论英国博物馆学史及“英国性”下的博物馆学  

A History of British Museology or Towards a Museology of Britishness

作　　者：大卫·弗朗斯 王思渝(译)[2] 阮可欣(译) David Francis;Wang Siyu;Ruan Kexin(Institute of Archaeology,University College London,London,WC1H 0PY;School of Archaeology and Museology,Peking University,Beijing,100871)

机构地区：[1]伦敦大学学院考古研究所,伦敦WC1H 0PY [2]北京大学考古文博学院,北京100871

出　　处：《博物院》2024年第4期7-22,共16页Museum

摘　　要：文章讨论了英国博物馆学的两大特点,及其成因与影响。其一是将博物馆与社会变革联系在一起的工具主义倾向,其二是收藏家的实用主义倾向,重点关注实物收藏,以及在艺术史或人类学语境下形成的话语系统。这两点都可视为对以法国和德国为代表的欧洲大陆博物馆学的回应。这一论断并不新鲜,更广为人知是,1989年《新博物馆学》(The New Museology)出版,这一年被后人称作英国博物馆学元年。《新博物馆学》认为,尽管博物馆工作者常将他们所面对的政策和工作程序视为理所当然,但事实上,他们的应对之法反映了潜在的价值体系,这一价值体系又是机构灌输给员工的。文章还讨论了“英国性(Britishness)”这一概念,对英国博物馆学是什么提出质疑,同时探讨社会正义和去殖民化等当代议题的历史背景,最后也将论及更为全面的跨文化英国博物馆学愿景。本文的核心在于,博物馆学并不是简单的关于博物馆的研究,而是正如布鲁诺·布鲁伦·索耶斯(Bruno Brulon Soares)继承了其先驱捷克博物馆学家兹比涅克·Z.斯坦斯基(Zbyněk Z.Stránský)所谈的,关于价值的研究。在某种意义上,这种价值既是指博物馆收藏和展示的实物的价值,也是其揭示的使其得以存续的潜在文化的价值。This essay argues that there are two entangled threads that define British Museology.The first is an instrumentalist tendency connecting the museum with social reform and the second is a materialist pragmatism focused on the object collections at the expense of the discursive systems,such as art history or anthropology,they represent or the histories they are entangled with.Both of these qualities can be seen as a reaction to the museology of mainland Europe in terms of France and Germany.This diagnosis is not a new one but has been identified most famously in 1989–a date that looms large as a year zero for British Museology due to the publication of a series of essays titled the The New Museology.This book holds that,though museum workers commonly naturalise their policies and procedures as professional practice,the decisions workers make reflect underlying value systems that are encoded in institutional narratives.This essay approaches the question of what British Museology is by first critically examining the concept of Britishness,then exploring the historical background behind the contemporary issues of social justice and decolonization in British museology,and finally,exploring what a more expansive transcultural British museology might look like.At the heart of this essay is the concept that museology is not simply the study of museums,but what Soares drawing on the work of pioneering Czech Museologist Zbyněk Z.Stránský,the study of value.This work not only in the sense that museums ascribe values to the objects they safeguard and display but also that they reveal the underlying values of the cultures that maintain them.

关 键 词：英国博物馆学 英国性 去殖民化 

分 类 号：G26[历史地理—考古学及博物馆学]