“The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity,” writes Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Questions of authenticity dominate art history, from verification of an artwork’s claims to legitimacy, to rethinking, in the wake of rapidly evolving information technologies, the very concept of authenticity. This conference seeks to offers a platform for the exploration of the ways in which authenticity can serve to validate and verify, how it relates to historical truth, but also how faith in the power of authentication makes manipulation and falsification dangerously easy.

New Voices postgraduate symposium, now in its sixth year, is organised by the Student Members’ Committee of the Association of Art Historians (AAH). This one-day conference offers an opportunity for postgraduate students to present their research in an informal, supportive and stimulating atmosphere. We seek proposals for papers that examine the notion of authenticity in all historical periods and critical perspectives, across all mediums. Topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to:

• Uniqueness and originality of artwork vs reproduction, multiples and copy
• Fakes and forgery: ethics and legality
• Connoisseurship, attribution, authentication and conservation
• Document and archive as evidence
• Photography’s power to document and authenticate
• Questions of authorship and authenticity
• Appropriation: borrowing and stealing?
• New possibilities offered by the technologies to authenticate but also to manipulate the image

We welcome proposals of 250 words for 20 minute papers from postgraduate students of all levels. Please send abstracts, including the full title of the paper, your name, institutional affiliation and contact details to Olga Smith (os243@cam.ac.uk) and Louise Hughes (lh1873@bristol.ac.uk) by 1st September 2008.