Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the growth of a new cultural force of which museums are only a part. The heritage industry is an attempt to dispel this climate of decline by exploiting the economic potential of our culture, and it finds a ready market because the perception of decline includes all sorts of insecurities and doubts that make its products especially attractive and reassuring. The heritage industry only draws a screen between ourselves and our true past. In culture, entropy will leave us frozen in a dead moment of stopped time. The growth of a heritage culture has led not only to a distortion of the past, but to a stifling of the culture of the present.