大英博物馆自辩不是每件藏品都是抢来的

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

大英博物馆日前发起了一项活动，试图反驳“其藏品都是来自掠夺的宝物的”这一观点。

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

长期以来，该博物馆一直因展出--并拒绝归还--被掠夺的藏品而饱受外界批评，这些宝物包括帕特农神庙的大理石雕像、罗塞塔石碑和格威格尔盾牌。

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，艺术史学者埃利斯·普罗克特在伦敦各大公共机构举办了“不安艺术巡回展”，其中就有大英博物馆。该巡回展因力图揭露殖民主义渊源而登上头条。

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.

大英博物馆亚洲人种志和南亚藏品策展人苏什玛·香萨利称，她策划的“收集历史”讲座活动，正是要回应普罗克特的巡回展。

"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：“有人倾向于关注藏品收集的殖民时期背景，这样的历史是‘部分的’，因此会有一群非常愤怒和感到不安的人。”

"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."

“我们试图平衡这一观点。很多藏品不是来自殖民背景，并非一切都是欧洲人通过抢劫获得的。”

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.

香萨利表示，之前存在着一种误解，即大英博物馆不知道或是不关心文物是怎么来的。但实际上有很多人在研究藏品的出处。