Studies on Heritage Management 2. - Cultural Heritage and its Management

Title:
Studies on Heritage Management 2. - Cultural Heritage and its Management
Author:
Infota
Date:
2011. october
Pages:
290

The Foundation for Information Society – the publisher of the Alma Mater series – has been thoroughly committed to preserve and present cultural and natural heritage. Our researches have been published in numerous studies but now, for the first time, it was due to treat this subject in the framework of the thematic volumes of alma Mater in a comprehensive way. The diverse issue has resulted in the assertion that the topics collected by our authors could not be put in one single volume. Due to the support of the National Civil Fund, now we have been granted to publish a second volume on Cultural Heritage Management.

The book – as it has been the case with the first volume – is intended to be used in higher education courses or as a text book, or “just” an interesting publication about cultural diversity. It has got three main sections. In the part dealing with general management issues, articles come from international experts having collected their experience from all over the world based on UNESCO guidelines. The second part deals with the actual institutional management situation in Hungary. These articles come among others from the Head of Department of Cultural Heritage Office, Director of the European Folklore Institute, Director of the Hungarian National Committee of Intangible Cultural Heritage, President of the Rural Heritage Association. The third section is the most varied as the case studies or expert reports present the most varied problems of cultural heritage preservations in music, dance, film, theatre, literature and language.

Our primary aim was to register the state-of-the-art summary of the current situation in Hungary, in order to enable the managers to take care of cultural heritage in a professional way, to ensure an appropriate protection, to raise awareness of people so that they could rightfully evaluate the world surrounding them and be able to pass it to the next generation.
Title:
Foreword

Author:
Lia Bassa, Ferenc Kiss

Pages:
1 - 2
Title:
Preface

Author:
Francesco Bandarin

Pages:
3
Title:
Management Plans and Management Planning

Author:
Giora Solar

Pages:
5 - 12

The origins of management plans come from nature protection and ecology, where comprehensive thinking has been the direction since long time. In cultural heritage protection and planning experience (when comprehensive planning is concerned) we are many years behind nature. Identify the cultural values, boundaries, other values – natural, touristic, economic, symbolic, social, owners’ values, etc., through meetings with experts and stakeholders. Identify the tangible properties, which are carrying the cultural values, document them and analyze their state of conservation as well as non tangible heritage and the “Spirit of Place”, including its attributes. Identify existing and potential threats: neglect, improper conservation, lack of planning, wrong and excessive development, tourism pressures, environmental pollution, any other pollution, wars, natural disasters, lack of management etc. Study all existing protection mechanisms. (Law, law enforcement mechanism, physical protection). Study the existing management structure. (Administration and bureaucracy.) Prepare action plan with suggested list of projects. Consider other issues, such as: public awareness campaigns, education, publicity and media, donors meetings, fundraising policies, The idea of understanding what people wish and what do they see in the heritage is extremely important for the development of the plan. Their participation, in one way or another, is one of the ways to assist the implementation and success of the plan. The management plan can be described therefore as the toolbox and the tools in it. Tools can be added and improved as needed.
Title:
The role of monitoring and requirements for success

Author:
Christopher Young

Pages:
13 - 22

Monitoring should be focused both on the assessment of the condition of the site, and on the effectiveness of the management system. It is essential that the results of the monitoring should be used to make the necessary changes in management, conservation and sustainable use of a heritage site to ensure that its values are maintained and enhanced. It is desirable that monitoring takes place over time and is repeated at regular intervals since this provides trend data on the condition of the site and the effectiveness of management over a period, and so may provide a more accurate picture of its condition and of underlying processes and threats which may be affecting it. Periodic Reporting of course deals both with the response of each member state to the general requirements of the World Heritage Convention (Part I) and also with the state of conservation of individual properties (Part II).
Title:
Cultural Heritage and Economic Theory

