Dear Everyone this letter was meant to go to the person directly but I lost the
address!

Dear Fritz,

Thankyou so much for your response. I lost your direct address but I really want
 to reply.

You wrote that an authentic object is "capable of proving certain facts without
any doubt". I am
not so sure about an object being able to prove certain facts beyond a doubt. It
 reminds me of
the old joke about the doctor and the alcholic. The Doctor sits down with the al
cholic with one
glass of water and one glass of whisky. He puts an earthworm in each. The one in
 the water lives
and the one in the alchol dies. His intention is to show the alcholic that water
 is essential to
life but that over indulgence in alchol brings death. "Oh, I see", says the alch
oholic, "the
lesson here is that if I drink whisky I won't get worms".
What I mean, in a long winded way, is that I think what we ultimately prove has
a lot to do with
what we had in mind in the first place. I think an object can be proof of its ta
ngible
qualities but not of meanings. Is it not possible that an object has no meaning
whatsoever unless
we attach meanings to it? Of course, I acknowledge that those meanings are highl
y selective and
are most certainly complicated.

Moving on from this, if I view objects in this light then I guess I would see au
thenticity
largely as you defined it from the Greek but a `truth' that has an examinable va
lue system. Thus
we may call a painting an authentic Renoir meaning that is was painted by Renoir
. This is true
but I would be questioning the reasons why we cared who painted it as opposed to
 caring about the
qualtiy of the painting or its subject matter. (This is not to say that these th
ings don't come
into it but I would say much further down the list of importance in this case).

Also, if I pursue this line of thought further...If one centres the meaning in t
he object then
the museologist becomes the facilitator which is a far more passive role then if
 one claims that
it is the museologist who gives the object meaning. By this I do not mean to say
 museologists are
inventing heritage but that their interpretive action is influenced by outside f
orces rather than
anything intrinsic to the object.

Anyway that is enough of my meanderings. My Duetsch is pretty scratchy but if I
can find your
book I will certainly attempt a reading!

Cheers,

Jennifer