The fact that people go to the Louvre museum in Paris to see the original painting Mona Lisa when they can see a reproduction anywhere leads us to question some assumptions about the role of museums of fine art in today’s world
人们去往巴黎卢浮宫参观《蒙娜丽莎》的原画，而他们本可以在任何地方看到其复制品，这一事实使得我们质疑一些有关艺术品博物馆在当今世界中所起作用的假设。
One of the most famous works of art in the world is Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Nearly everyone who goes to see the original will already be familiar with it from reproductions, but they accept that fine art is more rewardingly viewed in its original form.
世界上最著名的艺术作品之一是Leonardo da Vinci的《蒙娜丽莎》。几乎每位去参观原画的人都已经从复制品上对其分厂熟悉，但是他们认为艺术品更值得观赏其最初的形式。
However, if Mona Lisa was a famous novel, few people would bother to go to a museum to read the writer’s actual manuscript rather than a printed reproduction. This might be explained by the fact that the novel has evolved precisely because of technological developments that made it possible to print out huge numbers of texts, whereas oil painting have always been produced as unique objects. In addition, it could be argued that the practice of interpreting or ‘reading’ each medium follows different conventions. With novels, the reader attends mainly to the meaning of words rather than the way they are printed on the page, whereas the ‘reader’ of a painting must attend just as closely to the material form of marks and shapes in the picture as to any ideas they may signify.
然而，如果《蒙娜丽莎》是一部著名的小说，那么没有多少人会费力去博物馆阅读作者真正的手稿，而更倾向于阅读印刷的复制品。这或许会被如下事实所解释：小说得以准确地传承是由于技术的发展使得印刷出大量的文本可能，而油画一直以独特的形式被创造。此外，也可以说解释或“解读”每一种媒介的行为遵循不同的传统。对于小说，读者主要关注文字的意义而非它们被印刷在页面上的方式，而一副画的“读者”必然密切关注图画中的标记和形状的材料形式，及其在图片中所表示的各种意义。
Yet it has always been possible to make very accurate facsimiles of pretty well any fine art work. The seven surviving versions of Mona Lisa bear witness to the fact that in the 16th century, artists seemed perfectly content to assign the reproduction of their creations to their workshop apprentices as regular ‘bread and butter’ work. And today the task of reproducing pictures is incomparably more simple and reliable, with reprographic techniques that allow the production of high-quality prints made exactly to the original scale, with faithful colour values, and even with duplication of the surface relief of the painting.
但是制作出几乎任何艺术品的准确复制品一直是有可能的。在16世纪，艺术家似乎非常愿意将他们作品的复制工作分配给工作室学徒作为常规的谋生工作，《蒙娜丽莎》留存下来的七个版本见证了这一事实。如今，复制图画的任务无比地简单和可靠，复印技术允许高品质印刷的复制品精确到原画的规模，有可靠的色值，甚至能复制图画表面的凸凹纹理。
But despite an implicit recognition that the spread of good reproductions can be culturally valuable, museums continue to promote the special status of original work.
但是尽管人们隐隐地意识到好的复制品的传播在文化上是有价值的，博物馆依然宣传原始本的特殊地位。
Unfortunately, this seems to place severe limitations on the kind of experience offered to visitors.
可惜的是，这似乎会严重限制游客获得体验的方式。
One limitation is related to the way the museum presents its exhibits. As repositories of unique historical objects, art museums are often called ‘treasure houses’. We are reminded of this even before we view a collection by the presence of security guards, attendants, ropes and display cases to keep us away from the exhibits. In many cases, the architectural style of the building further reinforces that notion. In addition, a major collection like that of London’s National Gallery is housed in numerous rooms, each with dozens of works, any one of which is likely to be worth more than all the average visitor possesses. In a society that judges the personal status of the individual so much by their material worth, it is therefore difficult not to be impressed by one’s own relative ‘worthlessness’ in such an environment.