Author:
Georges Zouain

Pages:
23 - 52

Not too long ago, at meetings of the World Heritage Committee, several delegates used to ask: « We are very proud to have a site on the World Heritage List, but what is next? What do we do with this listing and with the site? ». We were left with the very question of value, of utility, of the role of « heritage » in our societies and economies. This has begun to change and, even though it is the tourism function that has taken over the economic role of cultural heritage, more and different functions are now recognized and their presence integrated in management plans of cultural heritage. Listing and protecting are mainly to prevent the deterioration or the disappearance of the object of protection – the cultural or natural heritage – since it will constitute an impoverishment of the heritage of the nation or, in the case of the World Heritage, of all the nations of the World. All over the World, there is a growing “demand” for heritage, enlarging more and more the scope of the concept. This demand is not driven by heritage specialists only but rather by the ‘consumers’ of heritage: the population at large, and the tourism sector. Rather, it is the use, the economic value, the returns expected that make nowadays heritage so interesting, appealing. In this paper, it is discussed how an economic reading of heritage helps in its protection through the understanding of its possible functions and the limits of its use.
Title:
Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) and its Implementation in Hungary

Author:
Eszter Csonka-Takács

Pages:
53 - 68

The intangible cultural heritage is basically a practice, knowledge and activity as well as the related tool, product or cultural site –, which is an acknowledged part of the cultural heritage of a community. This cultural heritage is being transmitted from generation to generation, being permanently re-created by the community, thus providing them with a common identity and continuity. The aim of the UNESCO convention is to safeguard living community practices, to strengthen the identity of surviving communities in the globalising-modernising world, as well as to present their cultural image, thus mutually acknowledging cultural diversity, to raise awareness of the significance of intangible expression forms that are threatened with exhaustion and to protect such heritage elements. A recently created professional network is contributing to this work in Hungary. Any locally working cultural expert can be its member whose task is the direct involvement in heritage protection related to the given community and geographical area.
Title:
Official and Authority Protection of Tangible Cultural Assets

Author:
Péter Buzinkay

Pages:
69 - 90

The tangible elements of our cultural heritage are generally called “art treasure” or “artistic objects” by the general public that are officially named “cultural assets” or “cultural items” by law and authority measures. In accordance with the definition of the heritage protection act, the “outstanding and characteristic mementos” (i.e. relics) and the “artistic productions” are protected, as well as the cultural benefits – in museums, collections and outside them, which is an important issue in our days. The study is dealing primarily with the governmental and non-governmental tasks related to the protection of tangible cultural assets, as well as their regulations in force, including the related institutional system, focusing on the administrative and authority responsibilities of the cultural expert administration Among them, the activities of art object supervision that is not implemented by ministries, is discussed in a more detailed way.
Title:
The Preservation of Intangible Cultural Heritage

Author:
Mihály Hoppál

Pages:
91 - 112

The article provides us with comprehensive information about the registration, management and preservation of the entirety of heritage including the various aspects of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH): oral traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage; performing arts; social practices, rituals and festive events; knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe; traditional craftsmanship. The second part of the article based mainly on personal experiences describes the best practices from all over the world. The drawing of conclusions and the implementation of the future vision in Hungary is supported by an extensive professional bibliography.
Title:
Network of Rural Heritage Farmhouses in Hungary

Author:
Péter Szablyár

Pages:
113 - 124

There is a very special public collection type in Hungary: the rural heritage farmhouses and their development is described in the article. Their enthusiastic creators, operators consider it as a “Hungarian uniqueness”, folk art expert take it for a temporary treasury, monument protectors see in them the survival possibility for the house, cottage or workshop to be saved. In the past decade, because of the social economic changes, these farmhouses have taken over the function of “community space”. The basic condition for the development and maintenance of farmhouses is the connection network that can ensure the financial resources for the operation, the professional knowledge of exhibitions and programs as well as providing sufficient marketing background for achieving the expected number of visitors. The process of networking has been most efficiently and competently carried out in the case of the farmhouses under nationality control. In 1999 an expert proposal has been set up for the nomination of the Hungarian rural heritage farmhouses to be included in the World Heritage List. Nevertheless, until this achievement, a unified management plan – in accordance with the special quality of these small collections - must be established covering the building maintenance, art object preservation as well as guaranteeing an equal level of public collection and education functions.
Title:
Rights and representation of objects / The museum of memory and personal histories of the objects

Author:
Péter Tóth G.

