‘Authentic reproductions’: museum collection practices as authentication

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the concept of cultural authenticity in museums through an analysis of how indigenous cultural objects in Taiwan are being authenticated by museums as ‘indigenous cultural heritage’.

In Taiwan, and internationally, indigenous artists and artisans are engaged in the revival of indigenous cultural heritage. Museums are participating in such revival through the acquisition and commission of ‘heritage objects’, newly made artifacts closely resembling their ‘traditional’ correspondent (Clifford, James. [2004. “Looking Several Ways: Anthropology and Native Heritage in Alaska.” Current Anthropology 45 (1): 5–30.]) I argue that in so doing, museums are authenticating newly made artefacts as indigenous cultural heritage; in the process, a reproduction is turned into an original, and that original into a canon.

I propose a theoretical and analytical shift away from the authenticity of the object, and towards authentication that, I suggest, can be understood as a process intrinsic in several museum practices. The ultimate goal of this article is to cast light on the under-researched role of museums as sites for cultural authentication.

KEYWORDS:

• Authenticity
• authentication
• museums
• indigenous
• collections
• Taiwan

Acknowledgments

A draft of this paper was originally presented at the conference Multiple Museum Practices: The Museum as Cornucopia (Norsk Teknisk Museum, Oslo, Norway, 24–25 October 2016); I wish to thank the participants for their questions and insights. I also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Marzia Varutti is Associate Professor in Museology and Cultural Heritage at the Centre for Museum Studies, IKOS, University of Oslo, Norway. In her research, she is investigating the relationships between museums and Indigenous Peoples, with a special focus on Taiwan. Dr Varutti is the author of Museums in China: The politics of representation after Mao (2014, Boydell & Brewer). Recent articles include ‘Crafting Heritage: Artisans and the Making of Indigenous Heritage in Contemporary Taiwan’ (International Journal of Heritage Studies) and ‘Polysemic objects and partial translations: Museums and the Interpretation of Indigenous Material Culture in Taiwan’ (Museum Anthropology).

Notes

1. This article is based on long-term field research conducted in Taiwan (initiated in 2010) among indigenous artists and artisans (with a special focus on Paiwan communities around Sandimen, Pingtung county) and in museums holding indigenous collections.

2. When referring to Taiwan, I use interchangeably the terms ‘indigenous artists’ and ‘indigenous artisans’ since for my Taiwanese interlocutors this distinction is not relevant: for instance, an individual cannot position him or herself as an indigenous artist without having developed a range of skills relating to the making of indigenous cultural objects, and without having gained deep insights into the cultural significance of, and contextual cultural knowledge about, those objects.

3. For a more thorough discussion of the historical and contemporary contexts for Indigenous Peoples in Taiwan please see Varutti 2011, 2013a; 2013b; 2015.

4. See Hobsbawm and Ranger (1992) and the overall body of literature that one might label as ‘post-modern cultural critique’, informed by a critical, de-constructive and self-reflective approach to fundamental concepts in cultural studies such as ‘tradition’ and ‘traditional cultures’, and the way these are conceptualized in the literature (see the seminal Clifford and Marcus Writing Culture volume, 1986).

5. This understanding of traditional objects is emerging from conversations with indigenous artists and artisans in Taiwan during my fieldwork.

6. The movie is a fictional account of an historical event – the 1930 ‘Wushe Incident’ – in the resistance fight of Seediq indigenous groups to the Japanese colonial power.

7. The 2011 video documentary Collected Ping-pu Memories- On Representing Kavalan and Ketagalan Voices and Images, documents this collaboration. Online: Collected Ping-pu Memories- On Representing Kavalan and Ketagalan Voices and Images.

8. In 2013, as part of my field research in Taiwan, I also commissioned and collected heritage objects from several indigenous artists and artisans for the ethnographic collections of the Museum of Cultural History of the University of Oslo, Norway.

9. http://maa.cam.ac.uk/pasifika-styles/.

10. Gwoździec Re!construction project: http://www.polin.pl/en/exhibitions-core-exhibition/gwozdziec-reconstruction.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway under grant FRIHUM postdoctoral fellowship (ref.121321) and the British Academy under scheme Small Grants (ref. SG-54072).