Experimental Diplomacy: Art and International Cultural Relations at 49th Parallel

This article focuses on 49th Parallel: Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art (1981–92), a New York City-based art gallery that was conceived as a diplomatic ‘pilot project’ by Canada’s Department of External Affairs to focus on ‘new’ and ‘experimental’ Canadian contemporary art. Drawing from policy papers, memorandums and grant applications, I examine the gallery’s conceptual framework governing three key exhibitions, particularly the assumptions informing the gallery’s deployment of contemporary art as a tool of soft power within a climate of ascendant neoliberal capitalist ideologies. These records of the gallery’s mandate and programming reveal mounting pressures to increase the presence of Canadian art in the international art scene.