Plight at the museums

Diverse choices

With that said, the practice of having a big institution may not be suitable for all campuses.

"A university museum doesn't necessarily have to be a comprehensive one," Xu from the CAA says. "Different schools within one college can focus on their strengths, providing the public with something unique and complementary to the public museums off campus."

In 2015, the CAA opened its Folk Crafts Museum to specifically display artifacts and artworks pertaining to traditional Chinese craftsmanship. Along with the China Design Museum, the whole complex is looking to do just that.

Perhaps, a good example is the Arthur M. Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking University.

Opened in 1993 with sponsorship from the eponymous American philanthropist, over the past quarter of a century, it has grown into one of the country's most important archaeology museums, thanks in no small part to the strong academic research of the university's archaeology department.

The museum－one of three in Peking University－attracted over 100,000 visits in 2017.

Three museums may seem small, though, considering that PKU is hailed, together with Tsinghua University, as one of the top two universities on the Chinese mainland. By comparison, the museum complex at Harvard University includes as many as 17 institutions.

One major positive is that everything has taken off in recent years, since the National Cultural Heritage Administration and Ministry of Education co-released national guidance for the development of university museums in 2011.

Tsinghua University Art Museum, which is based at the university's academy of arts and design, also opened its doors in 2016 and has offered numerous top-tier fine art and cultural relic exhibitions since.