Articoli taggati con ‘Ecclesiastical Heritage’
Ecclesiastical Museums: an important opportunity for cultural networks and territories
In the wide framework of cultural resources present on a territory, there are still instruments and assets that, for multiple reasons, do not enter in traditional mixed offer of a city or a region. Ecclesiastical cultural heritage is often part of the structures that public administrators let slip. For Italy, it seems like paradoxically. While an important part of the art history and of cultural heritage is related to the history of Church, and while there are almost no cultural itineraries that do not include an ecclesiastical reference, the so-called “ecclesiastical museums” are still a marginal part of the policies realized to improve cultural, social and economic growth of our territories. In this article, we will discuss both the theoretical implication and the concrete opportunities that the empowerment of the ecclesiastical museums could generate for Italian territories, in terms of touristic, cultural and spiritual offer. As occur for “secular” ones, the ecclesiastical museum expresses a set of differentiated values that we need to take into account: the economic and social values are, therefore, specific consequences of the intrinsic cultural and historical values represented by the artworks that the museums store and protect. Furthermore, ecclesiastical museums present an aspect that every kind of consideration needs to take into account: the relevance of the spiritual and religious values and the role of the artworks as an important tessera in the wider mosaic of the evangelization function. The article will therefore discuss three main aspects of the Italian ecclesiastical museums: first chapter, “From religious to spiritual” will briefly deal with the theoretical dimension of the role and the relevance of ecclesiastical collections and their inclusion in a broader cultural dimension. The second chapter “Ecclesiastical Museums and services” will analyze services and main characteristics shown by ecclesiastical museums in Italy. Third section will finally introduce the potentiality of the introduction of ecclesiastical museums in different networks, considering the recent growth of cultural and spiritual products or services.
Non-hype instruments for territorial development
As occurs in almost every branch of human activity, our sector is often influenced by trends that condition the work of academicians and practitioners. Today as yesterday, we assist to the explosion of tools whose impact could affect both the cultural and economic development of territories. Yesterday it was the case of festivals, today is what occurs with Blockchain and smart contracts. Nevertheless, following these fashions we leave behind tools or assets that could be very helpful in the construction of a territorial policy for a culture-based development. This number of Tafter Journal is dedicated to two instruments, highly differentiated, that nowadays are not as cool as big-data or the AI applications, but that could concretely concur to the diversification of territorial cultural offer contributing, at the same time, to the specialization of cultural and economic production of a region or a city. Who’s involved in day-by-day working on territory knows that are plenty of resources (as much as obstacles and difficulties) that need to be managed: historic buildings, contemporary production, cultural associations, natural heritage and so on. Properly, our role is indeed to underline further opportunities that could extend that set of assets, and show how these new (or old) tools work or they could do.
