Museum in racism row

THE British Museum has had to apologise after the curator of its Asia department said “Asian names can be confusing” to teenagers “so we have to be careful about using too many”.

Jane Portal was taking part in an “Ask a Curator” session on Twitter when she made the comment, which was met by a torrent of criticism. Some accused the museum of a lack of diversity and even racism.

The museum said: “Jane was answering a very specific question about how we make the information on object labels accessible to a wider range of people.”