Kulturarv, kanon og kvalitet i en pandemi-tid

Resumé

Is cultural heritage carved in stone and quality an indisputable criterion of art and culture? Or are they rather illusive phenomena and as such exposed to change? Starting in the public debates during Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 and 2021 on cultural heritage, canon and identity politics, this article discusses the cases in question (the decomposition of the bust of Frederik V at the Royal Danish Academy, the set-up of a sculpture of bronze of the black Queen Mary outside the Royal Casting Assembly, the mobilization to have more women writers on the national literary canon) through theories of cultural memorization and canonization. A vocabulary and set of distinctions such as history vs memory, archive vs canon, people/body vs governance/’head’ are introduced as means to nuance and ground the debate.