The British Museum has been forced to apologise after being branded ‘racist’ and ‘imperialist’ because a curator said the use of Asian names on exhibition labels could be confusing.
During a live question and answer session on Twitter, Jane Portal, keeper of the Asian department at the museum, said: ‘Curators write the labels based on their specialist knowledge and they are edited by our Interpretation department.
‘We aim to be understandable by 16-year-olds. Sometimes Asian names can be confusing, so we have to be careful about using too many.’
Jane Portal (left), keeper of the Asian department at the British Museum, poses with Chinese archaeologist Janice Li at the British Museum exhibition on the Terracotta Army in 2007
Tonight, former equality tsar Trevor Phillips branded those behind the political correctness row ‘silly and narcissistic’ and accused them of time wasting.
Mr Philips, formerly head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: ‘My point here applies to the British Museum as well.
‘I genuinely cannot understand why they would feel the need to apologise to people who really, if they actually wanted to tackle racism, I could come up with 100 better targets than this in an hour.
‘Anybody who wants to get themselves into a state about this cannot for one second be taken seriously as an anti–racist campaigner. They are just behaving like silly, narcissistic, teenagers.’
Dr Tony Sewell, an education campaigner said the windfall of criticism directed at the London-based museum was an overreaction, adding: ‘If you’re protesting on a political row… this is a bit dodgy’.
Dr Sewell, a leading black academic, said: ‘To be honest there are a lot worse things going on in the world, than to make that an issue to tear the museum down, for people to get offended about.’
During a live question and answer session on Twitter, Jane Portal, keeper of the Asian department at the museum, said: ‘Sometimes Asian names can be confusing’
He added: ‘Rather than protest on dodgy political grounds, make a protest which has a specific education reasonable grounds and then the museum can take that to heart but those protests weren’t about that- they were about being politically offended.’
Dr Sewell said it could consider having audio labels to help educate visitors but added that ‘it shouldn’t do that on the basis of a lobby group, conceding to that’.
The online spat erupted during a lengthy ‘ask a curator’ Q&A where staff responded to those interested in the institution’s work.
The Asian comment was made in response to a tweet from a museum in Sydney, Australia, which read: ‘How do you go about designing exhibition labels and information that are accessible to a wider range of people?’
After the initial explanation, a further tweet from the British Museum read: ‘We are limited by the length of labels. Dynasties and gods have different names in various Asian languages. We want to focus on the stories.’
Within minutes of the first tweet, dozens of abusive messages had been posted branding the comments ‘insulting’ and ‘perpetuating colonialist heritage’
Jane Portal, an expert on Asia who was behind the Tweets in question, studied Chinese at Cambridge followed by Korean at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) – and then spent time living in the continent.
Within minutes of the first tweet, dozens of abusive messages had been posted branding the comments ‘insulting’ and ‘perpetuating colonialist heritage’.
Kyle Derek Long said: ‘Children regularly memorize the taxonomy of dinosaurs. This is racism, pure and simple. Do better, British Museum. Stop failing humanity.’
Zaida Gangat wrote: ‘You’re perpetuating your colonialist heritage by making statements like this – most antiques were forcefully taken from the rest of the globe.’
Margaret Kirk said: ‘Have you any idea how incredibly insulting that is, on so many levels?’
Jillian York wrote: ‘Jesus. Confusing to whom? Your white patrons. Haven’t you stolen enough history.’
The initial remarks about Asian names had been posted at 10.14am yesterday and by 11.48am, the British Museum (pictured) had issued a statement
But others rallied behind the institution, questioning if saying sorry had really been appropriate.
Phil Pearson tweeted: ‘Is an apology really necessary? They were saying they edit due to limited space. Seems reasonable to me.’
The initial remarks about Asian names had been posted at 10.14am today and by 11.48am, the British Museum had issued a statement.
It read: ‘We would like to apologise for any offence caused. The curator was answering a very specific question about how we make the information on object labels accessible to a wider range of people.
‘Label text for any object is necessarily limited and we try to tell the object’ s story as well as include essential information about what it is and where it is from.
‘We are not always able to reflect the complexity of different names for e.g. periods, rulers, gods in different languages and cultures on labels. This is explored in more depth through our public programme – tours, lectures, exhibitions, research projects, school sessions etc.’
This was later followed up with another post clarifying how labels were created, which read: ‘The challenge with label-writing is not about whether people are able to understand or pronounce unfamiliar names, it is a question of whether we give multiple names to the same place/person/period in one label.
‘For any object in the Museum we try to make the label as clear as possible, to visitors of all origins, within a tight word limit. More context is provided through digital content and our public programme.’