专访美国华盛顿史密森尼学会副会长.doc

专访美国华盛顿史密森尼学会副会长保护世界文化：日益紧迫的使命专访美国华盛顿史密森尼学会副会长理查德库林华盛顿史密森尼学会负责历史、艺术和文化的副会长理查德库林最近与美国国务院国际信息局讨论了保护文化遗产的问题。库林承担着众多展览设施的管理工作，例如赫希杭博物馆、国立非洲艺术博物馆、国立美国历史博物馆、国立美洲印第安人博物馆、史密森尼拉美中心和史密森尼美国亚太裔项目。World Cultural Preservation: A Growing ImperativeA conversation with the Smithsonian Institutions Richard KurinRichard Kurin, under secretary for history, art, and culture at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, sat down with the State Departments Bureau of International Information Programs for a discussion on protecting cultural heritage. Kurin overseas numerous museums, including the Hirshhorn Museum, the National Museum of African Art, the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian Latino Center and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program.Question: How would you define culture and why is it important that the United States play a role in its preservation globally?Kurin: As an anthropologist by trade who has worked in many countries around the world, Im proud to represent not only the cultures of the United States, but indeed the cultures of peoples and regions around the world.I define culture really as a way of life, as the things that are important to us, the values and beliefs that make life meaningful. Culture is expressed through song and dance, through architecture, through literature, through our aspirations, through our religions, through our craftsmanship and artistry. Culture is obviously important because it defines who we are in respect to our fellow human beings, to our neighbors, and indeed to people around the world.We have a tremendous ability to learn each others cultures, to learn them the same way we learn languages. Now that said, we do speak a lot of different languages some 6,000 on the planet right now. And, as we know, the planet has become a lot smaller. Our cultures are in much greater contact every day with each other. So its imperative that we, as citizens of a planet, understand each other. Maybe we do not need to speak each others languages, eat each others foods or sing everybody elses songs, but we do need to taste them and experience them. And I think that this experience makes us rich as human beings and it increases our understanding of each other.Q: Can protecting culture play a role in advancing human rights, particularly for minorities and indigenous populations?A: There is a long history of confrontation between cultures, and this confrontation continues in the present as well. In some cases, we see a lot of intolerance, where people look at other human beings and think, “Well, we dont really understand their culture, we dont believe in what they do and therefore theyre inferior.” But when anthropologists, historians and others look at the achievements of other cultures, they find not ignorance but often insight, understanding that brings benefit to their own culture as well.At one time, everybodys culture was innovative. Its hard to say where the next insight will come from, where well solve the problem of cancer, for example. It may happen in the medical laboratories of the United States, it may happen in the laboratories of China or India, but it also may be in the folk knowledge, of a healer, a practitioner from the Amazon rain forest or central Africa. So I think we have a great deal to gain from each others cultures. I look at culture like a living library an archive of the past, but also a living laboratory for the exploration of creativity and innovation. It can be of tremendous benefit to all of us.Sometimes we think that heritage is something that belongs only to specific peoples living in specific countries. But the whole world mourned when the Bamiyan Buddhas were blown up. At the time, the Taliban were in power in Afghanistan, and they regarded these Buddhas as valueless or indeed as a desecration of their own beliefs. This