Cultural Heritage Technology and Conservation Research
The Cultural Heritage and Technology Institute under the Research Institute of the National Museum of China (NMC) is devoted to the preventive conservation of cultural heritage. As part of the conservation of cultural heritage, preventive conservation refers to all protective measures adopted for cultural heritage conservation, in addition to those for the conservation and restoration of the cultural property itself. The 1930 Rome Conference on works of art was a milestone as it was the occasion where preventive conservation was first known to the world. Chinese museums started relatively late in the research and development of technologies for the conservation of cultural heritage, and it was not until the 1960s that China saw its first scientific conservation laboratories established under the National Museum of Chinese History, Shanghai Museum, and Gansu Provincial Museum. The NMC put in place its “museum ambient temperature and humidity wireless-monitoring system” in 2011, and formulated the “Management Rules for the Ambient Monitoring of Cultural Heritage (Interim)” in 2014 to arrange for the monitoring of environments within collections storerooms, exhibition halls and showcases, in its effort to make ambient monitoring and control science- and rules-based on the principle of systems management. In 2017, the NMC completed the research project “Preventive Conservation of Museum Artifacts of Metal”, as commissioned by the National Cultural Heritage Administration, which successfully passed the expert review. It also upgraded its ambient monitoring system.
Full-time researcher: Pan Lu, Director and Research Curator