For what it is worth: The auction house as an arena for the performance of authenticity

This article examines how authenticity is produced within auction house valuation processes. Rather than treating authenticity as an intrinsic property of objects or as a status secured solely through provenance documentation, the study conceptualizes it as a relational and performative accomplishment. Drawing on autoethnographic material derived from professional engagement within the auction industry, the article analyses how authenticity emerges through everyday practices of examination, categorization, documentation, staging, and communication. While previous research has primarily focused on provenance, legal responsibility, and evidentiary verification, less attention has been directed toward the interactional and socio-material processes through which authenticity is enacted and stabilized in practice. Using a performance perspective as a point of departure, further informed by relational points of view and by sociocultural insights on fields, taste and distinction, the article demonstrates how authenticity is assembled through coordinated professional roles, institutional scripts, material traces, and audience recognition. The analysis shows how authenticity gains credibility through repeated alignments between documentation, expertise, auction formats, and representational strategies. Auction houses are thus positioned not merely as commercial intermediaries but as institutional arenas in which cultural value is negotiated. Authenticity ultimately appears as a socially accomplished dimension of value that extends beyond individual transactions and shapes broader hierarchies of cultural legitimacy.