However much those involved in the arts might protest neutrality from politics, when the going gets tough between nations, the arts are often drawn in as a form of soft diplomacy - think of the CIA's promotion of abstract expressionism during the Cold War, or the Soviet Union's alacrity in sending its brightest and best ballet stars on tour despite the tremendous risks of dancers' defections (notably by Rudolf Nureyev).
In the case of this week's announcement of Tate Britain's high-profile loan of 110 works by Turner to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the diplomatic message is that something's going terribly right when everything else is going horribly wrong -- while British workers in Moscow are being repatriated, and allegations of bullying of British Council workers in St Petersburg are rife, at least everything's rosy in the artistic garden. And because the British Council's Moscow office has been helping smoothe over negotiations between the two museums, I found its head strangely eager to get on the phone and tell me how peaceable and cooperative things had been, at least in relation to this this particular endeavour.
Art and artists, then, can send out powerful messages, such as when Spielberg pulled out of his artistic role in the Beijing Olympics. In the past week I have been fascinated by Covent Garden's decision to send the Royal Ballet to Beijing to dance as part of the Cultural Olympiad this June, in the teeth of the violence in Tibet. Monica Mason, the director of the Royal, thinks that there's much to be gained by keeping links between artists open, and using art as a force for reconciliation - but one wonders whether it's time to make a more forceful protest?
