Curator or translator? Exhibiting the intangible cultural heritage in the Alsace Bossue region

Based on a description and analysis of the exhibition project Exposez votre patrimoine culturel immatériel en Alsace Bossue (‘Exhibit your Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Alsace Bossue region’), this text examines the issues that were at stake in this project terms of heritage democracy. The guiding concept of the exhibition that was organised in 2014, was to transform inhabitants into participants, making their contribution to the definition of the heritage of this region in Alsace. In this sense the exhibition was above all a moment in an on-going process. The main aim was to give intangible cultural heritage (ICH) a measure of reality using the medium of material objects offered by local inhabitants, then drawing attention to the way these inhabitants define the ICH, and how this coincides with the official appraisal of heritage institutions.