Further introducing the terms we are thinking with, this week we are questioning the innuendo of the concept of authenticity within the cultural sector. The Oxford dictionary simply describes authenticity as the quality of being real or true, while the Tate Art Terms Glossary states “Walter Benjamin first used the word in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, where he describes an original work of art as having ‘authenticity’. By this he means it has a presence in time and space, and a unique existence in the place it happens to be. A reproduction of a work of art lacks ‘authenticity’ as it is not possible, when reproducing the work of art, to establish the exact conditions in which the original artwork was created.(...)” ‬

‪Denis Dutton distinguishes between “nominal authenticity and expressive authenticity” and as we are continuing our thoughts on the extractivism of cultural mass tourism, romanticized ruinporn and one dimensional representation we are favoring Can Bilsel’s deconstruction of the very idea of authenticity in relation to collecting museums. His publication “Regimes of the Authentic in Berlin's Pergamon Museum” describe an omnipresent phenomenon within western museology: Reconstructing the lost monuments of Antiquity as a complement to Europe's colonial imagination. Countless archaeologists travelled to the East, excavated extinct cities, and shipped their finds to Europe for display in imperial museums. Bilsel argues that the museums produced a modern décor, iconic images, which replaced the lost antique originals, rather than creating an explicitly hypothetical representation of Antiquity. ‪Addressing the dilemmas raised by the continuing presence of these displays, which embody the distinctive traits of the artistic and ideological programs of the last two centuries, Bilsel questions what the process of reproduction and authentication in the museum tells us about our changing perceptions of historic monuments.‬ 
‪The limitations and dangers of the concept of authenticity becomes increasingly obvious, particularly when questioning the classification of art within the institutional setting.‬