The Control Yuan on Thursday approved a raft of corrective measures against the National Palace Museum after it was found to have been negligent in its safekeeping of artifacts, as well as its managerial and supervisory duties.
Three Control Yuan members initiated an investigation into the museum, which has been criticized for incidents in which artifacts were broken and high-resolution images of pieces from its collection have been sold online.
The case dates back to October last year, when Chinese-language media reported that three porcelain pieces in the museum’s collection had been broken.
Photo courtesy of the National Palace Museum
The museum did not officially record the breakages at the time, which led to accusations of a cover-up by senior staff.
The Control Yuan members said in their investigation report that the most important mission of the museum, with a collection of about 700,000 Chinese artifacts and artworks, is preservation and artifact management.
However, on Feb. 3, 2021, and April 7 last year, while staff members were organizing artifacts, they discovered that a Ming Dynasty “yellow teacup with two green dragons” and a Qing Dynasty “yellow teacup with dragon pattern” had been damaged.
In addition, in May last year, a Qing Dynasty “blue-and-white floral plate” fell and broke due to staff mishandling, the Control Yuan said.
The working space of the museum warehouse was filled with improperly stacked materials, posing a serious risk to the safety of staff, as well as to artifacts and artworks, it said.
As a result, artifacts fell and were damaged due to human negligence, the Control Yuan members said.
After an on-site inspection, Control Yuan members found the environmental conditions in the museum’s storage facility to be poor, and suggested that staff reference advanced management and preservation methods employed for cultural artifacts at other domestic as well as foreign museums, the report said.
They also suggested accelerating the updating of warehouse equipment and improving preservation and management measures so that artifacts can be properly preserved, it said.
In addition, given that the museum has fewer than 20 workers tasked with the maintenance of the items in its collection, there is an apparent staff shortage, the Control Yuan members said, urging the museum to propose fixes.
Moreover, from December 2021 to June last year, at least 30,000 high-resolution images from the museum’s collection were leaked, the report said.
Even though the museum received a tip-off as early as June 13 last year, it did not report the case to authorities in accordance with the Cyber Security Management Act (資通安全管理法) until after the matter was revealed by the media on March 14, it said.
In addition to proposing corrective measures, the report also instructed the Executive Yuan to better supervise the museum and urged it to make improvements.
The museum said in a statement later on Thursday that it would humbly review its shortcomings and make improvements.
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