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Cultural diplomacy is a phrase I have heard often during my museum career.
文化外交是一个我在自己的博物馆职业生涯中经常听到的词。
It is used to describe an undefined and high-minded range of soft political activities undertaken by the leaders of cultural institutions, alongside their everyday tasks.
它用来描述文化机构领导人在主持日常工作之余开展的那种没有定义的高层次的软性政治活动。
It is certainly neat, but it brims with false promise.
这个概念肯定优雅，但充斥着虚假承诺。
Every good museum operates on a political level, of course.
当然，每一个优秀的博物馆都在某个政治层面上运营。
Collections build bridges between the past and the future, and links are created across cultures and ages.
收藏品为过去和未来搭建桥梁，在不同文化和年代间建立联系。
But a museum is neither an embassy nor an office of state.
但博物馆既不是大使馆，也不是政府办事处。
Museum directors for the most part are trained neither as diplomats nor as conflict negotiators.
多数博物馆馆长并非外交官或冲突谈判者出身。
No war has ever started because of museums, nor has a museum ever prevented one from starting.
没有一场战争因博物馆而起，也没有一个博物馆曾经阻止战争的爆发。
This is not an argument for an apolitical arts world, however.
然而，这并非艺术界脱离政治的论据。
Today’s museums and collections must not only acquire, conserve, interpret and present objects.
如今的博物馆和收藏品不仅必须购买、保护、解读和展示物品。
Given the state of geopolitics today, they have an obligation to focus on how design, art and creativity reflect moral and ethical value systems, and to question bias and political appropriation in all its forms.
鉴于目前的地缘政治状况，它们还有责任聚焦于设计、艺术和创造性如何反映道德和伦理价值体系，并质疑所有形式的偏见和政治挟持。
Museums cannot be refuges from politics, but rather must be places where arguments for change are contextualised and given depth; they should be platforms from which alternatives can be debated.
博物馆不可能是远离政治的庇护所，而必须是把变革理由放在大背景中考虑、辩论、使其具有深度的场所；它们应该是辩论替代选择的平台。
The history of Europe in the 20th-century shows what happens when museums ignore this aspect of their role.
20世纪的欧洲历史展现出博物馆忽视这种角色时会发生什么情况。
During the last throes of the Weimar Republic in Germany, for example, the denizens of the cultural world watched silently as blind nationalism turned into National Socialism and their institutions were transformed into propaganda machines.
例如，在德国的魏玛共和国最后时期，文化界的人们沉默地目睹着盲目的民族主义演变为国家社会主义，同时他们的机构演变为宣传机器。
Today, almost a century after the rise of Hitler, neo-Nazis in Bautzen, a small town in Saxony in east Germany, have been harassing young migrants.
如今，在希特勒崛起近一个世纪后，位于德国东部萨克森地区的小镇包岑(Bautzen)的新纳粹在骚扰年轻移民。
The police response has been to place the migrants under house arrest.
警方的回应是将这些移民软禁。
Where is the opposition from the cultural sphere? Why does Monika Grütters, the culture secretary in Berlin, not raise her voice? If cultural diplomacy is to be more than an elegant platitude, this, surely, is where it steps in.
文化界的反对声音在哪里？为什么德国文化部长莫妮卡•格鲁特尔(Monika Grütters)不提高嗓音？要让文化外交超越优雅的陈词滥调，那么这肯定是它应该介入的场合。
Incidentally, one of the most beautiful Islamic collections in the world is located only 30 miles away from Bautzen, in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden.
凑巧的是，全球最美的一些伊斯兰收藏品位于距离包岑仅30英里的地方，在德累斯顿国家艺术博物馆(Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden)。
Where in France is the cultural counterargument to the assault on the core values of the French republic by the National Front? After the Brexit vote, when cultural diplomacy was also impotent, a French colleague of mine texted me to say that this means National Socialism 2.0 for France.
在法国，文化界是如何抗议国民阵线(National Front)对法兰西共和国核心价值观的攻击的？在英国脱欧公投后（文化外交对此同样无能为力），我的一位法国同事给我发信息说，这意味着法国将会出现国家社会主义2.0。
But who is saying it in public? National museums, theatres and opera houses cannot be apolitical.
但谁在公开场合这么说了？国家博物馆、戏院和歌剧院不可能与政治脱离干系。
Those who maintain that they can, expose these institutions to malign political influence.
那些坚称可以的人们，反而会让这些机构暴露于恶毒的政治影响。
As for Brexit, no one can yet say where it will lead the UK, or even if the European project will survive the shock.
至于脱欧，没有人能确定它将带领英国走向何方，甚至不知道欧洲一体化计划能不能挺过这一冲击。
But we can be fairly sure that a hard Brexit will pose a serious challenge to art and culture in the UK.
但我们可以相当确定的是，硬性的脱欧将对英国的艺术和文化构成巨大挑战。
Museums are businesses first and foremost.
博物馆首先是企业。
They are subject to currency markets and depend on the confidence of global investment, yet they lack the resilience in reserves that a multinational conglomerate might enjoy.
它们受到外汇市场的影响，依赖全球投资信心，然而，它们缺乏跨国综合企业可能具备的那种储备弹性。
Three London museums alone attracted more visitors than Venice last year, and the revenue the UK’s cultural sector delivers to the nation is immense — both financially and in other ways.
去年，单单伦敦3家博物馆吸引的游客数量就超过威尼斯，英国文化产业的收入为英国做出的贡献是巨大的，在财务和其他方面都是如此。
Most meaningful cultural programmes are based on long-term collaborations with specialists around the world.
多数有意义的文化项目基于与全球专家的长期合作。
The international loans and the blockbuster exhibitions, which people in London now take for granted, were only made possible when borders became more porous.
国际展品租借和轰动一时的展览（现在伦敦人已视其为理所当然）只能在国际交流比较宽松的情况下出现。
Creating memorable exhibitions, securing rare loans and making defining acquisitions requires meticulous, dedicated work over many years.
缔造令人难忘的展览、获得罕见的租借展品以及做出意义重大的并购，需要多年一丝不苟专心致志的工作。
The uncertainty that has followed the Brexit vote has already consigned many such projects to the slow lane.
英国脱欧公投后出现的不确定性，已让很多此类项目走入慢行道。
Imagine the impact that a visa requirement for Europe would have.
想象一下欧洲提出签证要求后会造成的影响吧。
As my time as director of the Victoria and Albert Museum draws to a close, it feels fitting that the final exhibition I have overseen is a study of the revolution and rebellion that defined the late 1960s.
在我担任英国维多利亚和阿尔伯特博物馆(Victoria and Albert Museum)馆长的任期走入尾声之际，相当合适的是，我负责的最后一次展览是对定义上世纪60年代末的革命和叛乱的研究。
The legacy of that period remains a subject of heated debate, but the exhibition is a timely reminder of the resistance that lives in culture.
那段时期的文化遗产仍然是激烈辩论的主题，但这次展览将及时提醒人们存在于文化中的反抗。
Nationalism means war, said François Mitterrand in one of his final speeches.
弗朗索瓦•密特朗(François Mitterrand)曾在他最后的一篇演讲中说道：民族主义意味着战争。
While cultural diplomacy will never prevent conflict, museum collections that have survived centuries of strife and discord contain the raw materials for all the counterarguments to nationalism one could ever need.
尽管文化外交永远无法阻止冲突，但从几个世纪的冲突和纷争中存活下来的博物馆收藏品，包含着人们驳斥民族主义所需的全部素材。
