Hedvig Győry: Mélanges offerts a Edith Varga „Le lotus qui sort de terre” (Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts Supplément 1. Budapest, 2001)

SAPHIN AZ-AMAL NAGUIB: Cultural Heritage and its Display

society. Although, the authenticity of the object is conditioned by it being an 'original' and 'genuine', the multiple ways of displaying it denote the polysemy of the concept. The object itself is authentic. It is neither a forgery nor an imitation and the material, style, representation, provenance and dating correspond to sets of established criteria. Nevertheless, the initial message of the stela may be altered and adapted to different uses and interpretations. As the relation of truth is always subjective when applied to cultural heritage, artefacts are made to conform to the curators' scientific interests, interpretations and to how they conceive a given exhibition. Visitors receiving the information conveyed by the exhibition know that it is temporary and subject to reconsiderations based on new research and points of view, and that these revisions do not impinge on the originality of the object. Search, research and the virtual museum In museums objects are retrieved, studied and classified according to various taxonomies. Objects are provided with curriculum vitae that often reduce them to a collection of words and numbers. Each item becomes a document, the card that describes it. Grouped according to regional provenance and to historical time the objects tend to form separate collections which when they are displayed unfold into different narratives. Individual objects are not only the witnesses of their own history but also of the one of the collection they are part of and of 'their' museum. Today's museology is concerned with all the interconnected stages relating the story of the object's creation, that of its circulation and at the same time the history of the institution that keeps it. All these elements challenge the notion of property and cultural heritage in general and have given way to many debates and claims. In the course of the transcription of material culture into linear systems of signs and two-dimensional illustrations and photographies, monuments and artefacts lose their most essential property that is their concrete substance. Here cyberculture and the virtual museum have an advantage over the traditional museum. Computer based systems and the Internet give access to collections through digital representations of artefacts and their documentation. It is possible to reproduce and reconstruct three-dimensional computer-images of objects that can be turned, moved, changed in colours and lit from different angles without ever being touched. Artefacts are manipulated so that they can be studied in minute details. Fragments that are kept miles apart can be connected to each other in order to recreate the whole object. Knowledge may be