Consul General Speeches

Remarks at the Launch of http://www.washingtonamsterdam.com/
Hotel Intercontinental Amstel, Amsterdam, November 30, 2006, 1:15 p.m.

What a special privilege it is for me to be here today to help celebrate the launch of www.washingtonamsterdam.com.  I’ve got to thank Bruno Servaege and his excellent team at the tube.nl for their kind invitation, and for including me in an afternoon when we gather to launch an exciting new venture, and when we also celebrate the arts. 
There’s another, more personal reason that I am glad to be here today.  For the two years prior to my arrival in Amsterdam just a few short months ago, I made my home in Washington, D.C.  I love Washington.  It’s a city that has a great deal in common with Amsterdam.  They’re both capital cities, centers of economic and financial power, beacons of culture, and wonderful places to live.  And so today it’s a great pleasure for me to be part of a new initiative that I hope will bring the cities of Washington and Amsterdam closer together, and that will encourage many, many more people to experience all that both of these wonderful places have to offer.       
At the heart of washingtonamsterdam.com is travel and tourism, a global industry that has an undeniable economic impact.  In the United States, travel and tourism accounted for over 104 billion dollars in economic activity last year.  And I understand that this year the city of Amsterdam enjoyed a record year for tourism, booking a five percent increase in the number of people that visited. 
But there is so much more to travel than the dollars or euros it generates.  Travel opens hearts and minds to the world beyond the one we know.  Tourism can be a catalyst for urban renewal centered on great new cultural institutions like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, for example.  Tourism undoubtedly helps to preserve cultural heritage.  And I believe that travel fosters greater understanding among peoples and stimulates – as well as satisfies – curiosity about the world we live in.  There is absolutely no substitute for going somewhere and seeing a place with your own eyes, getting to know the people who live there, and developing – first hand – a greater understanding of the values and culture that influence people, villages, cities, and nations.   
As a U.S. diplomat, one of the most satisfying and exciting activities that I undertake is cultural diplomacy – a concept that purportedly reaches back to the earliest days of our nation’s existence.  Thomas Jefferson, when he was serving as an American diplomat in Paris, wrote:
“… I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the world and procure them its praise.” 
Jefferson’s concise description of cultural diplomacy – the idea that a nation’s cultural expressions can help others appreciate the true values at the core of that nation – lives on today.  In September 2006, the U.S. Department of State – partnering with public and private cultural institutions – launched a Global Cultural Initiative which we hope will mobilize the vast talents and resources of America’s cultural institutions to support international cultural diplomacy.  We are working with some of the most renowned cultural treasures of the United States: 
the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,
the American Film Institute,
the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities,
the National Endowment for the Arts,
the National Endowment for the Humanities,
and the Institute for Museum and Library Sciences. 
Our objective is to emphasize the importance of the arts as a means of engagement, connecting international audiences with American artists and art forms, and educating young people and adults in the U.S. and abroad about the arts and the cultures of other countries.   
 
It’s a pretty ambitious program.  But the United States and The Netherlands have been engaged in collaborations in celebration of the arts for decades. 
Here are just a few examples:
There is the New Netherlands Project, which is contributing to a better understanding of the important influences that the Dutch settlement of what is now the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. 
Piet Oudolf, a Dutch landscape designer, has been chosen to design the Gardens of Remembrance which, when all phases of the project are completed, will consist of 10,000 square feet of perennial plantings, flowers and passages for meditation and to honor those who perished on September 11, 2001. 
And, interestingly, I understand that an American landscape architect designed the landscape of the Westerpark in Amsterdam!
And the Theater Instituut of Amsterdam is participating in the Netherlands American Dance and Theater Project. 
A quick look at the arts and culture section of virtually any newspaper in a large U.S. city would read like a “who’s who” of the Dutch arts scene.  We in the United States are celebrating Rembrandt’s 400^th birthday well into 2007 with special exhibits in Massachusetts, Ohio, Missouri and Washington, D.C. 
There’s a retrospective of the Droog Design collective going on right now at the Museum of Art and Design in New York. 
The classical ensemble Calefax is touring Washington, North Carolina and New York. 
And the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Toneelgroup Amsterdam are collaborating on a stage adaptation of Wim Wenders’s film, Wings of Desire.
Here in Amsterdam several weeks ago I had the great pleasure of visiting a symposium hosted by Kunst en Cultuur at the Scheepvaart Musee that included four speakers on from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and almost 200 of the movers and shakers in the arts community in The Netherlands.
Beyond these formal, institutional exchanges, there is the great joy of discovery experienced by the millions of visitors to our two countries each year – and to the millions more that travel the world. 
I am certain that each of us here can pinpoint a moment in time when we were riveted by a particular painting or photograph, or challenged by a piece of music, or brought to our feet by a rousing dance performance or tremendous stage play.  Who knows what inspiration a young person, or a not-so-young person, might draw from a visit to the Rijksmuseum today?  Or the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum?
The travelers among us now have a new venue to search for information that will make your next visit to Washington, D.C. even more memorable, as well as a way of keeping up with all the amazing things that are going on in Amsterdam.  I offer my congratulations to the people who have made this day possible – thetube.nl and its sponsors – my best wishes for the success of washingtonamsterdam.com, and many delightful journeys to you all.