authenticity and perception -- sherry turkle in Forbes

Embedded in a piece on 'virtuality and its discontents' by sherry turkle in forbes is the following observation about a visit to the museum with her daughter:

When my daughter, Rebecca, was 14, we went to the Darwin exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History, which documents his life and thought and somewhat defensively presents the theory of evolution as the central truth that underpins contemporary biology. At the entrance are two Galápagos tortoises. One is hidden from view; the other rests in its cage, utterly still. "They could have used a robot," Rebecca remarks, thinking it a shame to bring the turtle all this way when it's just going to sit there. She is concerned for the imprisoned turtle and unmoved by its authenticity. It is Thanksgiving weekend. The line is long, the crowd frozen in place and my question, "Do you care that the turtle is alive?" is a welcome diversion. Most of the votes for the robots echo Rebecca's sentiment that, in this setting, aliveness doesn't seem worth the trouble. A 12-year-old girl is adamant: "For what the turtles do, you didn't have to have the live ones." Her father looks at her, uncomprehending: "But the point is that they are real."

[..]

I ask another question of the museumgoers: "If you put in a robot instead of the live turtle, do you think people should be told that the turtle is not alive?" Not really, say several of the children. Data on "aliveness" can be shared on a "need to know" basis, for a purpose. But what are the purposes of living things?

Sherry Turkle, Can You Hear Me Now? Forbes Magazine, Special Report, 05.07.07

The 12-year old doesn't seem to me to be denying the power of authenticity. she could be making a nuanced distinction about the authentic and the representational. her 'concern' for the turtle, and its role of 'just sitting here' questions the investment we make in things just because they are real, and questions why we would put a live animal in a museum situation. it challenges us as museums to think about perceptions of the 'real'.

These were real animals in the context of an exhibition about Darwin. Was anything else in the exhibition alive? was alive really necessary to provide context to Darwin's voyages and his contribution to our knowledge of the world? or would a robot be the 21st century equivalence of the topographical watercolours and botanical illustrations that originally documented the voyage? I find myself wondering what the expectations of authenticity are in this context... in the museum of natural history a live turtle would be an anomoly: a stuffed one would be more expected [and might provide about as much action].

Then there's the question about the need for a disclaimer -- about explicit declarations of the boundaries between the real and the representational -- how much literacy to we expect of our audiences? are we labelling our dioramas with the museum equivalent of 'professional driver on a closed track', or do we somehow expect our complex genres of communication to be understood and interpreted by a public that can distinguish artefact from interpretation?

/jt

for more context about the exhibiton, there's a review essay in Museum Anthropology, Review Essay: Darwin on Display, Haidy Geismar , Lindsay Anderberg , Miranda Appelbaum , Jamieson Bunn , Cristina Diaz-Carrera , Robert Forloney , Sarah Malaika , Erin McLaughlin , Kristen Olson Eckman , Kathryn Osborn , Laura Potts , Regina Richter, Museum Anthropology. Apr 2007, Vol. 30, No. 1: 40-45.