was quite tragic because these Bamiyan Buddhas stood for the beliefs of hundreds of millions of people. They were poised on the historic Silk Road that united people. They were a treasure and a part of the cultural heritage of all human beings, not just the heritage of the people who lived in Afghanistan, and certainly not of the Taliban. We have to do more in terms of inculcating the idea that heritage transcends any one regime or any one government.Look, you may not like my song, you may not like my statues, you may not care for my art, but at least you should respect it. Thats the biggest thing that the United States stands for, actually.In order to have a civil society, weve learned over the period of a few hundred years that respecting peoples beliefs and cultures is incredibly important. Sometimes weve learned that lesson in a hard way, as we have grappled with our own issues of cultural intolerance, of not respecting the views and cultures of certain people, such as in the case of Native Americans. Earlier in our history, the government was trying to wipe out and destroy their culture. Now we have the National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall in Washington in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. So I think the U.S. has learned a lesson about the respect for culture, respect for minority and majority and diverse groups. And I think that it is a lesson that is well-respected by the rest of the world and could be emulated by the rest of the world.Q: Cultural preservation is expensive. Is there an economic incentive for a country to preserve its culture?A: When we think about culture, we think primarily about two aspects of it. One is the creative aspect of culture, the living culture that is ongoing and innovative. The other is the heritage aspect of culture the architectural sites, the artifacts, the things in our museums that remind us of our past. While it is very expensive to preserve artifacts and architecture, it is an investment in ones cultural capital. Those sites, monuments and artifacts give people a sense of continuity of their identity. History has a way of both legitimating the present and giving it meaning. How did we get here? What did our ancestors do to make life meaningful? Whats important to us?As we look at the preservation of architectural sites, the preservation of artifacts in museums, of great artworks of the past, we find that those things are alluring. Theyre alluring to tourists; they are a part of the ongoing cultural economy, which draws ones own citizens. Theyre very important for the educational mission of a country. I think of our museums in Washington, where we get millions of schoolchildren, where they learn not just about the past but also educate themselves for the future. We have to look at the involvement in cultural heritage as an investment. Its an investment in the sense of purpose and pride that citizens will have in who they are as a people.Q: Has technology changed the way we approach cultural preservation?A: There has always been an interesting relationship between the preservation of cultural heritage and technology. In the late 1870s, Thomas Edison developed the first sound recording machine. What was it used for immediately? Anthropologists from the Smithsonian went out to various Indian tribes and communities across the United States and Canada and recorded songs and stories because the new technology was viewed as a way of preserving that past and that heritage that would be important for people to know.Similarly, when video, and film, and other technologies get developed, while they spur us on to create new industries that are regarded as avant-garde or technologically sophisticated, they are almost always applied to cultural heritage preservation work. I think of the great work in the Middle East, where sensing aerial photography has