u/anisamot

My husband and I are on vacation in Vienna. We had a great day - visited the Imperial Apartments/Sisi Museum (2.5 hours) and then the Kunsthistorisches museum (5 hours).
Over conversation at dinner he says it was great even though it’s probably all fake. Record scratch - what?!?! Yup - he thinks museums are hiding the good stuff and he as a lay-person has no way of confirming so how can he trust anything he sees in a museum.
 
His points:
A) He can’t just trust a museum isn’t switching the real thing with a fake for display purposes
B) he’s coming to the museum for the stories and curation of the exhibit, and has a hard time connecting with the objects themselves because he doesn’t think he can trust they are real
C) Museums should have a standardized way to indicate and  for the public to confirm if something is real or a copy that he can trust - but he doesn’t know what this is yet.
D) Museums have to hide the real things because they are too valuable, it’s too risky to have them accessible to the public.
 
My points:

1. The whole point of a museum is that it is a trusted authority where people go to see authenticity.
2. The time and resources it would take for a museum to make copies - what museum has that?!
3. The whole perceived value of something comes from its provenance being on exhibit/public knowledge of it - why would they hide ‘the good stuff’
4. Curators and experts do all of the research and authenticate the collection - the research is often available in books or other published resources if trusting their authority isn’t enough and anyone wants to check their sources.
5. The fact that something is on display in a museum is default ‘authentic’ and museums note otherwise on labels by stating ‘copy’ or ‘replica of’
6. Why would museums spend so much on security and and crates and all the crazy stuff we do if it’s not the real thing on display?!
7. In an AI world, museums are suppose to be the place we can go to see authenticity and trust what we are seeing is real.
8. There are multiple checks and balances on the authority of what is on exhibition - the institution overall and its need to protect its reputation. The education of the curator and their own reputation, other curators at the museum. Other professionals in that field… all would be able to call BS in museums were showing fakes en mass.
9. If museums are hiding the real thing, it’s a lot easier for someone to steal it because only the curator/museum would know it was gone. If the Mona Lisa goes missing, everyone will know about it.

 
 …. So what am I missing. He’s still convinced there are bad actors (seemingly the majority in his mind) doing a last mile swap. He also thinks he’s not the only one who thinks this way and this is a big problem museums are overlooking when communicating with the public. No matter what I say he says he can’t believe just because a museum says something is real that it is real.
 
Thoughts? Is the general perception that museums show replicas and hide the good stuff? Do we need to communicate this better? How can I convince my own husband that museums are doing their best to present what they are showing as accurately as possible?

Edit: thank you all for the responses they have been super interesting to read, and thank you for the concern over his mentality. It is definitely alarming and took me completely by surprise. Will be definitely be addressing it further after this vacation.