The collection of scientific articles and papers in art, culture, and cultural hetitage of Lebanon, Bulgarian, Romanian and Russian scientists.

The book explores the relationship between cultural heritage and local economic development by introducing the original idea that one possible mediator between the two can be identified as creativity. The book econometrically verifies this idea and demonstrates that cultural heritage, through its inspirational role on different creative talents, generates an indirect positive effect on local economic development. These results justify important new policy recommendations in the field of cultural heritage.

Lowentahal looks at the benefits and burdens of the past, how we study the past, and how we change it.

Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning offers a deep insight and comprehension of the world of Art. Contents: What is Art? The Structure of Art Significance of Materials Used in Art Describing Art - Formal Analysis, Types, and Styles of Art Meaning in Art - Socio-Cultural Contexts, Symbolism, and Iconography Connecting Art to Our Lives Form in Architecture Art and Identity Art and Power Art and Ritual Life - Symbolism of Space and Ritual Objects, Mortality, and Immortality Art and Ethics

Art interprets the visible world. Physics charts its unseen workings. The two realms seem completely opposed. But consider that both strive to reveal truths for which there are no words––with physicists using the language of mathematics and artists using visual images. In Art & Physics, Leonard Shlain tracks their breakthroughs side by side throughout history to reveal an astonishing correlation of visions. From the classical Greek sculptors to Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns, and from Aristotle to Einstein, artists have foreshadowed the discoveries of scientists, such as when Monet and Cezanne intuited the coming upheaval in physics that Einstein would initiate. In this lively and colorful narrative, Leonard Shlain explores how artistic breakthroughs could have prefigured the visionary insights of physicists on so many occasions throughout history. Provicative and original, Art & Physics is a seamless integration of the romance of art and the drama of science––and an exhilarating history of ideas.

This book focuses on the fraught relationship between cultural heritage and intellectual property, in their common concern with the creative arts. The competing discourses in international legal instruments around copyright and intangible cultural heritage are the most obvious manifestation of this troubled encounter. However, this characterization of the relationship between intellectual and cultural property is in itself problematic, not least because it reflects a fossilized concept of heritage, divided between things that are fixed and moveable, tangible and intangible. Instead the book maintains that heritage should be conceived as part of a dynamic and mutually constitutive process of community formation. It argues, therefore, for a critically important distinction between the fundamentally different concepts of not only intellectual and cultural heritage/property, but also of the market and the community. For while copyright as a private property right locates all relationships in the context of the market, the context of cultural heritage relationships is the community, of which the market forms a part but does not – and, indeed, should not – control the whole. The concept of cultural property/heritage, then, is a way of resisting the reduction of everything to its value in the market, a way of resisting the commodification, and creeping propertization, of everything. And, as such, the book proposes an alternative basis for expressing and controlling value according to the norms and identity of a community, and not according to the market value of private property rights. An important and original intervention, this book will appeal to academics and practitioners in both intellectual property and the arts, as well as legal and cultural theorists with interests in this area.

This original book explores the character of cultural governance of arts and cultural institutions in eight countries across five continents. Examining strategy and decision-making at an organisational level, this is the first empirical contribution on cultural policy and management, revealing how it is applied across the globe in otherwise unexplored countries. Concerned with the assumption that ‘one-size fits all’, the chapter authors analyse how cultural governance is managed within arts organizations in a range of countries to assess whether some locations are trying to apply unsuitable models. The chapters aim to discover and assess new practices to benefit the understanding of cultural governance and the arts sector which have as yet been excluded from the literature. As a collection of local accounts, this book offers a broad and rich perspective on managing cultural governance around the world.

Museums of the Arabian Peninsula offers new insights into the history and development of museums within the region. Recognising and engaging with varied approaches to museum development and practice, the book offers in-depth critical analyses from a range of viewpoints and disciplines. Drawing on regional and international scholarship, the book provides a critical and detailed analysis of museum and heritage institutions in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen. Questioning and engaging with issues related to the institutionalisation of cultural heritage, contributors provide original analyses of current practice and challenges within the region. Considering how these challenges connect to broader issues within the international context, the book offers the opportunity to examine how museums are actively produced and consumed from both the inside and the outside. This critical analysis also enables debates to emerge that question the appropriateness of existing models and methods and provide suggestions for future research and practice. Museums of the Arabian Peninsula offers fresh perspectives that reveal how Gulf museums operate from local, regional and transnational perspectives. The volume will be a key reference point for academics and students working in the fields of museum and heritage studies, anthropology, cultural studies, history, politics and Gulf and Middle East Studies.

It is widely acknowledged that all archaeological research is embedded within cultural, political and economic contexts, and that all archaeological research falls under the heading ‘heritage’. Most archaeologists now work in museums and other cultural institutions, government agencies, non-government organisations and private sector companies, and this diversity ensures that debates continue to proliferate about what constitutes appropriate professional ethics within these related and relevant contexts. Discussions about the ethics of cultural heritage in the 20th century focused on standards of professionalism, stewardship, responsibilities to stakeholders and on establishing public trust in the authenticity of the outcomes of the heritage process. This volume builds on recent approaches that move away from treating ethics as responsibilities to external domains and to the discipline, and which seek to ensure ethics are integral to all heritage theory, practice and methods. The chapters in this collection chart a departure from the tradition of external heritage ethics towards a broader approach underpinned by the turn to human rights, issues of social justice and the political economy of heritage, conceptualising ethical responsibilities not as pertaining to the past, but to a future-focused domain of social action.

There is a complex and contested terrain of cultural heritage in the library, archive and museum context. Information Literacy and Cultural Heritage explores this landscape and covers perspectives from museums, archives and libraries, highlighting the role of memory and contested history in the collection, description and presentation of cultural heritage. The book argues that the convergence of libraries, archives and museums in digital preservation should be extended to include the development of combined lifelong learning programmes, teaching both information literacy skills and awareness of cultural heritage. This title is structured into seven chapters, covering cultural heritage in the library, archive and museum context; digital information contexts; an overview of information literacy models of stages and processes, as well as models of standards, competencies and performance indicators. The book then examines the role of critical thinking and lifelong learning; proposes a generic model of information literacy and cultural heritage for lifelong learning; offers guidelines for adapting the model to local contexts; and offers a conclusion.