When 'nation' is used as an expletive.

James Cuno's "Who Owns Antiquities?" makes a strong case for "encyclopedic" or "universal" museums, which display the world's heritage in a single place from Ancient Greece to the postmodern world. In other words, he is a cosmopolitan, who considers the utterly "nationalistic" goals of local governments in retaining control over artifacts found on their territory to be ultimately counterproductive and wrong. He would rather see 'man kind' take responsibility for their collective heritage and store it museums conveniently located in major metropolitan centers, so that as many people and as diverse a people as possible could see it.

Shame that it's all a bright shiny fantasy then.

Although using liberally the heavy artillery of nationalism studies - the works of Edward Said and Benedict Anderson, to prove that nationalism is ugly, useless, violent and harmful, he fails to pay enough attention to the fact that despite all that, nationalism matters. Yes, nationalism, in all likelihood is a product of modernity, yes, it is often the source of violent conflicts and the death of both people and heritage, but it is also not, no matter how much Cuno would like it to be, simply both a construct and an ideal of the ruling elite.

Nationalism, patriotism, phrase it however to want, is an idea that appeals to people, the amount of debate and activism around issues of national patrimony should be a testament to that. From the 12 million visitors of the French Patrimony Days to the heated public debate around the Estonian Monument of Liberty, patrimony is something that gets people's heart racing.

"So what?" Cuno would say; Anderson, Said, Hobsbawm et al. still prove that present day nationalism has anything to do with artifacts that are two thousand years old. And he would be right. Nevertheless, museums in the 21st century are not ivory towers, but very much a part of the society they were created in, and a dialogue with nationalism, or patrimony (to use a less hostile term) is something museums cannot ignore, lest they lose the interest, support and reverence of the people. The communities of nations may be imagined, but that does not mean you can simply imagine them away.

Why not look at the other side of the coin? If Encyclopedic museums give us a peek into the global heritage of the entire human kind, then local, national museums provide the opportunity to study, in addition to valuable pieces of cultural heritage, the way people construct national identity. Considering how big a role it plays in the life of contemporary man, it is certainly something worth studying.

And finally: Why is the cosmopolitan community that Cuno imagines that all of human heritage belongs to any less imagined than the national heritage he so despises? Is it not just another classic case of the self vs. the other?