Building Bridges Through Art: A Curator’s Eye for Cultural Diplomacy
In an increasingly turbulent geopolitical environment, curator Natalie King builds bridges not through treaties or trade, but through art. As an internationally renowned arts leader, whose résumé includes curating Australia’s contribution to three Venice Biennales, King has long stood at the intersection of culture and diplomacy.
In an era where the world, as she puts it, “is a mesmerising mess”, cultural diplomacy and connections may be exactly what is needed.
Three decades into her work, Natalie King remains animated not just by the art on display, but by the human stories behind it. “Artists and creatives take you to places you had never imagined,” she says. Reflecting this creative journey, her career, which has taken her from the jungles of Samoa to Timor Leste, Tokyo, and Taiwan, has been anything but conventional.
Her first step toward Asia came in the 1990s with an internship at the inaugural Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane. “I got a small amount of funding to intern at Queensland Art Gallery at the close of the first edition in the early 90s,” King recalls. Her motivation then was partly geographical thanks to Australia’s proximity to Asia but driven more by “curiosity and cross-regional relationships”.
Source: Asialink
