Abstract
Contain: keep in, stem, give boundary. The museum is called upon to contain,
hold in, give boundary to works, objects, testimonies. But is the ethnographic museum called
to contain “dishes or appetite”? Dishes are not enough, dishes are not heritage, but footprints
that lead to the human dimension of appetite. Because heritage is appetite. But the appetite is
irrepressible and the museum is therefore forced to retreat on the dishes, a retreat that often
results in a falling back on the plate, as if it were heritage in itself. The text focuses on the
substance of the relationship between museum and heritage through a look at the challenges
of the Ettore Guatelli Museum, of which he has been director for the last twenty years.
Keywords: Heritage, Museum, Narrative, Infra-Ordinary, Things.