Preservation and Cultural Heritage from the Viewpoint of Culture, a Critical Approach

Preservation of historico-cultural monuments has been studied from different perspective through its history; sometimes from the artistic point of view, sometimes from the scientific, and sometimes from the cultural perspectives. Some of the preservation thinkers, who emphasize on the importance of the cultural context for preservation, refer the problems of this area to this very context, as well. Unfortunately, they do not enjoy a cohesive viewpoint and have brought up scattered opinions concerning various problems of preservation; opinions that are often in contrast to the science-oriented and holistic ideas of their predecessors. By studying their dispersed opinions as a whole and analyzing their intellectual principles, this article tries to show what preservation is from the viewpoint of culturalists and what criteria there are for determining the value of monument preservation. Furthermore, it will show what the principles for the museum-centered approach are in preservation and how it stands in opposition to the culturalists’ viewpoint. To this end, the article has brought up in general the artistic and scientific perspectives and has finally made a comparison between these three viewpoints to further clarify the differences and similarities of these approaches.