Abstract

What can the institutional practices of libraries and museums tell us about the ways in which our culture conceives of knowledge and aesthetics? How might their architectures, and our navigation of them, map upon the distinctions we make in our minds, dividing real from fake, legitimate from illegitimate, art from fact? This article lays out the conceptual and spatial constructs that are the Library and the Museum, detailing how even trivial norms within them uphold crucial philosophical distinctions, for example, surrounding authorship and authenticity. It then examines two recent cases of forgery in order to reveal how and why thinking across the thresholds of these distinctions, tenuous as they are, can provoke moral and legal consequences.

摘要

图书馆和博物馆的制度实践可以告诉我们什么关于我们的文化对知识和美学的构想方式？他们的架构，以及我们对它们的导航，如何映射到我们在脑海中做出的区分，区分真实与虚假、合法与非法、艺术与事实？本文阐述了图书馆和博物馆的概念和空间构造，详细说明了它们中即使是微不足道的规范也是如何维护关键的哲学区别的，例如，围绕作者身份和真实性。然后，它检查了最近的两个伪造案例，以揭示跨越这些差异的门槛的思考如何以及为什么会引起道德和法律后果。