Museum in race row for calling names of Asian gods ‘confusing’
THE British Museum was branded ‘racist’ and ‘imperialist’ yesterday – because a curator said Asian names could be confusing.
It apologised for the remark, only for anti-racism campaigners to accuse its critics of ‘silly and narcissistic’ political correctness.
The row was sparked during a live question and answer session on Twitter in which the curator discussed making exhibit labels accessible.
Jane Portal, keeper of the Asian department, wrote: ‘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.’
She added: ‘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.
‘E.g. the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy is known as Avalokitesvara in India, Guanyin in China, Kwanum in Korea and Kannon in Japan.’
However, within minutes of the first tweet, dozens of critical messages were posted online.
They called Mrs Portal’s comments ‘insulting’ and ‘perpetuating colonialist heritage’.
Kyle Derek Long wrote: ‘Children regularly memorise the taxonomy of dinosaurs. This is racism, pure and simple. Do better, British Museum. Stop failing humanity.’
Zaida Gangat added: ‘ You’re perpetuating your colonialist heritage by making statements like this – most antiques were forcefully taken from the rest of the globe.’ Jillian York said: ‘Confusing to whom? Your white patrons. Haven’t you stolen enough history.’
Mrs Portal, 62, studied Chinese at Cambridge and Korean at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, and has lived in Asia.
But within 90 minutes, the British Museum apologised. In a statement it said: ‘We would like to apologise for any offence caused. The curator was answer- ing 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.’
Last night Trevor Phillips, the former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: ‘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 behaving like silly, narcissistic, teenagers.’
Dr Tony Sewell, a leading black academic, education campaigner and CEO of Generating Genius, an education charity working with disadvantaged youths, said criticism of the museum was an overreaction.
‘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,’ he said. ‘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 the museum could consider having audio labels to help educate visitors but it ‘shouldn’t do that on the basis of a lobby group’.
Some online users rallied behind the museum, questioning if it was really appropriate to say sorry. Phil Pearson tweeted: ‘Is an apology really necessary? They were saying they edit due to limited space. Seems reasonable to me.’
‘Her critics are narcissistic’