The presentation describes a current dissertation project on Thai museums. The aim of the study is to examine selected exhibitions with regard to the production of authenticity. The research is based on the assumption that authenticity is deliberately constructed in order to create a specific feeling of genuineness, credibility, and relevance in visitors. When staging authenticity in historical representations, a distinction is usually made between two forms of authenticity. These are referred to as object authenticity and subject authenticity or as the mode of authentic testimony and the mode of authentic experience. On this basis, the researcher has developed five modes of authenticity that serve as analysis tools. The results of the research show that very different strategies are used to create authenticity. Empirical authenticity is used by exhibitions to prove and support certain contents or narratives on the basis of historical objects and scientific methods. In this way, this mode of authenticity can serve to make rather unknown or marginalized content and groups of people (workers, sex workers, migrants) visible and to testify to their narratives. Sensual authenticity is usually created through historical objects, whereby a special auratic connection to visitors is established. This can create a special emotional credibility. Communicative authenticity serves exhibitions to create imaginary worlds through easy-to-understand language, familiar images, and atmospheric backdrops, which dock onto the experiences of visitors and are therefore perceived by them as particularly real and believable. Visitors are also focused on the mode of experience authenticity as they work out the presented content themselves through their own actions and experiences. In the mode of critical authenticity, the constructive character of historical exhibitions is revealed, and well-known narratives and assumptions are deconstructed, which can give these exhibitions specific critical credibility.

   Felix Pülm holds a master’s degree in public history from the Free University of Berlin and is currently pursuing a PhD at the same institution. One focus of his research is on the field of memory culture and the functionalization of history. A second focus is on the role of museums as actors in historical culture and their participation in social discourses. Felix has lived in Thailand for more than ten years and works at Silpakorn University. In addition, he organizes activities and exhibitions in the fields of culture, history and language with various institutions.