The Foreign Service Journal, December 2015

32 DECEMBER 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL chairs to Abdel Ouorou Bare for his Beninese basketball team; a tune-up for the wheelchair of Burkina Faso’s Ismael Traore; and an electric wheelchair, new wheels and a modified wheelchair for Senegal’s Sanghone Diop. As our African visitors’ guide would tell us later, “they had never experienced this sort of kindness on the part of strangers. They will not forget this experience, ever.” Abdel and his basketball teamwent on to participate in a bas- ketball tournament for wheelchair-bound players, sponsored by the U.S. embassy in Benin. These extraordinary gifts could never have been bestowed without the valuable work of the IVLP, which regularly changes the lives of people from around the world. Alice Williams is the marketing and communications coordinator for the Utah Council for Citizen Diplomacy in Salt Lake City. Museum Management Lessons BY IVAN STANIC I n April 2007, I participated in the International Visitor Lead- ership Program titled “Cultural, Performing and Visual Arts Management in the United States” at the invitation of the U.S. embassy in Belgrade. My visit to America was a unique opportunity to study new methods and models of cultural management, aesthetics and life. I greatly benefited from the experience, which broadened my interests, changed my way of thinking and radically influenced my work. In a number of fields, American cultural and artistic practices are useful and adaptable outside your country. And, perhaps more importantly, my visit to America changed the way I think about the United States—for the better! I launched Belgrade’s “Night of Museums” by collaborating with a group of young, enthusiastic local artists. Our work began the year before I embarked on my visit to the United States, but the experience I gained in the United States allowed me to improve this project. Eight years later, I still use what I learned to aid me in my work at Belgrade’s Museum of Science and Technology. Our visits to Washington, D.C., Buffalo, Rochester, Seattle, Austin and New York City were all invaluable. They gave me insights into how your key institutions work, including the Smith- sonian Institution, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Experience Music Project, the Seattle Art Museum and the George Eastman House, among others. Our American coun- terparts were forthcoming, welcoming and eager to share their experiences and knowledge. Acquainting oneself with different practices, ways of doing business and application of knowledge, and establishing contacts with counterparts from American cultural institutions are critical to making international exchanges work. In 2009, I organized a workshop titled “Museums Today: Changes and Continuity.” Thanks to the IVLP, two key figures came to Belgrade to participate: Brent Glass, the former director of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and Mintz Ward, the executive director of the Coby Foundation. The two conducted a workshop for Serbian museummanagers that the U.S. embassy, the Fund for Arts and Culture in Central Europe and the Serbian Ministry of Culture jointly supported. Even today, six years later, my Serbian counterparts tell me the workshop was “one of the most useful seminars in which they had the pleasure to take part.” Ivan Stanic is the manager for marketing and public relations at the Museum of Science and Technology in Belgrade, Serbia. Starting Up Exchanges with Iraq in the 1980s BY JAMES BULLOCK I n 1984, I was all set to work in our embassy in Riyadh, when I was asked at the last minute to take on a higher-priority assign- ment instead: reopen the U.S. Information Agency’s operation in Baghdad, in anticipation of the imminent restoration of diplo- matic relations between Iraq and the United States. Although the political stakes were high, expectations were low. SaddamHus- sein’s police state was in tight control of anything foreign and ever watchful for enemies while fighting a desperate war against Iran. No one expected successful public diplomacy in that environ- ment. As a result, I had a free hand to do what I could. Despite having had a small U.S. interests section in Baghdad