Embassies showcase their countries’ best

Ask what’s unique about capital cities, and one thing springs to mind: their embassies. And in Washington it’s the often untapped source of international cultural events those embassies provide. Embassies here stage an amazingly diverse program of exhibitions and events that cultural attaches use to showcase the best of their arts, their designs, their music and their people — usually at little or no cost.

With 170 embassies, Washington enjoys a heady mix of cultural offerings that are many and kaleidoscopic — films, art and photography exhibitions, embassy tours, concerts, performances, lectures, language and culture lessons, literary events.

Some embassies — those of Austria, France, Germany and Finland — offer bigger programs than others, but nearly every embassy has at least a few events a year. Anyone with even the faintest bit of curiosity about a country is sure to find something in Washington to satisfy it.

Imagine the menu: A Brazilian detective movie in English-subtitled Portuguese. An evening of Tunisian music at the ambassador’s home. Classes in Hungarian or Korean. A lecture on Swiss architecture. An exhibit of photos of the Australian outback by a German filmmaker now living in Los Angeles. A show of textiles whose designs look very like those on the towels splashed about at Crate & Barrel.

They’re all here.

Yet they are often not advertised, difficult to find out about and sparsely attended.

“People really don’t realize what’s out there,” says Jerome Barry, founder and producer of the Embassy Series (www.embassyseries.org), a unique program of embassy concerts by internationally famous musicians.

Mr. Barry has produced more than 250 concerts at 35 embassies in the past 10 years.

“We try to bridge the cultural gap between the countries and show people what different countries have to offer,” says Mr. Barry, who is always discovering new embassies to work with and new artists to showcase. This year, venues have included Hungary, Iceland, Tunisia, Malaysia, and Mexico as well as the old standbys Mr. Barry works with consistently — the embassies of Austria, Germany, Poland and Slovakia.

This season’s Embassy Series has already produced two historic events: the October concert featuring American pianist Thomas Tirino, which was the first public program held in the old Cuban Embassy on 16th Street NW (now the Cuban Interests Section) in more than four decades, and the December performance of Chinese violinist Bin Huang, which was the first concert presented at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China by an arts organization.

Embassy Series concerts, which are always followed by cocktail receptions, often sell out months in advance. There are still several concerts left this season, including performances at the Malaysian, Tunisian, Austrian, and French embassies.

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The possibility of mingling with ambassadors, diplomats and artists at a concert or an art opening can be exciting to some but daunting to others who may feel as though they don’t belong in that world. Locals, however, are precisely the people to whom cultural attaches say they most want to appeal.

“Ours is very much a local crowd. My job is to pick the things that are best for the local audience,” says Tuula Yrjo-Koskinen, cultural counselor at the Finnish Embassy. “There’s a whole big audience that we have coming here time after time.”

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