Plight at the museums

Comprehensive institutions

Some universities have set good examples.

The Sichuan University Museum in Chengdu, the capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province, can be dated back to 1914, when Daniel Sheets Dye, an American professor working at the university, launched the institution. The museum's new building was opened in 2005 and designed to house a wide range of exhibits on archaeology, ethnology, fine arts, among other fields. More than 2,000 exhibits are regularly on display.

It is, so far, the only comprehensive museum in a Chinese university which is open to the public all the year around, according to Zhang Ping, a director in charge of scientific research in the museum.

"Lectures for the public are frequently hosted at the venue and more academic research can be done using this platform," Zhang says. "That's the way to build our connection with local communities."

More universities sharing similarly comprehensive collections are on the way to fulfilling their social responsibility.

In Nanjing University, Shi Mei, director of Nanjing University Museum, eagerly awaits the opening of a new museum building in 2022. The new site will enable the display of the university's large hoard of cultural relics, ancient books, specimens from the natural sciences, and more.

As one of the best universities in East China, Nanjing University has had a museum since 2015, but has already outgrown the current building, which cannot support big exhibitions.

When a set of precious ancient stone rubbings were displayed in 2017, Shi could only permit the exhibition to run for 10 days for safety reasons.

"People have a huge interest in such rarely-seen treasures," she observes. "But we're not capable of receiving so many people."

The university also has among its collection Tiao'er Tu ("a leisure official picks his ear"), a famous 10th-century scroll painting. However, this national treasure has not been exhibited since 1949 and, as such, few students at the university are aware of its existence.

When a museum in Shanghai wanted to borrow it for a temporary exhibition, Shi refused, fearing it would not be returned because of the better exhibition and storage conditions there.

"Development of the museums will save many collections in universities from the same fate of being covered in dust and getting forgotten," Shi says.