Collateral Theories of Heritage Preservation: from a Cult of Monuments to an Economics of Cultural Heritage
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| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | In European culture, the beginnings of the care of historical monuments as the effort to preserve material relics of past ages can be identified with the medieval respect for holy places and the related religious piety. If, at that time, the reconstruction or preservation of a monument was to be carried out, the decisive argument that pushed the entire process forward consisted in its underlying idea, namely in the answer to the question “Why?“. It is therefore obvious that initial forms of monument care were dependent upon the sheer reason why a concrete building should be preserved. However, a strong and sophisticated system of justification built upon well-based arguments was developed over time to found monument care as a causality which, out of the natural cycle of creation and ruin, extracts selected objects and brings them back to presence again. Within the modern ages, this emotional basis was further complemented with the newly accentuated rationality of monument care. The rational appreciation of the quality and value of monuments introduced market forces to the care of historical monuments, thus employing the agent that sets in motion the ever-growing crowds of tourist, ensures the influx of capital, and generally opens a large number of resources to be utilized in monument care. Then, this rationality factor poses the question that is closely linked to the related elementary aspect of economics: What should be protected, how, and for whom? The conflict of the two above-outlined approaches can be illustrated by the actual history and development of monument care reaching up to the current systems of complex protection. |