自拍神器在许多博物馆遭禁

Museum Rules: Talk Softly, and Carry No Selfie Stick

自拍神器在许多博物馆遭禁

In a famous lab trial, a chimp named Sultan put two interlocking sticks together and pulled down an elusive prize, a bunch of bananas hanging just out of arm’s reach.

在一项著名的实验室试验中，一个名叫苏丹(Sultan)的黑猩猩把两根连锁棍连到一起，拉下了一个不易得到的奖品——它的手够不到的一串香蕉。

Nearly a century later, eager tourists have conducted their own version of the experiment. Equipped with the camera extender known as a selfie stick, occasionally referred to as “the wand of narcissism,” they can now reach for flattering CinemaScope selfies wherever they go.

将近一个世纪后，热切的游客们也在进行这样的实验。在配备了被称为自拍杆(又称“自恋神器”)的相机延长器之后，现在不管走到哪儿，他们都能拍到惹人喜爱的宽屏自拍照。

Art museums have watched this development nervously, fearing damage to their collections or to visitors, as users swing their sticks with abandon. Now they are taking action. One by one, museums across the United States have been imposing bans on using selfie sticks for photographs inside galleries (adding them to existing rules on umbrellas, backpacks, tripods and monopods), yet another example of how controlling overcrowding has become part of the museum mission.

艺术博物馆紧张地关注这一发展，担心用户们肆意挥舞自拍棒时会对藏品或其他游客造成伤害。现在他们采取了行动。美国的博物馆一个接一个发布禁令，禁止在博物馆内使用自拍杆(之前已遭禁止的物品包括伞、背包、三脚架和单脚架)，这再次表明，控制过度拥挤已经成为博物馆的任务之一。

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington prohibited the sticks this month, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston plans to impose a ban. In New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has been studying the matter for some time, has just decided that it, too, will forbid selfie sticks. (New signs will be posted soon.)

本月，华盛顿的赫什霍恩博物馆(Hirshhorn Museum)和雕塑公园(Sculpture Garden)禁止使用自拍杆，休斯顿的美术馆(Museum of Fine Arts)也计划发布禁令。在纽约的大都会艺术博物馆已研究这个问题一段时间了，刚做出决定将禁止使用自拍杆(很快将设立新的提示标牌)。

“From now on, you will be asked quietly to put it away,” said Sree Sreenivasan, the chief digital officer at the Met. “It’s one thing to take a picture at arm’s length, but when it is three times arm’s length, you are invading someone else’s personal space.”

“从现在起，我们将委婉地请求你把它收起来，”大都会艺术博物馆的首席数据官斯里·斯里尼瓦桑(Sree Sreenivasan)说，“伸出胳膊拍照没问题，但是如果你伸出的东西是胳膊的三倍，那么你就是在侵犯他人的私人空间。”

The personal space of other visitors is just one problem. The artwork is another. “We do not want to have to put all the art under glass,” said Deborah Ziska, the chief of public information at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which has been quietly enforcing a ban on selfie sticks but is in the process of adding it formally to its printed guidelines for visitors.

其他游客的私人空间只是其中一个问题。艺术品则是另一个问题。“我们不想把所有艺术品都放进玻璃罩，”华盛顿国家艺术馆的首席公共信息官德博拉·齐什卡(Deborah Ziska)说。该博物馆已悄悄执行对自拍杆的禁令，正在把它正式加到纸质游客指南上。

Last but not least is the threat to the camera operator, intent on capturing the perfect shot and oblivious to the surroundings. “If people are not paying attention in the Temple of Dendur, they can end up in the water with the crocodile sculpture,” Mr. Sreenivasan said. “We have so many balconies you could fall from, and stairs you can trip on.”

最后一个问题也同样重要， 自拍杆对相机使用者同样有威胁——他们专注于捕捉完美镜头，往往会忽视周围环境。“在丹铎神庙，人们如果不留神，可能会掉进水里，和鳄鱼雕塑为伍，”斯里尼瓦桑说，“如果不小心，你可能会从我们这里的很多露台上掉下去，或者绊到台阶。”

At the Met on Thursday, Jasmine Adaos, a selfie-stick user from La Serena, Chile, expressed dismay. “It’s just another product,” she said. “When you have a regular camera, it’s the same thing. I don’t see the problem if you’re careful.” But Hai Lin, a student from Shandong, China, conceded that the museum might have a point. “You can hit people when they’re passing by,” she said.

