The British Museum has apologised after it was accused of racism yesterday - its Twitter hashtag '#AskACurator' Q and A session published a comment about Asian names being 'confusing', which drew a lot of critical attention.
The museum was forced to publish clarification posts after Jane Portal, the London institution's 'Keeper of Asia', responded to a question sent from the Twitter account for the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney, Australia. It asked: 'How do you go about designing exhibition labels and information that are accessible to a wider range of people?'
Portal replied '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', suggesting that the museum sometimes omits Asian names and heritage from its exhibition labels.
She then added in a separate Tweet in the same thread, 'We are limited by the length of labels. Dynasties & gods have different names in various Asian languages. We want to focus on the stories.'
The comments have garnered outrage online, from people who are accusing the museum of 'white-washing' Asian history, and making comparisons to other foreign names that British people have easily learned. Others have suggested ways around the 'label limitation' problem.
The @britishmuseum account published a further clarification after the #AskACurator session was over, explaining that 'For every object in the Museum we try to make the label as clear as possible, to visitors of all origins, within a tight word limit.'
This is only the latest drama: British Museum have also been criticised for several of its of artifact exhibitions, such as the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles. Organisations have demanded that the objects be returned to their rightful native countries, to which the museum responded that objects are legally prevented from leaving its collections by the British Museum Act of 1963. It has also been under investigation from a team of Chinese investigators sent to track down lost treasures, after it was believed that some valuable artifacts missing from a Beijing palace ransacked in 1860 could be held in its archives.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.