From the 18th century onwards, the museum as an institution has seen an upsurge which especially in Europe and in China has led to new creations and to the redesigning of established facilities in recent years. Simultaneously, the scholarly reflection on exhibitions has become an academic discipline in its own right. The term and the phenomenon of cultural heritage, being a seemingly counter-directed movement between local, regional and national reference points on the one hand and global sites representing the entire heritage of humankind on the other, compose the background music to a recent cultural evolution labelled glocalization. The essays shed light on the complex developments by taking different perspectives and elaborating the present situation by means of contemporary examples.
