Arts and Authenticity

Authenticity means truth, central of the ultimate “truths” that modern tourists search for outside of their rather superficial home lives. Authenticity, on the other hand, refers to another kind of truth, it means that things really are what they are said to be the opposite of authenticity is not “new” or “souvenir” but “fake” or “misrepresented”, though these two often go together under the influence of commercialism. Arts and handicrafts are an important attraction for tourists and can be a significant source of income for residents of the tourism area. Tourism can also be useda technique for revitalizing and maintaining. It is important to make a distinction between souvenir items and true arts and crafts, realizing that both have a role to perform in tourism. The authenticity of local arts and crafts should be retained in terms of use of local materials, designs and crafts skills. However, designs can often be modified to suit the interests of tourists. Special training may be required of local artists and craftsmen and sales outlets organized, with quality controls applied. Traditional dance, music and drama can also be of much interest to tourists and require special organization and sometimes development of specialized performance facilities. Maintaining authenticity of these performances is important and may require that training programs be established and quality controls applied. Many people confuse authentic with traditional when thinking about arts, crafts, costume, architecture and so on. But “traditional” is a flexible concept and as we have already seen it is constantly under reformulation in any living society: it is only under the influence of museumification that tradition becomes labeled and static. Let us examine for a moment the different ways in which things could be not authentic applying more to arts and crafts than to architecture.