大英博物館自辯不是每件藏品都是搶來的

The British Museum is launching an initiative intended to counter the perception that its collections derive only from looted treasures.

大英博物館日前發起了一項活動，試圖反駁“其藏品都是來自掠奪的寶物的”這一觀點。

The museum has long faced criticism for displaying -- and refusing to return -- looted treasures, including the Parthenon Marbles, Rosetta Stone, and the Gweagal shield.

長期以來，該博物館一直因展出--並拒絕歸還--被掠奪的藏品而飽受外界批評，這些寶物包括帕特農神廟的大理石雕像、羅塞塔石碑和格威格爾盾牌。

Earlier this year, the art historian Alice Procter's Uncomfortable Art Tours around London institutions, including the British Museum, made headlines for their attempts to expose the role of colonialism.

今年年初，藝術史學者埃利斯·普羅克特在倫敦各大公共機構舉辦了“不安藝術巡迴展”，其中就有大英博物館。該巡迴展因力圖揭露殖民主義淵源而登上頭條。

Dr Sushma Jansari, the curator of the Asian ethnographic and South Asia collections at the British Museum, said she had devised Collected Histories in response to Procter's tours.

大英博物館亞洲人種志和南亞藏品策展人蘇什瑪·香薩利稱，她策劃的“收集歷史”講座活動，正是要回應普羅克特的巡迴展。

"There are a lot of partial histories and they tend to focus on the colonial aspect of the collecting so you have a bunch of people who tend to be quite angry and upset," she said.

她表示：“有人傾向於關注藏品收集的殖民時期背景，這樣的歷史是‘部分的’，因此會有一羣非常憤怒和感到不安的人。”

"We're trying to reset the balance a little bit. A lot of our collections are not from a colonial context; not everything here was acquired by Europeans by looting."

“我們試圖平衡這一觀點。很多藏品不是來自殖民背景，並非一切都是歐洲人通過搶劫獲得的。”

Jansari said there was a misguided impression that the British Museum did not know -- or care -- about how artefacts entered its collections, whereas a lot of people were actually researching the provenance of items.

香薩利表示，之前存在着一種誤解，即大英博物館不知道或是不關心文物是怎麼來的。但實際上有很多人在研究藏品的出處。