De-Patrimonializing Cultural Heritage? Which? How? Why?
04/02/2025
Editorial

I took part to the NextGen Heritage roundtable on Thursday afternoon, focusing on the theme of De-Patrimonialization from a public-private perspective.
I won’t dwell on acknowledgments or descriptions of the event and the beautiful Venetian venues where Ca’ Foscari University hosted us. Instead, I’ll get straight to the heart of the topic—at least from my perspective as a former archaeologist, museologist, and cultural consultant.
The topic is a thorny one, as became evident during our discussion: tot capita, tot sententiae—never more so than when culture and money are involved. Because that’s the crux of the matter: de-patrimonialization has seemingly been understood as “assigning an economic value to something one intends to dispose of.” But what value, exactly? Based on seriality? The more there are, the less they’re worth, following the golden rule of supply and demand? Or, conversely, the more there are, the higher the cost, since these are assets that, until now, couldn’t easily be sold?
When it comes to archaeological, demo-ethno-anthropological, or industrial heritage, seriality—and thus reproducibility (a discussion that applies equally to photography)—holds intrinsic value: it tells us about the object’s diffusion, its use, sometimes its repurposing, and certainly the journeys and exchanges it has undergone. This is a value that transcends the economic worth of the object itself. The same applies to ecclesiastical heritage, though the reasoning shifts when discussing artistic assets such as paintings and drawings—less so for sculptures, which can also be serial and reproduced in different sizes and materials.
For paintings and drawings, often unique creations—though we know that copies and cartoons allowed artists over the centuries to replicate their works, modifying them according to a patron’s displeasure or preference—should cultural patrimonialization be limited to the works of the Maggiori? To first versions of artworks?
Who knows.
The issue is probably being framed incorrectly, and I don’t blame the capable organizers and curators of the event, but rather our society, which has lost the ability to understand value beyond its economic dimension.
The loss of values that our society—indeed, Western society as a whole—is experiencing (hopefully finding a way through, as with any passage) forces us to assign a price to everything, eroding the concept of Cultural Heritage as a Common Good.
A Common Good belongs to everyone, and anyone can claim the right to be its custodian or steward. A Common Good has no economic value because no price could ever be adequate to purchase it. A Common Good provides each territory or community—though "community" seems to be becoming an uncomfortable concept—with a set of totems, or at least to anyone who feels that a particular asset represents them. Beyond representation, the totem must also ensure the protection and safeguarding of its clan.
And so, we arrive at a reversal of the issue: rather than de-patrimonializing, we should enable those who wish to take responsibility for their totem to also benefit economically from its protection—whether it be a hotel displaying amphorae, a community maintaining an archaeological site, an association committed to enhancing a monastic complex… or even just a single artwork.
So let’s open the doors of museum and heritage authority storage facilities, allowing Common Goods to emerge. Ownership wouldn’t change—everything would remain under the State’s jurisdiction. The purpose wouldn’t change either—the inalienable right of citizens (cit. S. Rodotà). There would be no transaction on the asset, but through and thanks to the asset.
And perhaps, both native-born and resident citizens—especially the latter, who often feel marginalized and barely recognized—would learn to understand the Value, the energy their totem can invoke, regardless of its intrinsic economic worth and beyond the ever-evolving concept of what Culture is—a discussion that, sooner or later, we will need to restart.