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| 令人會心一笑的公共藝術。 |
今天的品嘗者／李亦凡
德國科隆最出名的是科隆大教堂。一出科隆火車站就看到它矗立在旁，雄偉壯觀，若要將其完整盡收到相機畫面中可不是一件容易事。教堂內，彩色玻璃裝飾的窗戶，述說著過去的歷史，陽光照入，也把教堂點綴如有神蹟之感。
步出科隆教堂，往河岸方向有座通往萊因河對岸的鐵路人行橋，火車經過這座橋即到科隆火車站，在鐵軌旁亦有提供行人與腳踏車通過的步道。走在橋上可以欣賞河岸風景，回頭更可看見科隆大教堂另一面的景致，且還有火車從旁經過的有趣感受。
一上橋便可看到遠方有個狀似要掉落水裡的人站在橋外，再仔細一看，那是德國人幽默的裝置藝術，在橋接近河中央處做了個機器人，看似要落水的可愛模樣，偶爾路過的鴿群也會前來湊熱鬧，停在它身邊，讓人經過時不自覺會心一笑。
走在鐵路旁還可發現德國人浪漫的一面，許多情侶夫妻，在圍欄上掛上象徵永不分離的愛情鎖，兩兩一組，分別寫上彼此的名字，緊緊地鎖在一起。各式各樣的鎖頭，也看出情侶們想要與眾不同的心情。
誰說德國人只有嚴肅的一面，走在科隆用心仔細觀察每個角落，你會發覺德國人的幽默與浪漫。
巴黎有卢浮宫，伦敦有大英博物馆，柏林则有个博物馆岛。在柏林市中心，穿过柏林的斯普雷河在那里分流形成了一个小岛，沿岛的北岸有五家博物馆，因此这里又被称为博物馆岛。
博物馆的建筑气势辉煌，夺人眼目，各有特色。有一座博物馆是仿古希腊庙宇的风格，新巴罗克风格和古典主义风格在这里交相辉映。
近来，五座博物馆中的其中一座格外受到关注，这就是"新博物馆"。其实它并不新，而是建于19世纪中叶。"新博物馆"在第二次世界大战期间被严重毁坏。战后，柏林被战胜国分割，博物馆岛在苏联管辖区，并逐渐演变成废墟。
直到1986年，"新博物馆"的挖掘和抢救整理工作才开始。1993年为修复"新博物馆"举行了名为"博物馆岛总体规划"的建筑设计竞赛。当时的柏 林国家博物馆主任彼得－克劳斯.舒斯特介绍说："当时，国家博物馆的任务是要用十年的时间完成修缮工作，到2010年时让五座博物馆建筑重新焕发昔日的风 采。这个博物馆建筑群是世界上独一无二的，因此也被联合国教科文组织列入世界遗产名单。"
在英国著名建筑师大卫.齐珀费尔德的领导下，"新博物馆"的浩大修复工程从2003年开始进行。齐珀费尔德力争保持建筑的原样，但同时也刻意将战争 破坏的痕迹展现出来。由于战争破坏严重，这对齐珀费尔德来说是一个巨大的挑战："博物馆被损坏的程度非常大。虽然有的还残存建筑部分还保存下来很多东西， 但是有的部分被完全摧毁。这是一种罕见的和不规则的破坏。"
今年年初，"新博物馆"从长达几十年的沉睡中苏醒过来。齐珀费尔德率领他的修复队伍花了六年的时间完成这一使命，然而，他的工作也不是没有受到争 议。开始时，有人递交请愿书和发起民意表决来阻止齐珀费尔德的修复计划，因为齐珀费尔德最早拿出的方案可能会影响到博物馆岛的世界文化遗产地位。经过修改 后，修复计划才受到广泛的肯定和接受。一位参观者说："建筑风格很能吸引我。我认为这是一种历史元素和现代简约风格的成功混合。光和影互动构成的灯光设计 非常有创意。"
另一位参观者说："我感到非常惊喜。新与旧、被毁坏的和新创造的东西成功地被联系在一起。"
"新博物馆"中收藏了不少古埃及的珍品和赝品。除了埃及古棺，观众还能看到一个祭品供奉房间。"新博物馆"拥有的古埃及藏品是世界上最大的和最有影响的收藏之一。它的最吸引观众的藏品无疑是古埃及纳芙蒂蒂王后的胸像。这座胸像有五千年的历史，它散发出一种神秘的历史魅力。
纳芙蒂蒂王后胸像被单独放在一个拱形展厅中展出，以间接的灯光来照明，并罩在一个四米高的玻璃罩里，凸现出它的珍贵和重要性。
萨宾娜.霍夫曼是"新博物馆"的讲解员，这位埃及学研究者向参观者解说每一件展品的特殊之处。她的讲解生动清晰，一个讲解全程大概要花一个半到两个 小时。但是，要想在仔细看完所有展品，则需要花很多时间。萨宾娜.霍夫曼说："要想看完这个博物馆，要花很长的时间，因为博物馆有四层。人们把这座博物馆 又称为百宝箱。要想认识这里的每一件宝藏，你需要在这里逗留数天甚至数星期。"
"新博物馆"还收藏有古埃及莎草纸文献馆的艺术珍品和史前和早期历史文物。这些文物展示了欧亚大陆的史前和早期文明中旧石器时代到中世纪鼎盛时期的历史发展。这里还能看到尼安德特河谷人类头骨化石、考古学家亨利希.施利曼的特洛伊文物以及一个青铜器时代的金帽子。
由于展品众多，参观者很容易就会分不清方向。不过，即使没有解说员的引导，在这座庞大的博物馆中也有不会感到茫然无助。解说员萨宾娜.霍夫曼介绍 说："这里安装了很多触摸式显示屏幕来介绍博物馆的历史。还有出色的声音讲解器，拿着它观众就可以独自一人参观的同时，也得到背景性的信息。"
想参观"新博物馆"的人，现在一定要尽早预订门票。博物馆每天只售出限量的天票，因为想参观的人太多，特别是现在新开张不久。每张门票是10欧元。如果有谁嫌门票太贵，可以利用每周四的闭馆前四小时的免费参观。十六以下的青少年和儿童可以免费参观。
作者：Chi-Viet Giang/潇阳
责编：乐然
