1st Edition

Murals and Tourism Heritage, Politics and Identity

Edited By Jonathan Skinner, Lee Jolliffe Copyright 2017
    320 Pages
    by Routledge

    320 Pages 35 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Around the world, tourists are drawn to visit murals painted on walls. Whether heritage asset, legacy leftover, or contested art space, the mural is more than a simple tourist attraction or accidental aspect of tourism material culture. They express something about the politics, heritage and identity of the locations being visited, whether a medieval fresco in an Italian church, or modern political art found in Belfast or Tehran.

    This interdisciplinary and highly international book explores tourism around murals that are either evolving or have transitioned as instruments of politics, heritage and identity. It explores the diverse messaging of these murals: their production, interpretation, marketing and – in some cases – destruction. It argues that the mural is more than a simple tourist attraction or accidental aspect of tourism material culture.

    Murals and Tourism will be valuable reading for those interested in cultural geography, tourism, heritage studies and the visual arts.

    Part I: Introduction

    1. ‘Wall-to-wall coverage': an introduction to murals tourism

    Jonathan Skinner and Lee Jolliffe

    Part II: Heritage

    2. Heritage murals as tourist attractions in Ravenna, Moldavia and Istanbul: artistic treasures, cultural identities and political statements

    Warwick Frost and Jennifer Laing

    3. From ‘sacred images’ to ‘tourist images’? The fourteenth-century frescoes of Santa Croce, Florence

    Russell Staiff

    4. The walls speak. Mexican popular graphics as heritage

    Martín M. Checa- Artasu

    5. Tourism, voyeurism and the media ecologies of Tehran’s mural arts

    Pamela Karimi

    Part III: Politics

    6. La Carbonería: an alternative transformation of public space

    Plácido Muñoz Morán

    7. Murals as sticking plasters: improving the image of an eastern German city for visitors and residents

    Gareth E. Hamilton

    8. Difference upon the walls: hygienizing policies and the use of graffiti against pixação in São Paulo

    Paula Larruscahim and Paul Schweizer

    Part IV: Identity

    9. A journey through public art in Douala: framing the identity of New Bell neighbourhood

    Marta Pucciarelli and Lorenzo Cantoni

    10. Visiting murals and healing the past of racial injustice in divided Detroit

    Deborah Che

    11. Visiting murals and grafitti art in Brazil

    Angela C. Flecha, Cristina Jönsson and D'Arcy Dornan

    12. Balancing Uruguayan identity and sustainable economic development through street art

    María de Miguel Molina, Virginia Santamarina Campos, Blanca de Miguel Molina and Eva Martínez Carazo

    Part V: Northern Ireland

    13. State intervention in re-imaging Northern Ireland’s political murals: implications for tourism and the communities

    Maria T. Simone-Charteris

    14. The Gaeltacht Quarter of Mural City: Irish in Falls Road murals

    Siun Carden

    15. Extra-mural activities and trauma tourism: public and community sector re-imaging of street art in Belfast

    Katy Radford

    Part VI: Future Directions

    16. Murals as a tool for action research

    Rebecca Yeo

    Biography

    Jonathan Skinner is Reader in Social Anthropology in the Department of Life Sciences, University of Roehampton, UK.

    Lee Jolliffe is Professor of Hospitality and Tourism in the Faculty of Business at the University of New Brunswick, Canada.