Past and future presencing in museums : four cases of engaging with intangible heritage from the Netherlands

To help include the approaches of the intangible heritage paradigm like participation, intangible heritage brokers provide museum professionals with inspirational and pragmatic methodological tools emphasizing the “great potential [of intangible cultural heritage] to address pressing issues in today’s world in innovative ways, and to contribute to the identification and implementation of sustainable solutions” for the future. The argument in this article, however, is that in the museum sector broader time alignments are critical when engaging with intangible cultural heritage. The multidirectional relationships between the past, present and future that museums create and use when working with intangible cultural heritage will have to be taken into account more profoundly in the discourse about building bridges across, and collaborating between, the sectors.