PT Journal
AU Sappa, C
TI Actions and reactions in commodifying cultural heritage hosted in museums
SO JIPITEC
PY 2023
BP 161
EP None
VL 14
IS 1
DE access to culture; commodification; control; digitalized cultural heritage; digitization of cultural heritage; education to knowledge; museums; works of visual art
AB Museums are inclusivity-aimed institutions with a mission of education to knowledge. This mission can be appropriately implemented via the traditional initiatives of preservation and of exhibition, and the less traditional initiatives of sharing information related to cultural heritage via the internet or the metaverse, or by elaborating material to be used by visitors in an interactive fashion. It is undeniable that all these initiatives are costly. So, many museums did not resist the temptation of introducing self-fund mechanisms via the use of different legal tools, such as contractual provisions, national rules on cultural heritage and copyright principles. By exploiting these legal measures museums establish a control-based approach, that make their focus shift to market dynamics. In the last decade, an open-access approach in this field was initiated by the civil society via bottom-up initiatives, on the top of which the legislator added some regulatory measures more recently. The latter expressly aims at consolidating access and education to knowledge. However, a closer look to the entire set of relevant regulatory measures in particular reveals that underpinning economic interests are the main priority of such an approach related to making images of cultural heritage collected in museums available for re-use purposes, at a limited cost. These economic interests are only indirectly those of museums, while they are directly those of businesses. Thus, libre open-access practices and policies that encourage wide re-uses, should they be bottom-up or derive from a regulatory framework, would certainly bring two advantages. The first would be to let museums focusing on educational purposes in a fashion that is in line with the digital technology facilities; the second one would be to encourage market operators of any size to conduct business.
ER