A look at historic cultural exchanges

Arts and sports have eased tensions and opened diplomatic doors between rival nations in the past. A look at some key cultural exchanges:

CHINA

April 1971 — The U.S. Table Tennis Team accepts a surprise invitation from China, making the group the first American non-communist delegation allowed into China since the communist takeover in 1949. This "pingpong diplomacy" helps lay the path for President Richard Nixon's historic trip to China the following year.

1979 — Acclaimed violinist Isaac Stern embarks on a cultural tour of China in which he performs and mentors young Chinese musicians, encounters that are chronicled in an Oscar-winning documentary, "Mozart to Mao."

February 2008 — The first historic survey of American art ever presented in China goes on view in Beijing. "Three Hundred Years of Innovation," traces American art from the colonial era to the present.

IRAN

1998 — Iran's soccer team charms Americans by giving the U.S. players flowers before defeating them 2-1 at the World Cup. A brief blossoming of academic, cultural and other outreach followed, but dried up amid political shifts in Iran and the United States.

January 2007 — U.S. wrestlers are welcomed to Iran with bouquets of flowers and participate in the Persian Gulf Cup, the top wrestling tournament in Iran, where the sport has been a national obsession for centuries. It is the first time Americans take part in the competition since hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005.

SOVIET UNION AND EASTERN EUROPE

1989 — As the Berlin Wall is torn down, Soviet exile and renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich plays Bach cello suites amid the rubble. The next year, Rostropovich makes a triumphant return to Russia to perform with Washington's National Symphony Orchestra, where he was music director from 1977 to 1994.

November 1987 — Jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck travels to the Soviet Union, performing at the summit of President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

1960 — The American Ballet Theatre goes to the Soviet Union, the first American dance company sent to that country. Two years later, the New York City Ballet follows.

1959 — Leonard Bernstein takes the New York Philharmonic on a tour of the Soviet Union. A year earlier, American pianist Van Cliburn had won the first International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow at the height of the Cold War, and was hailed as a major ambassador of American culture.

1956 — George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" tours Leningrad and Moscow, followed by performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra later that year.