NARRATOR:Listen to part of a lecture in an art history class.

旁白：听一段艺术史课的讲座。

MALE PROFESSOR:OK, so we’ve all heard of the Louvre, right? Maybe the most famous art museum in Paris, France?

男教授：好的，所以我们都听说过卢浮宫，对吧？也许是法国巴黎最著名的艺术博物馆。

In 1793 the Louvre was the first museum to open its doors to the public.

1793年，卢浮宫成为第一个向公众开放的博物馆。

Up till then, there were lots of private museums…private collections in the homes of Europe’s royalty and nobility…but only a select few were invited to see those works of art.

在此之前，有很多私人博物馆，欧洲皇室和贵族的私人收藏，但只有少数人被邀请参观这些艺术品。

The idea of a public museum was, in essence, a new one.

公共博物馆的想法本质上是一个新的想法。

Now, when the Louvre opened as a public museum, it was free to all artists every day of the week.

当卢浮宫作为公共博物馆开放时，一周中的每一天都对所有艺术家免费开放。

But to those who were not artists—y’know, the rest of the general public?

但是对于那些不是艺术家的人来说，你懂的，其他普通大众。

Well, they were only allowed to visit the museum on certain days.

他们只被允许在某些日子参观博物馆。

And that’s because the public museum was first seen as a teaching institution—a place where past artistic achievements would be available to current artists to learn from.

那是因为公共博物馆最初被视为一个教学机构。在那里，以前的艺术成就可供当代艺术家学习。

OK, so you see the first step was taken—from museums that were just private institutions owned by royalty…to the Louvre, a museum open to the public—with some restrictions.

好的，你看，第一步已经迈出了，从只是皇室拥有的私人机构的博物馆到卢浮宫，一个对公众开放但有一些限制的博物馆。

But then there was another shift…and that was brought about by a French painter named Alexandre Lenoir.

但随后发生了另一个转变，这是由一位名叫亚历山大·勒努瓦的法国画家带来的。

Lenoir was a young and enthusiastic artist who’d been assigned to be the supervisor of a storehouse for artworks in 1791.

勒努瓦是一位年轻而热情的艺术家，他在 1791 年被指派担任艺术品仓库的主管。

Y’see, the French Revolution was taking place at that time, and many national monuments and other works of art were getting damaged or destroyed.

你看，当时正在发生法国大革命，许多国家纪念碑和其它艺术品遭到破坏或毁坏。

Consequently, a couple of large buildings in Paris were dedicated as storehouses for rescued artworks.

因此，巴黎的几座大型建筑被专门用于获救艺术品的仓库。

Five years later, in 1796, Lenoir did something unique with the art in his storehouse—something never done before: he classified and displayed the paintings and statues by period and style.

五年后的 1796 年，勒努瓦用艺术和他的仓库做了一些独特且前所未有的事情：他按时期和风格对绘画和雕像进行分类和展示。

So people began to notice—and admire—what Lenoir was doing.

于是人们开始注意到并钦佩勒努瓦的所作所为。

And soon, he transformed his storehouse into what would become the National Museum of French Monuments, which would later become a branch of the very Louvre that started this whole discussion.

很快，他将仓库改造成法国古迹国家博物馆，后来成为引发整个讨论的卢浮宫的一个分支。

And, uh, what’s even more notable is that, Lenoir’s system of classification and display—it became a model for other public art museums…with each room in the museum representing a different century or period of art.

而更值得一提的是，勒努瓦的分类陈列体系，成为其它公共美术馆的典范，馆内的每个房间都代表着不同的世纪或时期的艺术。

Lenoir’s belief that a museum should be concerned with public instruction and offer education according to historical periods—this concept seems obvious now, but it was groundbreaking back then.

勒努瓦认为博物馆应该关注公共教育，并根据历史时期提供教育——这个概念现在看起来很明显，但在当时却是开创性的。

Interestingly, though, not everyone was, uhh…impressed with Lenoir…or with museums in general, for that matter.

然而，有趣的是，并不是每个人都对勒努瓦或一般的博物馆印象深刻。

There were people—including some artists and historians—who were as much against museums as Lenoir was for them.

有些人，包括一些艺术家和历史学家，他们反对博物馆就像勒努瓦反对他们一样。

In fact, some argued that museums would pretty much bring an end to art.

事实上，有些人认为博物馆几乎会终结艺术。

They contended that works of art removed from their original context were…incomplete—that artworks ought to remain in the places…the mountains, towns, uhh…in the locations where they were originally created and viewed.

他们争辩说，脱离其原始背景的艺术作品是不完整的，艺术品应该留在山区、城镇，那些最初创作和观看的地方。

Take a painting created in an Italian seaside village, for example.

以在意大利海滨村庄创作的一幅画作为例。

Could that painting maintain its same identity once it was moved to a museum in France?

那幅画一旦被转移到法国的博物馆，还能保持一样吗？

Nowadays, most of us know and appreciate the fact that we can go to a museum and see many works of art from different time periods, artists, and countries.

如今，我们大多数人都知道并欣赏这样一个事实，也就是我们可以去博物馆，看到来自不同时期、艺术家和国家的许多艺术作品。

The fact that anyone can go into one place and see works of distant cultures, enjoy their beauty, and even find inspiration in them benefits us all.

任何人都可以进入一个地方，欣赏遥远文化的作品，欣赏它们的美丽，甚至从中找到灵感，这对我们所有人都有好处。

The Louvre clearly embraces this concept.

卢浮宫显然接受了这一概念。

But there are still some skeptics, people today who are just as skeptical of art museums as the critics were back in Lenoir’s day…and for all the same reasons.

但仍有一些怀疑论者，就是一些和勒努瓦时代的批评家们对博物馆态度一样的人。