So where is culture going anyway?

Economic crisis is great for culture! No wait, it's horrible! No, painting is the new gold! While the punditocracy is all over generalizing ideological statements about the economy, the world of culture seems to leave them scratching heads. No one is entirely clear how the general public will look at heritage when looking in their wallet makes them more and more worried. Some even ask: why care, when the world is ending?

There seems to be little doubt that as far as auctions go, people are buying like they used to and many fear that museum donations will dry up as former donors have more pressing issues at hand (coughlehmanbrotherscough). When it comes to the people on the street though, I find myself thinking more like John Harris of the Guardian. It is true, that when times get rough, then culture is the first to lose funding and the last to regain it. But while the scope and vision of heritage production may have to be contracted, the will and interest to both create and consume may, in fact, increase.

As John Harris points out, lean times often lead to creativity - great changes have always precipitated great art, from the great paintings and groundbreaking philosophy of the Great French Revolution to the sardonic comedy films and depressingly realistic literature of the 1930-s. And revolutionary times, remain the topic of future artists long after their passing, Hollywood, for instance has still not gotten over the World War II fad.

But there is room for heritage as well, because finally, as the New York Times article notes: "[Art] doesn't change, no matter what the economy." Heritage provides the anchor during cataclysmic times that ties people to their roots and provides them with the opportunity to say: "If this old vase could survive 3000 years of floods, earthquakes, wars, massacres, famine and plague, then a fluctuation in the stock market is not so bad." In a situation like this, it becomes apparent how cultural heritage is not only our link to the past, but also something that ties the past to the present and puts the present in context of the past, in a way more tangible than any op-ed in the New York Times.

As Lowenthal says: "yesterday's relics enlarge today's landscapes". Heritage, which has the timestamp of history on it, is the only thing that can make history beyond the date of our birth real to us. If, at times of great distress in present, relics can provide us with a tangible feeling of the great distresses of the past, then they may serve indeed as great comfort. Which is something many of us could use at this point.