ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the role that cultural institutions play in helping to create viable diverse cities. It argues that how cultural institutions represent and respond to the challenges of heightened migration and increasing diversity is, in part, a function of the cultural armature of the cities where they are located – their history, demography, diversity management regimes, and the deep cultural structures laid down by their founders. How institutions respond is also a function of the city and nation’s position in the global cultural hierarchy which, in turn, affects how much museums are influenced by and influence global museum assemblages. National and urban cultural politics interdependently shape the warp and woof of museum practice in countries of different sizes, populations, and degrees of cultural centralisation, but the globalisation of the museum sector also weaves itself between the threads.
