What an interesting question! Because another respondent began with the Greek and Latin perspectives on authenticity, I wondered if I might indulge in the views of a few more philosophers. The sixteenth century brought profound changes in production technology which had significant ramifications on social and philosophical thought. The french philosopher Descartes (1596-1650) summed it up this way: we cannot accept anything as being true unless we can clearly and distinctly perceive it. To achieve this can require the breaking down of a compound problem into as many single factors as possible. Then we can take our point of departure in the simplest idea of all. This sounds like the Latin interpretation of "original" where the object is merely the point of departure for an authentic experience. Incidentally, Descartes thought there were very few things that could be clearly and distinctly perceived beyond the existence of the self and that of God or some perfect being (longer discussion not relevant here). David Hume (1711-76) believed that we receive information in one of two ways: impressions and ideas. Impressions are immediate, you burn yourself on a hot stove and feel pain. Afterwards you can recollect that you burned yourself -- this recollection he called idea. The difference between an impression and an idea is that an impression is stronger and livlier than your reflective memory of that impression. You could say that the sensation is the original and that the idea, or reflection, is a pale imitation. Mind you, neither the impression or idea is an absolute. I never see the object -- innate in its entirety. I receive an impression of the object (first layer of interpretation) and later remember the idea of the that impression (second layer of interpretation) but I always start with one foot on the stairway so to speak. All of our knowledge of the world comes through sensations but sensations are produced by us, not the world of objects around us. Immanual Kant (and I swear this is the last one) took Hume's empiricism one step further by making a clear delineation between "the thing in itself" and "the thing for me." He agreed that we can never have a certain knowledge about things "in themselves." We can only know how things "appear to us." On the other hand, he also believed that prior to seeing any object, our perceptions would be shaped by our capacity for reason, innate to all people. This innate reason includes our need to see objects as products of time and space (for the museum field the question might be asked, which time and which space -- at time of creation, subsequent use, collection, or display. Regardless, we see objects as products of time and space) and the need to identify causes for events. Rarely do we look at an object without asking a why question "why was it made" "why these materials" "why this form" "why this time" The original question about authenticity is an interesting introduction to not only how people see objects in museums -- but how they see objects in general. Thanks. I'll step down now. Michelle L. Craig Traveling Psychology Exhibition Washington, DC [log in to unmask]