Pages:
125 - 146

In the last decade several authors raised the question of whether objects have their own life history and their own rights. They look at cultural items not only from an instrumental point of view but see them as social agents that build indispensable part of social events and memories, that play fundamental roles in social contexts or personal drama. If we are willing to accept at least some of these arguments there seem to be several consequences for museums. The author argues that museums are not only storerooms or exhibition spaces for vacant material entities but they have to care also about objects from a more personal perspective, as mediator, bearer and results of complex social phenomena.
Title:
The Protection of our Written Cultural Heritage in the View of a Restorator

Author:
Marianne Érdi

Pages:
147 - 176

Libraries and archives are the guardians of written and printed tokens of Hungarian national culture. The tangible documents are information carriers themselves, the protection and safeguarding of which are indispensable for avoiding any harm of the information. The documents having an artistic value or being unique are to be saved as they do not only represent an intangible asset but are also valuable as objects. The expert conserving our written cultural values is the restorator whose aim is to bring the restored object into a form that is mostly converging to its original status by saving all creational characteristics of it without producing a brand new object as well as by eliminating all traces of the past years. Since each period has had its own special forms of characteristic features, their construction and attributes have to be known, in order to treat them in a proper way, to preserve their status and protect their information contents. If we are aware of and can select the appropriate protection method for the various inner and outer causes leading to the impairment of written or printed documents, these effects can be avoided or the process can be slowed down. A little bit of comprehension and awareness can make everybody highly contributing to the protection of our written and printed values.
Title:
A Chapter of Film Preservation – The Nitrate Films

Author:
Foundation for Information Society

Pages:
177 - 202

The nitrate film, with its excellent black and white colours and having a rich voice track, fascinated viewers a long time ago when they wrote an important chapter of the cinema revolution. Nitrate films that were supposed to be safe always had two significant disadvantages: they are overly flammable and could quickly decompose; inappropriate storage caused several fires. Nitrate films are chemically instable and the decomposition process cannot be stopped. Films fade and shrink, become distorted, the perforation breaks, the original colours, contrasts and voice become noisy, and all these after some decades could lead to the total annihilation of the film. This unique and irreplaceable part of the cultural heritage of the nations (as well as of the universal photo and film art) is continuously deteriorating and no satisfying solution for their saving and digital restoration has been found so far. The study aims at the understanding of the situation of the nitrate films and outlines a proposal concerning solution options.
Title:
A Survey Attempt: Protecting our Musical Instrument Treasure – or Who Has What to Do with Our Instruments?

Author:
János Mezei

Pages:
203 - 224

The basic consideration of the study is that the preservation of our culture of musical instruments is the common task resulting of three factors: the practical work done by the special workshops of musical instrument production and reparation; the technical education of musical instrument specialists in the regular school system; the value preserving job of museums. In the paper, it will be proved that the process and uninterrupted existence of musical instrument culture does not only depend on the fact that the theoretical and practical rules of the profession and the related knowledge are transmitted to the generations willing to receive it, but also on the condition to what extent we are able to practice, safeguard and communicate our professional traditions together with the approach of rational application. The institutional system of museums can strongly play a part in it. The feeling for general sense of culture can already be based in the kindergartens but definitely must have a place in the regular school system. The world of tradition of our musical instruments includes the collections of official musical culture as well as of that of folk culture and all the professions willing to create, preserve and repair musical instruments. The social differences and in the same time historical parallelism of the two directions of culture (folk and non-folk) are summarised based on their reasons and development.
Title:
Thoughts about the Protection of Dance Heritage

