Cultural heritage is one of the concepts that have made an unusual career in the 20th century. The cultural codes associated with it senses, meanings, and ideas, characteristic for specific local or national communities, and the tangible and intangible assets, became a space for new fascinations as well as scientific, regional, social and amateur exploration. These multiple searches for the truth showed that the essence of heritage is portrayed in the choice transforming the cultural goods into “our heritage.” The areas of culture, which are given axiological sense by individuals or communities, are usually protected and communicated to the next generations. There are various forms of communication – individual as well as collective oral tradition, institutional – public, private and non-governmental distinctive for organizations which select the phenomena and artefacts important from the point of view of their meanings. Please note, however, that this choice is always more or less subjective. The UNESCO cultural heritage alone brings many questions about its needs, essence, discourses as well as areas left outside its protection. Looking at the UNESCO list we discover both, monuments which bear the highest value from a given nation's point of view, as well as the missing elements – multiple excluded areas, which still remain outside the officially recognized heritage. It is also worth to note that beyond the “institutional protection” there may oft en be a space of the “institutional oblivion” that frequently covers “strange” tangible and intangible objects, which are not cared for the communities or even carriers of this heritage, who do not wish to communicate it to their descendants. It is a space for all forms of degradation, marginalization, and in the end oblivion that awaits the legacy of the “strange.” The choice, protection and at the same time marginalization of certain heritage areas are also related to the quality of its management – it can thus be a creative activity to maintain the heritage, or, by excluding certain spheres – condemning it to non-existence.

In the Cultural heritage – management, identity and potential monograph, the authors, academic professors of the Institute of Culture at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, raised the theoretical and practical issues related to the cultural heritage and management of selected Polish and foreign cultural institutions.