A few days ago, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the Ministry of Finance jointly formulated the “Regulations on Collection of State-owned Museums” (hereinafter referred to as the “Regulations”), established and improved the collection management system, and clearly pointed out that museums should not collect collections with illegal or unknown sources, which is related to the overall situation of cultural relics protection in China.
As a world cultural heritage country, China’s cultural relics protection task is very heavy. Although the departments of cultural relics and public security have made great efforts, the security situation of cultural relics is still grim. According to the data, in the three special crackdowns since 2017, 3,481 cultural relics crimes have been detected and more than 40,000 cultural relics have been recovered, which is equivalent to the total collection of a medium-sized local museum. In recent years, the characteristics of professionalism, collectivization and intelligence of cultural relics crimes such as cultural relics theft and excavation are more obvious and more concealed. For example, the tomb of Qian Liu, Zhejiang Province was stolen, and the tomb was not located in a remote countryside. Even if the stolen cultural relics were recovered, the overall structure of the tomb and the original state of the artifacts had changed, and the Millennium Mausoleum was no longer complete.
Based on the above situation, it is particularly important to stipulate that museums “say no” to collections with illegal or unknown sources, so as to break down and cut off the chain of cultural relics crimes and stolen goods. The scientific method of collecting and investigating will effectively evaluate the authenticity and source legitimacy of the materials to be collected, so as to avoid the inflow of stolen goods.
The innocence of the cultural relics in the collection is the moral bottom line of the museum. Drawing a red line for the collection of collections is conducive to the long-term healthy development of China’s museum industry and will help China’s cultural heritage protection cause to establish a model image in the international arena.
It is worth noting that the “Regulations” emphasizes that the workflow of collecting collections through purchase should be standardized, the procedures of expert collective appraisal should be improved, and the “one-vote veto” should be implemented for authenticity appraisal, which further tightens the “access mechanism” of collections.
In recent years, the authenticity of some museum collections has been questioned, some of which involve academic arguments, while others are “low-level mistakes” that deviate from common sense. For the former, museums need to further strengthen the training of professional ability, strengthen the construction of talent team and enhance the comprehensive research ability of cultural relics. For the latter, we should see the complex interests involved behind it. The relevant museums and their responsible persons should improve their political stance, enhance their legal awareness, strengthen their responsible attitude towards public history education and cultural heritage, and adhere to the basic moral standards of practitioners.
Moreover, the principal and basic provisions concerning the safety and authenticity of cultural relics should not be limited to state-owned museums. For other types of museums, relevant regulations should also be issued as soon as possible to improve the supervision mechanism.
It is also mentioned in the “Regulations” that the museum should draw up the overall plan, medium-and long-term plan and annual plan for collection, and carry out the collection work in a standardized and orderly manner. In recent years, under the wave of museum construction in various places, some natural history materials.The museum blindly pursues “big and comprehensive”, and some small museums should also display general history, which makes the phenomenon of “one side of a thousand museums” very prominent. Under the guidance of the “Regulations”, combined with the museum’s own characteristics, it will effectively enhance the appeal and attraction of the museum display to do a good job in thematic collection and characteristic exhibition in a planned way, innovate the display form, and tell the “great history” with “small incision”.
Fan xingsheng