been able to unearth ancient archeological sites, ancient roads and ancient trading routes. It gives us an explanation of the relationship between different societies. New technology will always be used in that way because were always looking to coax out more meaning from our past.The Internet, for example, is a fantastic tool for people around the world to communicate about their culture. The interesting thing about the Internet is that you dont need to have hundreds of millions of dollars to build magnificent museums. You can share your culture with people around the world in a matter of seconds. I think the Internet provides a way in which different minority populations, different small populations, can have their voice heard and can communicate with much larger populations. The Internet is developing means of translation so that we can move from one language to another more easily, and thats a marvelous innovation for cross-cultural collaboration.A few years ago, many countries got together and did a Silk Road project, working pan-nationally across the breadth of Asia, Europe, even North Africa and the Americas because it was those trade routes that really connected the whole world. The Silk Road was one of those trade routes that brought together music, culture, ideas and foods, and really connected people around the world. I look at the Internet as a modern-day version of the Silk Road.Q: What can the United States and other countries do to stop the illegal trade of stolen artifacts?A: Most nations in the world have signed on to treaties which recognize the value of artifacts and cultural property to the very people who nurtured them and that draw meaning from them. Those treaties require governments and various other organizations to guarantee that those cultural properties will not be traded, will not go across boundaries and will not be sold surreptitiously. Many museums and organizations are participating in a number of ways that help people protect against that.The Smithsonian Museum and the American Association of Museums are very involved in doing what we call “provenance research,” that is tracing the biography of various objects that might have been produced, traded or acquired, for example, during the Nazi era. We trace these biographies of literally thousands and thousands of objects. Where did they come from? When were they traded? Was that trading legitimate or was it indeed something that violated one of the treaties and was done illegitimately? I think its important to make citizens aware of the importance of these objects and the ethical obligation to preserve them.Q: What do you think we have to lose if we fail to protect our cultural heritage?A: I believe that when people lose their cultural heritage they lose their moral grounding, their connection to their own past. If you look at populations that have been displaced by war, or refugee populations, or people that have been subjected to all kinds of intolerance and persecution, very often you see a draw to something that is theirs and that no one can take away from them, and that is their sense of history and a sense of who they are. People die over that. People have gone to the gallows and concentration camps over the issue of who they are. Its very hard to take away their culture. But if you lose that, I think you lose a whole sense of self individually, as a community and as a nation.There are also political and economic consequences of a people losing its culture. Culture is a resource, a distinctly human invention that has enabled us to survive. Culture has a practical, utilitarian value. When you look around the world today, you look at the vast cultural economy. The cultural economy has grown extraordinarily in the last several decades, and I think nowadays it is actually the largest part of the international economy. When you think of people writing