Limits and potentialities of Ecomuseums in Sicily, between tourist exploitation and cultural heritage preservation

This paper deals with the limits and potentialities of innovative museum projects recently created in Sicily, the so- called “ecomuseums ”, trough a critical evaluation of some case studies set in the wider theoretical framework provided by the new currents of thought of museology and cultural heritage preservation. In effect, ecomuseums have been recently standing out as new tools of protection and enhancement, due to their intrinsic capacity to reflect deeply-rooted relations among museums, environment and local communities. Therefore, such inventive museum projects concern territories, not necessarily defined by conventional boundaries, where a flexible and dynamic museum model is based on in situ conservation, fragmented site interpretation and a community-based approach: this implies the enhancement of local distinctiveness as well as the growing democratisation of museum practices. For this reason, ecomuseums, if shrewdly exploited, provide a more socially inclusive model supporting local development and small-scale cultural tourism, so that they can be considered as significant tools of reinforcing dynamically the local distinctiveness of places, apart from preserving tangible and intangible cultural resources (such as cultural landscapes, historic artefacts, customs, traditions). As a result, the objective of this work is to highlight the impact exerted by these museum models not only on Sicilian local communities, in terms of shared identity enhancement and economic development, but also on the tourist industry of such territories, many of them very far from the main tourist routes. Furthermore, the work aims at evaluating how far these Sicilian museum projects achieve the tenets of ecomuseum philosophy, apart from establishing whether the variation in practices is due to the highly specific features of the local territories involved, or rather to mere marketing devices conceived to attract tourists.