How Britain can provide cultural aid to Africa
In the Great Court of the British Museum flowers are growing out of the barrels of guns. In rusting branches metal fledglings are being fed by their metallic mother. In the shade below saunters a turtle made from the magazines of AK-47s.
The Tree of Life is a sculpture constructed out of guns (almost all European) decommissioned after the Mozambique Civil war. For every gun handed in, a useful tool a hoe, a sewing machine was given in return. But it was not enough for the weapons to be beyond use: they had to be shown to be so, beaten not into ploughshares but into public works of art. The Tree of Life speaks clearly of what has been achieved in Mozambique, obliquely but just as powerfully of what still eludes Northern Ireland.
It is now the centrepiece of the British Museum's Africa '05, a programme that aims to change the way we think of Africa and therefore of ourselves. Europe will not be able to act differently in Africa until it can think differently. And museums can do as much as any institution to make that a reality.
The Tree of Life highlights the role that art can play in the shaping of civil society. Objects embody histories and fears, tensions and hopes far more powerfully than any political words, not least because objects can carry so many more layers of meaning. If the components of Tree of Life are weapons of European warfare, its form combines the Judaeo-Christian tree as bearer of knowledge of good and evil, with the African tradition of the tree beneath which conflicts are resolved. But it is also about worldwide complicity in Mozambique's civil war, the consequences of the arms trade, or, if we choose, about conflict resolution or gun crime in the UK. If you want to show the complexity of reality, use things not words. If, for example, you want to demonstrate how different parts of your country interconnect or how your culture relates to those around it, put the right group of objects together and you reach a wider public than any other tactic will allow. Crudely put, if you want to build a secure and confident state, build a museum. It was true in London in 1753, when parliament created the first institution to be called British the British Museum to embody the new and uncertain nation's view of itself and the world, after our civil war of 1745. It is true today in Africa. Throughout the continent, museums are being re-shaped as countries re-define themselves to encompass their pasts and their post-colonial inheritance, and to re-assess their place in the world. European museums have a crucial role to play in the process.
In Ethiopia, for example, like Mozambique recovering from prolonged civil war, the government is eager to foster reconciliation. It is therefore setting up a museum to show the connections between the various communities that make up the population. It has asked the British Museum to provide advice and ethnographic expertise. In Nairobi next year, an exhibition will be mounted by a Kenyan curator using the collection of the British Museum to tell a story of crucial importance to Kenya: how the country has been shaped by the cultures of the rest of east Africa and the Indian Ocean what part Ethiopia and the Arabic world have played in the making of modern Kenya. It is the first time that any European collection has been used in this way in Africa, to present to Africans stories told by Africans. It points the way forward. Most African countries have very good collections of their own artefacts but little from their neighbours or the wider world. Only the encyclopaedic collections of Europe and America can provide that wider context, the evidence of links and influences that shape and explain why a country is the way it is. The collections of the British Museum are beginning to play this role in Malaysia and China. The civic purpose of our museums can be realised in other countries, not just our own.
This would be a new notion of cultural diplomacy: using the incomparable collections and expertise of the UK not to promote our own achievements but to enable others to examine theirs in a wider international context. It could be a potent instrument for generating understanding. It should surely be part of what the UK offers as it engages with the rest of the world. This is one obvious way to advance global citizenship. The British government has already done a great deal this year to transform thinking about what collaboration with Africa can mean. Using a wider cultural diplomacy it could do the same worldwide.
The writer is director of the British Museum 大英博物馆“文化援非”
在大英博物馆（ British Museum ）的中庭（ Great Court ），一支支枪管化为一朵朵鲜花。生锈的枝干上，金属母鸟正给羽翼未丰的金属幼雏喂食。一只用 AK-47 步枪弹仓做成的海龟在树下阴影中漫步。
“生命之树”是一个用莫桑比克内战后上缴的枪支（几乎都是欧洲货）雕塑而成的作品。每上缴一支枪，人们可以换取一件有用的工具――锄头或缝纫机。但是，仅将武器停用并不够，还要将这行动表现出来：并非将武器打造成耕犁，而是变成公众的艺术品。“生命之树”清楚地说明了莫桑比克所取得的成就，同时也委婉而有力地反映出北爱尔兰一直未能达到的目标。
现在它是大英博物馆“非洲 2005 ”项目的核心展品。该项目旨在改变我们对非洲乃至自身的看法。除非改变思维，否则欧洲无法对非洲采取不同的做法。而博物馆可以同其它机构一样发挥作用，使之变为现实。
“生命之树”强调了艺术在建立公民社会中的作用。实物能够比任何政治语言都更强有力地体现历史与恐惧、紧张与希望，主要是因为实物可承载更多层次的意涵。如果“生命之树”是由用于欧洲战争的武器所组成，那么其外在形态则具有双重含义：犹太 - 基督教所赋予树木分辨善恶的能力，以及非洲在此树之下化干戈为玉帛的传统。但是，它同样也指出了世人在莫桑比克内战中推波助澜的责任，以及军火生意的恶果，或者，若让我们选择的话，它还代表着冲突的化解或英国的枪械犯罪。
如果你希望表现现实的复杂性，就要用事物而非语言。例如，你想说明你的国家不同组成部分之间的相互联系，或你的文化与周围事物多么紧密相连的话，则可把合适的物体放在一起，这样你所影响的公众要比任何手段所能达到的更多。说白了，如果你想建构一个安全而自信的国家，就应该建一个博物馆。事实上，早在 1753 年的伦敦，当议会创办了第一个被称作英国人的机构――大英博物馆时，它体现了在 1745 年内战后，一个不稳定的新国家对自身乃至整个世界的观点。今天的非洲也是如此。在整个非洲大陆，当各国重新自我定位，以便融合过去与后殖民时期的遗产，并重新评估在世界所处的地位时，博物馆正得到重新修缮。
例如，与莫桑比克从长期内战中恢复元气的情形一样，埃塞俄比亚政府也期望促进和解。为此，该国建起一座博物馆，以显示构成全国人口的各社区之间的联系。它要求大英博物馆提供建议和人种学的专家意见。明年，一位肯尼亚的博物馆馆长将在内罗毕推出一项展览，并利用大英博物馆的馆藏讲述一个对肯尼亚来说至关重要的故事：该国如何在东非其它国家和印度洋文化的影响下形成，以及埃塞俄比亚和阿拉伯世界在现代肯尼亚的形成中又起到了什么作用。这是欧洲收藏品首次以这种方式在非洲使用，即表现由非洲人讲述的非洲故事。这种做法指出了今后的方向。大多数非洲国家都拥有自己工艺品的丰富收藏，但是少有邻国乃至世界的藏品。只有欧洲和美国包罗万象的收藏品才能提供更广博的内容，能够以各种联系和影响迹象去证明、解释一个国家的现状。大英博物馆的馆藏已开始在马来西亚和中国发生这种作用。我们博物馆面向公众的目的不仅在本国、也能在它国实现。
这将成为文化外交的新概念：利用英国无与伦比的收藏和专业知识去帮助别人在一个更广阔的国际背景下检视其成就，而非宣扬我们自己的成就。它可以成为促进了解的有效手段。它确实应成为与世界其它国家交往时，英国提供帮助的一部分。这是一个推进全球公民权利的显而易见的方式。对于同非洲进行什么样的合作才有成效方面，英国政府今年在改变思维方式上已做了很多。利用更广泛的文化外交，可谓放诸四海皆准。
作者为大英博物馆馆长
