Culture
The Treaties That Decide What Counts as a National Film
Coproduction agreements quietly determine which movies get funded, taxed and celebrated as national cinema — culture administered as treaty law.
Deshawn Carter
Culture
Culture is reported here as evidence rather than entertainment. Coverage includes music scenes and protest song, cinema and censorship, religious practice, language policy, memorials and contested history. Each profile connects a cultural argument to a political one, showing what a population will tolerate. For readers who find the mood of a country informative.
Music, film, religion, language and public memory reported as indicators of what a society believes and what its government can get away with.
Culture
Why Museums Fear the Restitution Precedent More Than the Objects
Directors do not lie awake over single bronzes — they lie awake over the slippery slope, and the slope is real in exactly one sense.
Priscilla Vance
Culture
How a Country Turned Pop Songs Into Statecraft
Korea built the modern world's most successful cultural-diplomacy program — partly by design, mostly by accident it then studied carefully.
Deshawn Carter
Culture
Every Nation a Gallery: How the Venice Biennale's Pavilions Work
The world's oldest art biennial lets states build their own exhibition halls in a city of water — a permanent map of recognition, ambition and absence.
Deshawn Carter
Culture
Eurovision Is a Song Contest the Way the UN Is a Debating Society
The world's largest live music event doubles as Europe's least official diplomatic ledger — bloc voting, boycotts and all.
Priscilla Vance