The tendency to collect and exhibit works of art, which had been known since antiquity, took on new dimensions with the rise of humanism in Europe. In addition to the initially ecclesiastical and private collections of rulers, the aristocracy and the wealthy bourgeois elite, the first large public galleries displaying works of art appeared in the 17th and especially in the 18th century. Many of these galleries and museums still exist today. Their number and the volume of works of art in their collections have increased dramatically over the decades and centuries, and this trend is continuing unabated. While most artworks were exhibited in the early collections, today the proportion of artworks on display, at least in the larger institutions, is usually very small, as most artefacts are stored in depots and rarely, if ever, on public display. At the same time, inventories and institutional protection of works of fine art of immovable cultural heritage are increasing. Inventorying, preserving, maintaining, conserving-restoring and monitoring all these works of art requires more and more experts, space and energy, which is a major challenge in today’s more sustainability-oriented society. There are also problems of accessibility in highly touristic locations, where the number of visitors has to be limited because of the harmful impact on the environment and the artefacts. Solutions are at least partially evident in various areas: perhaps taking into account less anthropocentric aspects in the valuation of visual heritage, allowing for even greater social participation in decisionmaking on the preservation and monitoring of the state of heritage, further digitising and virtualising visual heritage and developing digital humanities in general, and reducing the carbon footprint and energy consumption of galleries, museums and immovable cultural heritage buildings.
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