Every September, with the opening of the new General Assembly session, New York is filled with delegations, strengthened security and traffic blocked around the Glass Palace. But the UN, for those who live in the city, is not only that. For some time the United Nations Association of New York (UNA-NYC) has been trying to tell it through art, with a series of cultural events called Culture and Connections.
The basic idea is simple: to use the museums and exhibitions of the city as a gateway to the great themes on which the UN works, from human rights to historical memory, to cooperation between peoples. The series began with an evening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a private guided tour reserved for a small group of members, who crossed works of different eras and continents, with the guide that invited participants to reflect on universal themes such as identity, conflict and resilience. The evening closed on the rooftop of the museum, between a drink and the view on Central Park at sunset, with UNA- NYC that had covered much of the cost of the tour to make it accessible to its members.
From there the series has grown, touching other cultural institutions of the city: Anne Frank the Exhibition at the Center for Jewish History, with a guided tour followed by a speech by Professor Gavriel Rosenfeld, president of the centre, and the Neue Galerie, dedicated to Austrian and German art. Another stage has dealt with a more explicit theme related to UN work: protection of cultural heritage in time of conflict.
Behind the project there is a precise conviction, that UNA- NYC often repeats in presenting the series: the Met and the UN share, each in its own way, the goal of approaching people, the one showing the creativity of humanity through art, the other working concretely on peace and sustainable development. The association imagines that the series continues to grow, with the stated goal of nourishing not only curiosity and discovery, but also a dialogue of communities that help New Yorkers explore world cultures as a basis for empathy and global citizenship.
L’articolo From a tour to an evening on Anne Frank: the UN mission through art comes from IlNewyorkese.