自拍杆使用者贾丝明·亚当(Jasmine Adaos)来自智利拉塞雷纳，周四，她在参观大都会博物馆时说，“它只是一个产品，跟你用普通相机没有区别。我觉得只要小心一点就不会有问题。”但是来自中国山东的学生林海(音译)承认，博物馆的做法可能也有道理。“有人经过时，你可能会碰到别人，”她说。

Generally, the taking of selfies is not merely tolerated, it is encouraged. Art museums long ago concluded that selfies help visitors bond to art and create free advertising for the museum. When Katy Perry dropped by the Art Institute of Chicago’s Magritte exhibition last summer and detoured to take a selfie in front of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” the museum reaped a publicity windfall after the image was posted on Pinterest.

一般来说，自拍不仅受到容忍，而且受到鼓励。艺术博物馆很久以前就发现，自拍能增进游客与艺术的感情，为博物馆免费做宣传。去年夏天，凯蒂·佩里 (Katy Perry)顺道去参观芝加哥艺术学院的马格里特(Magritte)展，然后绕道在格兰特·伍德(Grant Wood)的《美国哥特式》(American Gothic)前拍了张自拍照，把它发布到了Pinterest上，这家博物馆因此意外地得到了宣传。

The Whitney Museum of American Art, at its Jeff Koons retrospective last year, passed out cards proclaiming, in capital letters, “Koons Is Great for Selfies!“ and urged visitors to post their work on Instagram.

去年惠特尼美国艺术博物馆在自己的杰夫·昆斯(Jeff Koons)回顾展上分发卡片，上面用大写字母写道：“昆斯的作品很适合自拍!”鼓励游客把自拍照发到Instagram上。

So, selfies good; sticks bad. But bad in theory, not fact, since many museum officials in the United States acknowledge that they have experienced few actual instances of selfie-stick use, or, in some cases, none. For the Hirshhorn, and Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, which have yet to record a single sighting, the ban was a pre-emptive strike. Meanwhile, at the Tate Modern and the National Gallery in London, and the Louvre in Paris — two cities where Asian tourists, in particular, have made the selfie stick a highly visible part of the urban landscape — selfie sticks are still permitted.

所以说，自拍很好，但是自拍杆不好。但它只是理论上不好，而非产生了现实的恶劣影响，因为美国很多博物馆的管理人员承认，他们很少见到(有的甚至从未见过)用自拍杆的人。对赫什霍恩博物馆和芝加哥的当代艺术博物馆来说(这两处从未出现过使用自拍杆的情况)，这项禁令是预防性的。与此同时，伦敦的泰特现代美术馆(Tate Modern)和国家美术馆(National Gallery)以及巴黎的卢浮宫仍允许使用自拍杆。在伦敦和巴黎，经常可以看见亚洲游客在使用自拍杆。

Noah Rasheta, whose photographic accessories company, iStabilizer, has produced 150,000 selfie sticks since 2011, said, “It’s not the product that’s at fault, it’s the behavior of the people using it.” If the museums think of the selfie as a free form of advertising, he argued, they should encourage visitors to take a better picture.

诺亚·拉舍塔(Noah Rasheta)的照相配件公司iStabilizer从2011年起已生产了15万根自拍杆。他说，“错的不是这种产品，而是使用者的行为。”他认为，如果博物馆认为自拍是一种免费广告，他们应该鼓励游客拍出更好的照片。

Museums have always struggled with an intrinsic conflict: how to expose their collections to the maximum number of visitors while protecting their priceless treasures. Their efforts are generally encoded in a set of guidelines, some universal — do not touch the art, do not smoke, do not bring food, do not talk on a cellphone — and some quite particular.

博物馆一直在一种固有矛盾中挣扎：如何在保护那些无价之宝的同时，把藏品尽可能展示给更多的观众。他们的努力通常体现在参观指南中，有些要求很普遍——不要触摸艺术品，不要抽烟，不要带食品，不要打手机——有些很特别。