Abstract
The rapid spread of the COVID pandemic is deeply changing people’s lives and upsetting consolidated models and lifestyles. The social distancing measures for the reduction of contagion have been heavily affecting people’s daily experiences, such as for example the public’s relationship with cultural resources. Museums, in particular, are paying the highest price for that, forced to find new forms for heritage fruition, thus representing an emblematic case. Taking its steps from the analysis of the pandemic’s effects on global museum heritage and of museums’ response, the article focuses then on ICTs’ role as communication languages between heritage and its audiences in the solutions adopted, and on their suitability to the changed context. Finally, reflections on structural and contextual aspects of the dialogue between cultural resources and their public, beyond strictly technological matters, are proposed, to highlight the real extent of the challenges facing the museum sector.
Highlights
The COVID pandemic and the consequent safety measures for the reduction of contagion have been inducing a striking impact on the public’s relationship with cultural resources, especially those whose consumption implies people’s gathering
Not as the pandemic represents a huge risk factor for the financial sustainability of managing institutions, and for the very existence of cultural heritage, whose physical integrity is already jeopardized through deterioration, poor or lacking maintenance, extreme events, and anthropic pressure
Given the multifaceted value that they assume within communities and the diverse implications of cultural consumption, it is not easy to abridge the extent of the overall impact of the Coronavirus and of the violent suspension of museum activities on the whole of satellite activities due to the absence of precedents
Summary
The COVID pandemic and the consequent safety measures for the reduction of contagion have been inducing a striking impact on the public’s relationship with cultural resources, especially those whose consumption implies people’s gathering. UNESCO expressly included communities’ abandonment in its List of primary risk factors (Section “Social/cultural uses of heritage—Society’s valuing of heritage”) [1]. In this process, omitted frequentation and consumption of resources from the part of the public play a key role. If communities keep their relationship to and knowledge of heritage alive, cultural resources maintain their essence and significance as inheritance, testimony and identity value; the transfer of knowledge of cultural resources can only occur at its highest through the fruition experience, on site or in remote mode. From a wider-scale perspective, it proposes reflections on structural and contextual aspects of the dialogue between cultural resources and their public, beyond strictly technological matters, in order to highlight the real extent of challenges facing the museum sector
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