Initiative boosts efforts to preserve museum collections

China's National Cultural Heritage Administration recently issued a notice and held a video teleconference to promote a special initiative on the security management of cultural relics in State-owned museums nationwide, launching a comprehensive inventory of these museums' collections and efforts to identify, address, and rectify safety hazards.

This initiative is a fundamental, foundational, and far-reaching priority in the field of cultural heritage.

Through yearlong efforts, the administration will organize State-owned museums nationwide to check their inventories, comprehensively verify the consistency between records and actual holdings, and promote the establishment of a standardized, normalized mechanism for museum collection inventory.

Simultaneously, the pilot work for the second national census on movable cultural relics will be launched.

Intensive efforts will also be made to identify and rectify safety hazards in museum collections, further strengthen preventive measures, enhance security management and emergency response capabilities, and ensure the safety of cultural relics.

The administration has requested that all museums establish and practice an accurate perspective on performance evaluation, taking this special initiative as an opportunity to improve management systems, build a solid line of defense for collection safety through tangible results, and promote the overall enhancement of security management for their collections.

The national museum work conference held in December last year emphasized that collection management must always be given top priority, with systematic efforts in acquisition, preservation, research, and interpretation. Relevant work arrangements and key tasks will be incorporated into the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) for cultural heritage endeavors.

Subsequently, the administration will conduct a thorough review and address museum collection management issues highlighted by relevant public concerns. It will oversee and provide guidance to cultural heritage administrative departments at all levels, as well as museums, in strengthening the foundational aspects of collection management by standardizing procedures for classification, registration, record-keeping, and the handling of collections in and out of storage.

Moreover, stringent protocols will be enforced for the acceptance and accession of donated collections, thereby ensuring that responsibilities for their preservation and utilization are effectively fulfilled.