第一个限制与博物馆呈现展品的方式有关。作为独特历史物品的存储处，艺术博物馆通常被称为“藏宝室”。即使在我们看到藏品之前，这一点也通过为了使我们远离展品而出现的安保人员、服务人员、绳索和展示柜提醒着我们。在很多情况下，建筑物的建筑风格进一步强化了这种观念。此外，主要的展品，像在伦敦国家美术馆中的那些，被收藏在许多房间中，每一间都有数十件艺术品，而其中任意一件的价值都有可能超过了所有参观者的平均财富水平。在一个在如此大程度上通过物质价值评估个人地位的社会中，人们很难在这种环境中不感受到自己相对“一文不值”。
Furthermore, consideration of the ‘value’ of the original work in its treasure house setting impresses upon the viewer that, since these works were originally produced, they have been assigned a huge monetary value by some person or institution more powerful than themselves. Evidently, nothing the viewer thinks about the work is going to alter that value, and so today’s viewer is deterred from trying to extend that spontaneous, immediate, self-reliant kind of reading which would originally have met the work.
此外，对博物馆中原版艺术品“价值”的考虑会让来访者感到由于这些艺术品是原版，它们已经被一些人或是比自己更有权力的机构赋予了巨大的经济价值。很明显，参观者关于藏品的任何想法都不会改变这种价值，因此如今的参观者不会像最初看到展品时那样试图延展这种无意识的、即时的、自主的、解读。
The visitor may then be struck by the strangeness of seeing such diverse paintings, drawings and sculptures brought together in an environment for which they were not originally created. This ‘displacement effect’ is further heightened by the sheer volume of exhibits. In the case of a major collection, there are probably more works on display that we could realistically view in weeks or even months.
参观者看到如此多样的油画、素描以及雕塑被放置在同在一个最初并非为其创造的环境中时会产生陌生感。这种“位移效应”会进一步被展品的巨大数量提升。在一个大型展览中，相比我们实际上能够在几个星期或者几个月中看到的数量，或许会有更多艺术品被展示。
This is particularly distressing because time seems to be a vital factor in the appreciation of all art forms. A fundamental difference between paintings and other art forms is that there is no prescribed time over which a painting is viewed. By contrast, the audience encounters an opera or a play over a specific time, which is the duration of the performance. Similarly, novels and poems are read in a prescribed temporal sequence, whereas a picture has no clear place at which to start viewing, or at which to finish. Thus art works themselves encourage us to view them superficially, without appreciating the richness of detail and labour that is involved.
这尤其令人苦恼，因为欣赏所有的艺术形式时，时间似乎都是一个关键因素。绘画作品和其他艺术形式的一个根本区别在于欣赏一幅绘画作品没有既定时间。相反地，观众会在一个特定的时间欣赏一出歌剧或戏剧，也就是演出的持续时间。类似地，小说和诗歌也需要在一个既定的时间顺序下阅读，而一幅画并没有清晰的开始欣赏或结束的地方。因此，艺术作品本身鼓励我们通过外表来欣赏它们，而非欣赏其中涉及的丰富的细节和劳动。
Consequently, the dominant critical approach becomes that of the art historian, a specialized academic approach devoted to ‘discovering the meaning’ of art within the cultural context of its time. This is in perfect harmony with the museum’s function, since the approach is dedicated to seeking out and conserving ‘authentic’, ‘original’ readings of the exhibits. Again, this seems to put paid to that spontaneous, participatory criticism which can be found in abundance in criticism of classic works of literature, but is absent from most art history.
因此，占主导地位的批判法成为艺术史家们使用的方法，这是一种专业性的学术方法，它关注于发现艺术品在其所处时代的文化背景下的意义。这与博物馆的功能完全一致，因为这种方法专注于找出并保存对展品“真正的”、“原始的”解读。再一次，这似乎结束了那种自发的、参与性的批判，它们大量出现在对经典文学作品的评论中，但是在多数艺术史中并不存在。
The displays of art museums serve as a warning of what critical practices can emerge when spontaneous criticism is suppressed. The museum public, like any other audience, experience art more rewardingly when given the confidence to express their views. If appropriate works of fine art could be rendered permanently accessible to the public by means of high-fidelity reproductions, as literation and music already are, the public may feel somewhat less in awe of them. Unfortunately, that may be too much to ask from those who seek to maintain and control the art establishment.
艺术博物馆中的展出可以作为一种警示，提醒人们在自发的评论受到压制时，会出现怎样的评论行为。像其他所有观众一样，当给予表达其观点的自信时，博物馆的受众在鉴赏艺术时会更加受益。如果通过高保真度的复制品，使得恰当的艺术作品让大众能够一直接到，就像文学和音乐已经做到的那样，那么人们对艺术作品可能会稍微感到不那么敬畏。遗憾的是，对于那些希望维持和控制艺术领域的人而言，询问这些似乎太过多余了。
