Making it Real. Historical Authenticity in Museums and Collections in the UK, Germany, and Europe

Veranstalter:
DAAD Cambridge
University of Cambridge
Leibniz Research Alliance ‘Historical Authenticity’
Arts Council England

Organized by:
Liba Taub, Whipple Museum of the History of Science
Ulf Hashagen, Deutsches Museum, Munich
Achim Saupe, Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam (ZZF)
 

Programme

Tuesday, December 3, 6.30 pm

Get together and dinner

Wednesday, December 4

9.45 Introduction
Liba Taub, Achim Saupe, Ulf Hashagen
 

Section 1: Authentication and authorisation. Objects, places and institutions in political-cultural contexts

10:10
Sally Foster (Stirling University)
What replicas can tell us about authenticity, if we let them speak

10.50
Barbara Wood (University of Hertfordshire)
How Shifting Power and Authority in Heritage Reinvent 'Authenticity' in Museums

11.30
Stefanie Jovanovic-Kruspel (Natural History Museum Vienna)
The Case of the Novara-Spear: Spolia in 19th Century Museums. Between Authenticity and Storytelling

12.10 Lunch break

13.30-14:30
Museum Tour 1: Museum of Classical Archaeology, Susanne Turner

Section 2: Virtual authenticity - a contradiction?

15.20
Dennis Niewerth (German Maritime Museum, Bremerhaven)
Authenticity as Virtuality: Producing 'The Real' in Digital Cultural Heritage

16.00
Dominik Kimmel (Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum – Leibniz Research Institute for Archaeology, Mainz)
Evidence in Virtual Worlds

16.40
Willi Xylander (Senckenberg Museum für Naturkunde, Görlitz)
“Para-Authenticity” - An approach to presenting “the real life” in a virtual reality animation on soil animals

19.00 Dinner
 

Thursday, December 5

Section 3: The real and authentic between replicas, copies, fakes and forgeries

9.40
Artemis Yagou (Deutsches Museum, Munich)
Making it Real for Whom? Issues of Authenticity in Pocket Watches for the Ottoman Market (18th-19th century)

10.20
Silke Berdux (Deutsches Museum, Munich)
To speak or not to speak? The Kempelen speaking apparatus in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, its replica, and issues of authenticity

11.00 Museum Tour 2 — Whipple Museum, Joshua Nall

12.00 Lunch

Section 4: Authorising and representing the real

13.00
Anna-Magdalena Heide (German Mining Museum, Bochum)
Commissioned Authenticity. The Example "Portraits of Famous Miners"

13.40
Elaine Charwat (UCL & Oxford University Museum of Natural History)
"Not the real thing?" Natural History Models and Casts as Uncomfortable Objects

14.30
Charlotte Colding Smith (German Maritime Museum Bremerhaven)
Authentication and Presentation of Scrimshaw and Whale Ivories in a Modern Museum Context

15.10
Final Discussion

15.30 End