第1段

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品之一是列奥纳多·达·芬奇的《蒙娜丽莎》。几乎每个去看原作的人都会对它有所了解，但他们接受了这样一个事实，即艺术作品在其原始形式中更有收获感。

第2段

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 paintings 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，很少有人会费心去博物馆阅读作家的真正手稿，而不是印刷品。这可能可以解释为小说之所以能演变是因为技术发展使得大量文本的印刷成为可能，而油画始终是独一无二的艺术品。此外，可以说不同媒介的阅读或“阅读”实践遵循不同的约定。对于小说，读者主要关注的是文字的含义，而不是它们在页面上的排列方式，而油画的“读者”必须同样关注图片中标记和形状的实体形式，以及它们所代表的任何意义。

第3段

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.

然而，制作非常准确的艺术品复制品一直是可能的。《蒙娜丽莎》的七个存世版本证明，在16世纪，艺术家们似乎完全满意将他们的作品复制给他们的工作室学徒作为正式的“谋生之道”。而今天，复制图片的任务变得非常简单和可靠，使用印刷技术可以精确按照原始比例制作高质量的印刷品，忠实地还原色彩价值，甚至可以复制绘画表面的凹凸纹理。

第4段

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.

但尽管隐含承认良好复制品的传播可能具有文化价值，博物馆仍继续推广原作的特殊地位。

第5段

Unfortunately, this seems to place severe limitations on the kind of experience offered to visitors.

不幸的是，这似乎对游客提供的体验产生了严重限制。

第6段

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.

一个限制与博物馆展示展品的方式有关。作为独特历史对象的仓库，艺术博物馆通常被称为“珍宝屋”。我们在观看收藏品之前就会被安保人员、服务人员、绳索和展示柜等隔离开。在许多情况下，建筑风格进一步加强了这种观念。此外，像伦敦国家美术馆这样的主要收藏，收藏了数十个作品的每个房间，其中任何一个作品的价值都可能超过普通参观者所拥有的所有作品的总和。在一个以个人财富来判断个人社会地位的社会中，很难不对自己在这样一个环境中的相对“无价值”印象深刻。

第7段

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，对宝藏中原作的“价值”考虑使观众意识到，自作品制作以来，它们已经被某些比自己更有权势的个人或机构赋予了巨大的货币价值。显然，观众对作品的想法不会改变其价值，因此当今的观众被阻止扩展最初可能遇到的那种即兴、即时、自给自足的阅读方式。

第8段

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 than we could realistically view in weeks or even months.

游客可能被如此多样的绘画、素描和雕塑在非原始环境中汇聚在一起的奇特感所震撼。这种“错位效应”由于展品数量的庞大而进一步加剧。对于一个重要的收藏，可能展出的作品比我们在几个星期甚至几个月内实际上能够观看的作品还要多。

第9段

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 viewings 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.

这尤其令人痛苦，因为时间似乎是欣赏所有艺术形式的重要因素。绘画与其他艺术形式的一个基本区别在于，绘画被欣赏时没有规定的时间。相比之下，观众在一场歌剧或戏剧中会在特定的时间内进行观赏，即演出的持续时间。类似地，小说和诗歌是按照预定的时间顺序阅读的，而图片没有明确的开始观看的地方或结束观看的地方。因此，艺术作品本身就鼓励我们以肤浅的方式来观察它们，而不欣赏其中的细节和劳动的丰富性。

第10段

Consequently, the dominant critical approach becomes that of the art historian, a specialised 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，主导的批评方法变成了艺术史学家的方法，这是一种专门的学术方法，致力于在其时间文化背景下“发现艺术的意义”。这与博物馆的功能完全一致，因为这种方法致力于寻找和保存展品的“真实”、“原始”解读。再次，这似乎阻止了那种在对经典文学作品的批评中大量存在的自发、参与式的批评，但却在大多数艺术史研究中缺失。

第11段

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 literature 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.