Tangential Heritage Values in Museum Communication

This paper seeks to examine aspects of tangentiality connecting heritage tourism goals, on the one hand, and museum architecture, on the other. It does so through the specific angle of communication, understood as a complex process that fluctuates, to a very large extent, at a level external to that of conventional institutional practice. The assumption is that determining factors are in fact tangential in nature and that, contrariwise, mainstream communication remains contextual and transient. This reasoning is illustrated by three museums in the United Arab Emirates, and substantiated by insights on their architectural significance.