Author:
László Felföldi

Pages:
225 - 234

The role players of the dance heritage education and protection have several challenges to face. They include the harmonization of inner and outer perspectives, i.e. the evaluation of the relation between tradition and modernisation (development). The permanent slavish and rigid reproduction of past dance formats contradicts to the heritage protection requirements in local communities following the principle of sustainability. The “authenticity” means in this train of thoughts not only a “professional authenticity” but also that of the individual members of the community including the eternal introduction of innovations thus producing a permanent change in the practice of dancing. The next challenge is the relation of transmission and heritage protection: it is not evident whether the dance heritage protection of the general/ special dance elements are favoured. The respect for the social spheres in the local communities can involve the vanishing of some cultural elements. The established cultural rules prevail for the extent of access to the common knowledge by the different genders of the communities. It may happen that in a multinational community, one of them presents the community heritage as a whole, neglecting the elements of the other nationalities. Finally, the artificial division of tangible and intangible heritage causes problems not only locally but on the UNESCO level as well. These types of aspects treated thoroughly can contribute to a correct conception and sustainable protection of our dance heritage.
Title:
Cabaret and Operettas – The Survival of Two Genres in the Theatre of Hungary

Author:
István Kállai

Pages:
235 - 246

Theatre is a very specific phenomenon, as its main virtue is its being a one time experience: there and then. Nevertheless, there are famous productions, there are genres related to countries (Italian opera, American musical, French farce etc.) Hungary can “own” even two of them: operetta and cabaret. Both are at the border of extinction, transformation, it is now that we still can talk about them as they are still accessible. Partly in reality, partly in our memories, because their sites exist, because the spectacular performances and lovable tunes are welcome all over the world even in our days. Both genres are appropriate to produce and preserve a very specific image of Hungary in the 20th century. Excellent description of characteristics of the age is given, in a very funny form the most tragic events are provided. The third part of the article pulls the attention to a very peculiar social phenomenon, to the most typical character type in the world of the operettas which is the appearance of the gypsy characters and their diverse occurrence.
Title:
Toward Sequencing Multiple Motif Co-Occurrences

Author:
Sándor Darányi, László Forró

Pages:
247 - 260

Catalogs project subject field experience onto a multidimensional map which is then converted to a hierarchical list. In the case of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Tale Type Catalog (ATU), this subject field is the global pattern of tale content defining tale types as canonical motif sequences. To extract and visualize such a map, we considered ATU as a corpus and analysed two segments of it, “Supernatural adversaries” (types 300-399) in particular and “Tales of magic” (types 300-749) in general. The two corpora were scrutinized for multiple motif co-occurrences and visualized by two-mode clustering of a bag-of-motif co-occurrences matrix. Findings indicate the presence of canonical content units above motif level as well. The organization scheme of folk narratives utilizing motif sequences is reminiscent of nucleotid sequences in the genetic code.
Title:
Fragments about World Heritage of a Knowledgeable Hungarian Mind

Author:
Szabó Géza

Pages:
261 - 282

An especially important element from the point of view of our definition is that the intangible cultural heritage can be a custom, heritage, knowledge, skill as well as an object or product related to these primarily intangible elements. These are the transmitters or otherwise the local carriers of intangible cultural heritage taken over by one generation from the other. Local people stick to these elements and - in our case - to these products, as the continuity of their identity and culture is connected to them. The 11 valuables of our national list include the identifying elements of the heritage of our folk traditions and craftsmanship. Among them, the value of our gastronomical heritage “the tradition in Karcag of the mutton paprika stew from the area Kunság” also appears, showing that our dishes and the methods preparing them are also inherited parts of our traditions, of our intangible cultural heritage. In our opinion, it can be pointed out of further gastronomic values that they are the carriers or embodiments of cohesion energy to establish identity and create community. The conception of such products and commodities requires special professional knowledge that has been transmitted by fathers to sons for centuries. The product elevated to the rank of heritage is based on the traditions of local management and represents an extraordinary, acknowledged quality. In our country, there is an example of such a value: the spicy gross sausage, the famous “stifolder”, prepared by the Swab (German) ethnic group in Baranya county in the course of the “pig killing” ceremony. The study reveals the characteristic features of this traditional product, following the principles of the French “terroir” system applied for qualifying local productions.

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