Gates like this one at a restaurant on First Avenue in Manhattan must eventually be replaced.
New York City’s storefront gates, like its fire escapes and stoops, are there but not quite there: the unnoticed wallpaper of New York at night. They have been battered by vandals and defaced by graffiti taggers. They have secured diamonds, handmade tortellini and other valuable commodities. They have provided the clattering soundtrack of dawn and dusk, the steel canvas of struggling artists, the most compelling evidence that the city does, indeed, sleep.
Solid roll-down gates like this one on First Avenue become canvases for the spray-paint crowd.
Some gates are decorated with merchants' logos, or, like this one, bear relevant messages.
Open-weave gates, like this one, which let passers-by peer in, will still be allowed.
And now, on orders of the City Council, roll-down gates have joined the ranks of fatty foods and cigarette smoke: they have been legislated against, some right into extinction.
The Council voted on Monday to ban the kind of security gates that completely shield commercial storefront windows and doors from view — ones that resemble old-fashioned auto garage doors, with narrow horizontal slats that rise up like a steely sort of curtain — while permitting the kinds of gates common in suburban shopping malls that allow passers-by to see inside.
Along Court Street in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn, a gentrifying commercial and residential strip in what remains an Italian stronghold, the gradual ban on solid gates — there are probably tens of thousands of them — was as well-received as a property tax hike. Not a single owner or manager who was interviewed was aware of the Council’s vote.
The head-scratching dismay expressed by Pyung Lim Lee upon learning that City Hall had taken a regulatory interest in the rickety old solid gate outside C.H. Plaza Dry Cleaners, 400 Court Street, Brooklyn, N.Y., 11231, was typical.
“If the government pays, then O.K.,” said Mr. Lee, the owner of the shop, who was not surprised to learn that the government would not, after all, be covering the cost of a new gate. “They make law, law, law, and people’s life is more difficult.”
