Globalization, Art, and Cultural Diversity in a Connected World
This paper examines how globalization has transformed artistic expression and cultural appreciation across borders. Drawing on scholars such as Jan Aart Scholte, it explores three key trends globalization introduces into the art world — importation, combination, and new creation — and considers whether these trends enrich or dilute cultural diversity. The paper also addresses the role of museums as sites of both nationalist identity and global exchange, the question of whether ethnicity or nationality should determine what artists create, and the risk that globalization imposes Western aesthetic standards on the rest of the world. Ultimately, the paper argues for a balanced globalization that celebrates cultural exchange without suppressing local heritage.
- Introduction: Globalization and the Arts: Key questions linking globalization to artistic identity
- How Globalization Shapes Artistic Expression: Scholte's analysis of globalization's impact on beauty and art
- Diversity, Nationalism, and Art: Three trends in globalized art and cultural exchange
- Museums as Sites of Global and Local Identity: Museums balancing national identity and global participation
- Ethnicity, Nationality, and Artistic Freedom: Whether ethnicity should constrain what artists create
- Conclusion: Balancing cultural exchange with local heritage protection
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What makes this paper effective
- It frames the topic through a clear set of guiding questions at the outset, giving the reader a precise roadmap of the argument before evidence is introduced.
- It balances multiple scholarly perspectives — including Scholte's theoretical framework, Holo's museum-centered analysis, and Gharebaghi's call for artistic universalism — rather than relying on a single source.
- It acknowledges opposing viewpoints (proponents vs. opponents of globalization in art) and uses real-world examples, such as the Reina Sofia museum director's curatorial choices, to ground abstract claims.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively uses source integration to build a layered argument. Rather than simply summarizing each source in sequence, the student weaves quotations and paraphrases together around a central theme — the tension between cultural universalism and local identity — allowing different sources to speak to each other across paragraphs.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a series of guiding research questions, then moves through the theoretical landscape of globalization and art (Scholte), practical artistic attitudes (Gharebaghi, Lynn Anne), institutional dimensions (Holo and Alvarez on museums), and a normative position on ethnicity and creative freedom, before closing with a synthesizing conclusion. This progression — from theory to practice to ethics — gives the essay a coherent argumentative arc.
Introduction: Globalization and the Arts
Has globalization changed the way artists see the world and society? If so, how has it changed artists' views of culture? What place does diversity occupy in the world of art, and are there concerns rooted in nationalism that artists express through their work? Should ethnicity or nationality determine what an artist creates? These questions and issues are reviewed and critiqued in the sections that follow.
How Globalization Shapes Artistic Expression
Pushparajah and Manobavan, writing in the Daily News (Sri Lanka's national newspaper), explain that globalization survives by "controlling information flows" and has a "profound impact on the human populous as it controls the pathways of information." While this is certainly accurate to some degree, the central question here is whether globalization — with its control of information flow — has affected the world's prevailing "appreciation of beauty" and, by extension, what we understand as art (Scholte, 2000, p. 200).
Jan Aart Scholte acknowledges that beauty has undergone some changes in "supraterritorial spaces," but argues that more fundamental ideas of what constitutes beauty "have not disappeared in the process" (p. 200). Indeed, Scholte continues, globalization has actually helped "certain art forms to obtain worldwide currency," due to the digital mass media that has emerged. Some art forms — such as Andy Warhol's images and "tinted-glass office blocks" — have become "marks of beauty" across borders and are not "unconnected to any specific country." Scholte further notes a "hybridization in collective identities" brought about by globalization; at the same time, the shrinking of the globe has provided what he calls "increased possibilities for intercultural combinations in the arts" (p. 201).
Works Cited
Gharebaghi, Ali-Asghar. "The Globalization of Art? The Same Old Story?" Tavoos Online / Art Quarterly / Iran's First Bilingual Art Magazine. 2008. Retrieved October 6, 2011, from http://www.tavoosonline.com.
Holo, Selma, and Mari-Tere Alvarez. Beyond the Turnstile: Making the Case for Museums and Sustainable Values. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.
Lynn Anne's. "Art & Globalization." Lynn Anne's Blogspot. Retrieved October 7, 2011, from http://lynnanneverbeck.blogspot.com/2010/04/art-globalization.html.
Pushparajah, T.A., and M. Manobavan. "Globalization and Contemporary Literature." Daily News. 2010. Retrieved October 7, 2011, from http://www.dailynews.lk.
Scholte, Jan Aart. Globalization: A Critical Introduction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.
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