”The Diplomat” poster.Netflix
Amusingly enough, the one poster gift actually centered on a fictional U.S. ambassador, “The Diplomat,” a Netflix series starring Keri Russell as Kate Wyler, U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom stationed in London, included a major Art in Embassies gaffe in the first episode. Russell’s husband on the show, Hal Wyler, a fellow diplomat played by Rufus Sewell, informs a house staffer they will not be replacing the outgoing artwork from the previous ambassador’s personal art collection because, as career public servants, the Wyler’s don’t own an art collection.
That’s not how it works.
“I met Rufus at the White House Correspondents Dinner and I was like, ‘You do a wonderful job, but in two minutes, you destroyed 60 years of what we do,’” Beyer said, chuckling.
All kidding aside, art has a proven ability to communicate what words and people cannot.
“Art makes you feel what a diplomat is trying to make you understand,” Beyer explained. “There’s nothing more powerful than understanding something from a feeling. Sometimes you’re wanting to explain, and explain, and explain something so that people will feel something. With art, you start with that feeling.”
