Whose Berlin?

It’s questionable, to say the least, whether the thousands of Washingtonians who queued up outside the National Gallery to marvel at Tutankhamun came away convinced that Prime Minister Sadat should be allowed to complete his shopping list, or whether the New Yorkers now flocking to the Metropolitan’s Russian and Soviet Painting are beginning to wonder if Sakharov isn’t making up all those horrid stories about what happens to dissidents in the Soviet Union. Still, countries of all sizes and political persuasions are convinced that this kind of cultural public relations pays off, and that nothing beats the export of art and artists for drumming up political goodwill.

A recent case in point was the saturation bombing of New York with art exhibitions, films, plays, poetry readings, and scholarly symposia offered under the catchy slogan Berlin Now, a rubric that was plastered on bus stops all over town. Just which part of divided Berlin was thus displaying its wares was not specified in the advertising. It turned out that it was West Berlin, a fact even those who managed to attend some of the events were rather hard put to discover.

RB

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Ruth Berenson

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It’s questionable, to say the least, whether the thousands of Washingtonians who queued up outside the National Gallery to marvel at Tutankhamun came away convinced that Prime Minister Sadat should be allowed to complete his shopping list, or whether the New Yorkers now flocking to the Metropolitan’s Russian and Soviet Painting are beginning to wonder if Sakharov isn’t making up all those horrid stories about what happens to dissidents in the Soviet Union. Still, countries of all sizes and political persuasions are convinced that this kind of cultural public relations pays off, and that nothing beats the export of art and artists for drumming up political goodwill.

A recent case in point was the saturation bombing of New York with art exhibitions, films, plays, poetry readings, and scholarly symposia offered under the catchy slogan Berlin Now, a rubric that was plastered on bus stops all over town. Just which part of divided Berlin was thus displaying its wares was not specified in the advertising. It turned out that it was West Berlin, a fact even those who managed to attend some of the events were rather hard put to discover.