The storybook rise of Jean-Luc Martinez begins where he grew up, in a Paris suburb dominated by blocky public housing. It ends deep within the opulent palace of the Louvre museum, where he is plotting what he calls a “petite révolution.”
巴黎——关于让-卢克·马丁内斯(Jean-Luc Martinez)步步高升的故事，要从他在一个全是廉租房的巴黎郊区的成长时期开始讲起，到卢浮宫博物馆豪华宫殿的深处告终——目前他正在这里策划一场他所谓的“小型革命”。Mr. Martinez, 50, son of a postman and the Louvre’s president since April 2013, is moving quickly to make a democratic mark on the royal stronghold that has the most visitors of any museum in the world, 70 percent of them foreign tourists.
50岁的马丁内斯是一位邮递员的儿子，2013年4月当上了卢浮宫馆长，目前他正在迅速为这座皇家重地打上民主化的印记；这里是全世界吸引游客人数最多的博物馆，其中70%是外国游客。A two-year, 53.5 million euro makeover, or nearly $67 million, is underway in the vast reception area below I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid, where long lines of waiting visitors stream into a chaotic, open space that Mr. Martinez likens to a noisy airport and that leaves many people disoriented and lost.
在贝聿铭设计的玻璃金字塔下方的巨大接待区，参观者们排着长队等待进入一个乱糟糟的开阔空间，马丁内斯说，这里就像喧嚣的飞机场，很多人都辨不清方向，快要迷路了。如今，为时两年，斥资5300万欧元（或将近6700美元）的翻修就将在这里进行。
He is also revamping the museum’s basic storytelling tools: almost 40,000 banners, wall text, signs and symbols that now explain its treasures in French. The plan is to make them more readable and concise, in English and Spanish for the vast majority of visitors searching for cloakrooms or the Mona Lisa in the sprawl of a museum that dates to 1190, when it was a fortress for King Philippe II.
他还将重修博物馆的基础解说工具：将近四万个阐释卢浮宫馆藏的法语标题、墙壁说明、标牌和符号。他计划增添英语和西班牙语解说，让它们更加易读和精确，这样，在这座历史可追溯到1190年，曾为菲利普国王二世城堡的博物馆里，大量游客就可以方便地找到厕所或《蒙娜·丽莎》了。In the past, museums catered to visitors schooled in art history, with detailed information like a book and “chapters, titles, paragraphs,” Mr. Martinez said, striding in a dark suit and tie by a marble centaur and a wounded alabaster Galatian in a gallery where a 17th-century king once meted out commands. “Our museum is not a book. It’s something physical. It’s necessary to move things around to try to increase understanding of our art.”
过去，博物馆都为那些学习艺术史的参观者们提供详细的信息，就像一本书籍，有“章节、标题和段落”，马丁内斯说道。他身穿深色西装，打着领带，走过一座长廊，这里陈列着一尊大理石半人马雕像和一座残损的雪花石膏迦拉太人塑像，一位17世纪的国王曾在这里发号施令。“我们的博物馆不是一本书，而是具有实体的东西，有必要改变事物，帮助人们增进对艺术的理解。”His strategy to “think of the visitor” also reflects a museum trend toward creating narratives that are more relevant to a changing demographic. As major museums strive to become more mainstream and less elitist, most of the Louvre’s nine million visitors tend to be newcomers and art novices and it is searching for ways to make their experiences more meaningful.
他的战略是“为参观者着想”，这也反应了博物馆界改变解说方式、适应人口构成变化的趋势。目前大型博物馆都在力求变得更加主流，去精英化，参观卢浮宫的900万名观众也大都是新来者和艺术初学者，博物馆在寻找方式，让他们的参观体验更有意义。“For nearly everybody, museums are scary spaces,” said James M. Bradburne, director of the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, who has lectured widely on how museums can engage audiences more effectively. “It’s like going into the city for the first time. There aren’t signs at every point. It is very true that at the Louvre — and every museum — we underinform visitors.”
“对于几乎所有人来说，博物馆都是令人生畏的地方，”佛罗伦萨斯特罗齐宫的主管詹姆斯·M·布拉德伯尼(James M. Bradburne)说，他曾做过大量讲座，讲述博物馆如何更有效率地吸引观众。“这就像初次来到一个城市，到处都没有标志牌一样。确实，在卢浮宫——以及所有博物馆——我们都没有向参观者提供足够信息。”The idea is to help newcomers to crack the code, with clear information to interpret a vast trove that includes the Venus de Milo, “Winged Victory of Samothrace” and the colossal statue of Ramesses II. Mr. Martinez is also reducing temporary exhibitions to make way for an educational space for Louvre artworks grouped around revolving themes such as mythology and the origins of civilization.
马丁内斯的想法就是帮助新来者破解密码，向他们提供清晰的信息，去阐释博物馆的众多宝藏，诸如米洛岛的维纳斯、“有翅膀的萨摩丝雷斯胜利女神”和拉美西斯二世的巨大塑像。马丁内斯还减少了临时展览，腾出地方创立一个教育空间，以神话学和文明起源等等为主题，展示卢浮宫的艺术藏品。Mr. Martinez, a descendant of Spanish immigrants who came five generations earlier from Almería, in southern Andalusia, grew up in Rosny-sous-Bois, a working-class suburb east of Paris. He said he reflects the demographic evolution. His own first visit to the Louvre was a history class trip at the age of 11. When he came home, he said, he told nothing to his parents, who had never taken him to a museum.
马丁内斯是西班牙移民的后裔，五代以前的先祖从南安达卢西亚的阿尔梅里亚移居法国。他在巴黎东部的工薪阶层郊区罗尼苏布瓦长大，他说自己身上也反映了人口构成的变迁。他第一次访问卢浮宫是在11岁那年学校历史课组织的旅行中，但回到家里，他却没有对父母说起这件事，父母从未带他参观过博物馆。“I lived in a suburb that was very modern, and everything was new,” he recalled. “And when I arrived here, everything was ancient. Imagine for a child, to see five centuries of art, some as old as two or three millenniums. In this space, I felt the depth of human history.”
“我住在一个非常现代的郊区，一切都是新的，”他回忆，“来到卢浮宫，一切又都那么古老。试想一个孩子，一下子目睹了五个世纪的艺术，有些东西拥有两三千年的历史。在这里，我感受到人类历史的深度。”To this day, his 82-year-old father has never visited the Louvre, where his son has worked since 1997 as a curator and the director of the museum’s Greek, Etruscan and Roman department before becoming president last year.
马丁内斯的父亲如今已经82岁，他从未参观过卢浮宫。而马丁内斯自1997年便在卢浮宫的希腊、伊特鲁里亚与罗马部担任策展人和负责人，去年当上了馆长。It is a far different profile from his patrician predecessor, Henri Loyrette, a lawyer’s son who socialized with wealthy art patrons like the French luxury tycoon François Pinault and presided over the museum’s expansion to a satellite Louvre-Lens in northern France and the Abu Dhabi Louvre scheduled to open late next year.
这和他的前任昂利·卢瓦雷泰(Henri Loyrette)的贵族形象非常不同。卢瓦雷泰是律师的儿子，热衷结交富有的艺术界赞助人，比如法国奢侈品大亨弗朗索瓦·皮诺(François Pinault)。他还主持了博物馆的扩建，在法国北部兴建了卢浮宫新馆(Louvre-Lens)，阿布扎比卢浮宫也将在明年年底开放。