books, or producing television programs, or producing things on the Internet, if you think of everything from video games to song, if you think of theater and movies, if you think of tourism and people going to observe cultural sites, it is the largest industry in the world. So imagine that we take all that away. Take Angkor Wat out of Cambodia, take Machu Picchu out of Peru, take the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon, the Everglades, and probably most of New York City and Washington out of the United States, and you lose millions and millions of visitors. I think France gets tens of millions of visitors every year that contribute to that economy. If you lose or wipe away a culture, I think you not only lose a sense of meaning, both individual and national, but you have vast swaths of the economy just totally gone.Therefore, it is very important to invest in culture, give it value, give it a place, and nurture it, not just for its intangible qualities the aspects that give meaning to life but also for its very tangible benefits, which are sometimes economic, sometimes political, sometimes even medical and scientific. We at the Smithsonian have an Air and Space Museum that has a moon rock and satellites that went up into space. We werent the first nation on Earth to contemplate the cosmos or think about the nature of the universe. That stirring to explore outer space is very deeply held and goes back to the roots of human beings when people were coming out of the savannah in Africa and looking up at the stars and trying to figure out the significance of all that up there for us down here. Thats culture. So its those musings that propel us on to greater heights and will continue to do so. If we lose cultural heritage, we lose meaning, we lose economy, but we also lose our imagination.问：你对文化的定义是什么？为什么美国为保护全球文化遗产发挥作用具有重大意义？库林：我的本行是人类学，在全世界各地许多国家工作过。我感到自豪的是，不仅可以推介美国文化，而且确实能够体验全世界各地人民和各地区的文化。我认为，文化实际上可以定义为一种生活方式，是一些对我们很重要的事情，使生活充满意义的价值观和信仰。文化通过歌舞，通过建筑，通过文学，通过我们的愿望，通过我们的宗教，通过我们的技艺和艺术得到表达。文化显然很重要，因为文化定义了我们是什么人，以区别于其他人类同胞，区别于我们的邻邦，也区别于世界各地的人。我们有巨大的能力相互学习彼此的文化，如同我们相互学习语言一样。说到语言，目前在地球上，人类可以说约6,000多种不同的语言。此外，众所周知，地球已经变得很小。我们各自的文化每天的相互接触更为频繁。因此，作为这个星球的公民，我们迫切需要互相了解。我们或许不需要说对方的语言，不需要采纳对方的食物或会唱其他人的歌，但我们确实需要对这一切有所品尝和体验。我认为，这种体验丰富了我们人类，增进了我们的相互了解。问：保护文化能否为促进人权，特别是为维护少数民族和土著居民的利益发挥作用？答：不同文化之间的对立由来已久，目前仍在继续。在某些情况下，我们看到大量不宽容的现象，人们往往一看到与自己不同的人就会这样想：“我们并不真正了解他们的文化，我们不信任他们所做的事情，所以他们就不如我们。” 但是，当人类学家、历史学家等人看到其他文化所取得的成就时，他们体验到的不是无知，而往往是有益于他们自身文化的见识和理解。有一段时间，每一家的文化都在创新。很难说下一个真知灼见将来自什么地方，例如我们准备攻克癌症的难关，成果也许会出现在美国的医学实验室里，也可能来自中国或印度的实验室，但也可能来源于亚马逊雨林或中非某一个治疗师或助理医生的民间智慧。因此，我认为我们可以从彼此的文化中汲取大量的营养。我视文化为一个活的图书馆记录过去的档案，也是探索创意和革新的活生生的实验室，可以给我们大家都带来巨大的收益。有时候，我们认为，遗产只属于生活在特定国家的特定群体。但是，巴米扬大佛被炸，整个世界都为之哀悼。当时塔利班在阿富汗大权在握，他们认为这座大佛毫无价值，甚至认为是对自己宗教的亵渎。这十分令人悲哀，因为巴米扬大佛代表了亿万人民的信仰。这些佛像伫立在把人们联结在一起的丝绸之路上。这些佛像是珍贵的宝藏，是全人类文化遗产的一部分，不仅仅属于居住在阿富汗的人民的文化遗产。当然决不属于塔利班。我们必须做更多的工作，让大家都认识到，遗产超越了任何一种制度或任何一届政府的范围。你看，你可能不喜欢我的歌，你可能不喜欢我的雕塑，你可能不在乎我的艺术，但至少你应该予以尊重。实际上，这是美国倡导的最重要的方面。为了建立一个公民社会，我们历经数百年才认识到，尊重人们的信仰和文化非常重要。有时候，我们在屡受挫折以后才吸取了教训，而我们也一直在设法解决我们本身文化中的不宽容问题，设法解决对某些人的观点和文化不尊重的问题，如何对待美洲原住民就是一个例子。在我国历史早期，政府试图消灭和摧毁他们的文化。现在我们在远眺美国国会山的华盛顿大草坪上建立了国立美洲印第安人博物馆。因此，我认为，在尊重文化，尊重少数人和多数人及多样性群体的问题上，美国已经汲取了教训。我认为这个教训也受到世界其他国家的尊重，或许可能得到世界其他国家的效仿。问：文化保护耗资巨大。有没有一种能够促使一个国家保护自身文化的经济鼓励措施？答：当我们谈到文化时，我们主要考虑的是文化的两个方面。一方面是文化的原创性，即不断创新的当代文化。另一方面是文化的传统性，如建筑物、手工艺品、以及我们博物馆中那些能唤起我们的历史记忆的陈列品。保护手工艺品和建筑物耗资巨大，但这是对自身文化资源的投资。那些建筑物、纪念馆和手工艺品赋予人们一种自我特征的延续感。历史既能合理地诠释现实，又能赋予现实以实际意义。我们是如何步入目前阶段的？为了使人生充满意义，我们的祖先做了些什么？有哪些是值得借鉴的？当我们谈到保护建筑遗址、保护博物馆手工艺品以及历史上的艺术杰作时，我们发现这些物品极具吸引力。它们吸引着游客；它们也是当代文化经济的组成部分，深受本国公民的欢迎。它们还对国家的教育工作十分重要。我不禁想起我们华盛顿吸引着数百万中小学生前来参观的博物馆，在这里他们不仅可以了解过去，还可以知晓未来。我们必须将参与文化传统视为一种投资。这是公民们对身为一国人民的使命感和自豪感的投资。问：技术是否改变了我们从事文化保护的方式？答：传统文化的保护与技术之间的关系始终是耐人寻味的。19世纪70年代后期，托马斯爱迪生发明了第一台留声机。当时留声机立即就有哪些用途呢？史密森尼学会的人类学家们前往全美及加拿大各地的不同印第安人部落和社区，去录制民歌和传说故事。当时的这种新技术被视为保护这段历史和传统的工具，对人们了解历史传统具有重要意义。同样，当录像和电影等其他技术问世后，它们激发我们去开创被视为前卫或技术尖端的