Heritage and the Visual Arts

Abstract

It is not often one can make universal generalizations, but it is axiomatic that cultural heritage places and the visual arts are inseparable. Whether it is the rock art in Kakadu World Heritage Site in northern Australia, the multiple art works that suffuse the urban fabric of Florence, the bas-relief sculptures of the temples of Angkor in Cambodia, the frescoes in the tombs of the Valley of the Kings, the giant sculptures at the temples at Karnak in Egypt, ‘heritage’ collections of paintings like those of the nineteenth-century painter J. M. W. Turner at the Tate Britain, the frescoes and sculptures at Sigiriya World Heritage Site in central Sri Lanka, or the stained glass and the sculptural programmes of Chartres Cathedral, this virtually inexhaustible list denotes heritage, however conceived, as twinned inextricably with the visual arts.