Pensare il futuro delle “comunità di eredità” e dei musei etnografici attraverso la pandemia: una riflessione per iniziare.

For the Third National Conference of the Società Italiana di Antropologia Culturale (Siac) “Future: Anthropologies of the Future, the Future of Anthropology”, organised in Rome during September 2021, a panel was proposed by the Società Italiana per la Museografia e i Beni Demoetnoantropologici (Simbdea) to critically discuss ethnographic museums and cultural heritage in times of pandemic from different theoretical and applicative perspectives. The panel aimed to open up a discussion on museums, heritages and the pandemic, and to gather experiences not only of the critical issues, but also of some of the reactions deployed by museums, as well as by heritage and festive communities, in the face of forced closures and the suspension of the most important festivities and moments of collective rituality. Presenting some of the contributions proposed at that time, this text reflects on the “return to normality” for museums, ecomuseums and heritage communities starting from the latest Istat 2022 census of museums.