Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses children’s pursuit of ‘authenticity’ through their engagement with material culture at the National Museum of Scotland. It suggests that the concept of ‘authenticity’ provides insight into constructions of cultural knowledge and belonging, relations of trust and the affective presence of heritage in the form of museum artefacts.

Paper long abstract:

"Temples of authenticity" (Handler 1986:4), museums are spaces where cultural heritage is represented in material form. The National Museum of Scotland is particularly self-conscious about its role in the performance of national identity and belonging. One of its key educational resources, Object Handling Boxes, encourages children to explore artefacts in a bid to develop their investigative skills and inspire their own understandings of the past. The children are well aware, however, that these objects are often "false" replicas of the real thing. Despite the sometimes-contrary assumptions of museum professionals, children's consistent questioning over whether objects were "real" or not, expresses 'authenticity' as a central concern within their museum experience. This paper employs ethnographic material from the National Museum of Scotland's education programmes to suggest that 'authenticity' does not have to be reduced to the intellectual and emotional projections of human 'subjects' onto material 'objects', rather museum artefacts have an affective capacity inherent to their physical nature. 'Authenticity' can thus refer to an embodied experience, a very real and physical encounter between 'things', and through which the metonymical presence (Runia 2006) of the past is felt and acted upon. Employing the politically-charged national touring exhibition of the Lewis Chessmen as a case study, this paper also examines the ways in which children in local communities across Scotland (in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Shetland and Lewis) engage with "real things from the past" in the process of creating their own narratives of identity and belonging.