Frank Caputo took a more nuanced approach. He is the owner of Caputo’s Fine Foods, a narrow little hub of homemade mozzarella and pastas, down the street from the church where Al Capone was married long ago. Since Caputo’s was opened by his parents in 1973, the shop has had two gates, both of them the solid, no-peeking-in type. “I was afraid that someone was going to break the glass,” said Mr. Caputo, 47.
He has had the second gate — a $4,000 model with an electric motor that allows him to turn a key or press a button to raise or lower it — for about two years, and he figured that by 2026, when the ban fully kicks in, he would need to replace it, anyway. “If they would have told me I had six months to replace it, I would have been upset,” Mr. Caputo said.
Council members said the bill, which passed 45 to 0, was intended to deter vandals from spraying graffiti on flat-surface gates, to help beautify neighborhoods and to give police officers and firefighters the ability to look inside in an emergency. The ban applies to numerous businesses, including banks, barber shops, beauty salons, health clinics, dry cleaners, dental offices and retail stores.
All businesses affected have until July 1, 2026, to install security gates that allow at least 70 percent of the area they cover to be visible. Any gates installed after July 1, 2011, must comply with the new requirements.
“We took great pains in this bill to make sure we balanced quality-of-life issues and graffiti eradication with the real-life financial challenges small businesses are facing in this recession,” said the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn. “That’s why the bill has a lengthy time frame.”
The city’s many storefronts, like their proprietors, have their own bedtime rituals. In the diamond district in Manhattan, many shops do not bother with roll-down gates: employees can be seen removing the jewelry, item by item, from the window displays, bound for parts unknown.
On one block of Court Street, the window of a barber shop with no gate afforded a full view inside (the old-fashioned cash register’s empty drawer left open and the bill holders up), but the insurance office next door seemed to contain more secrets, with a solid gate, marred by graffiti.
The metal gate covering G. Esposito & Sons’ pork store offered a peek inside, but what was visible just inside the door would probably attract only the most desperate sort of burglar: a giant apron-clad, wide-eyed piggy statue.
Karen Van Every, the owner of Serimony, a card and gift shop, has a see-through gate, which she wanted so that passers-by could look inside when the store is closed. “People walk by and they see a piece of jewelry in the window and they want to come back,” she said.
Still, Ms. Van Every, like many other Court Street merchants, said she opposed the ban because of its eventual impact on businesses’ bottom line. “Every little cost associated with having a small business could put you under,” she said.
The solid gates have a forbidding quality, recalling the bad old days of 1970s-era New York, when a desire to encourage window-shopping was superseded by a concern over rampant crime and occasional looting.
In some cases, they were no deterrent. In 1973, for example, five young burglars in the Bronx broke into a clothing store with a roll-down gate by cutting a hole in the roof.
But in other cases, solid gates might have helped. During the blackout that struck the city in the summer of 1977, looters ripped off nonsolid storefront gates by hooking chains to them, attaching the chains to cars and then stepping on the gas.
But sometimes no gate could have withstood looters’ fury during the blackout. Jonathan Mahler, in his book “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City,” described the scene in Bushwick: “They were taking crowbars to steel shutters, prying them open like tennis-ball-can tops or simply jimmying them up with hydraulic jacks and then wedging garbage cans underneath to keep them open.”
The gates, like all endangered species, have their own unique history. They have kept people in as much as out: In 2004, advocates for immigrants complained that janitors were getting trapped inside locked and gated groceries until managers arrived the next morning.
In Bushwick years ago, some graffiti-tagged gates were painted over, without charge, by New Yorkers with little choice in the matter: petty criminals sentenced to perform community service.
On Court Street, many of the solid gates are marked with graffiti, but others have been used as billboards to advertise the stores they protect. Acorn Real Estate features an image of a giant acorn; R.P.T. Physical Therapy, nearby, had an artist paint its blue logo on its gate, a silhouette of a man over the phrase, “Let Us Help You Reach Your Goals.”
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Slide Show: Readers' Designs to Beautify Roll-Down Gates