The senior management of the world's leading museums are unanimous in believing that the building-up of new talent is a key factor in achieving successful administrations.
The message was delivered during the three-day Summit of Museum Directors which began yesterday and includes some 300 museum directors and experts from around the world.
Men Xianmin, division chief of the State Bureau of Cultural Relics, believes economic globalization has had an enormous impact on cultures in various parts of the world, posing great challenges for their preservation. "For this reason the professionals working in the museums have the especially important task of passing on cultural heritage by their research and studies and thereby provide a better public service."
Pan Zhenzhou, director of the National Museum of China (NMC), created from the successful merger of the former National Museum of Chinese History and National Museum of Chinese Revolutionary History, was directly attributable to the nurturing of high caliber young talent.
Zheng Xinmiao, director of the Palace Museum, said that owing to the experienced senior experts, his museum, like NMC, has experts in the conserving of bronzes, clocks, and the Ming and Qing dynasty imperial furniture, as well as those skilled in copying, restoring and mounting ancient paintings and calligraphic works.
"However, these unique skills have been inherited and developed in master-and-disciple form," he said.
The directors shared their experiences of new ways to train those young talents working in the museums.
Chen Xiejun, director of Shanghai Museum, thinks apart from offering better salaries and employment packages, a system to motivate better on-the-job training and greater opportunities for exchanging ideas with experts overseas is a good way to nurture young professionals in museums.
"We have more young people involved in the project of compiling the series of books on the collections in Shanghai's Museums, which offers them a good opportunity to advance their studies on the job," said Chen.
The Shanghai Museum has also organized five international forums on ancient bronze, jade, china, calligraphy and painting in the past three years, and this has enabled the young staff to communicate with experts from around the world.
Philippe de Montebello, director of New York's Metropolitan Museum, revealed that he and Chen are currently working on more training exchanges for their experts.
(China Daily March 27, 2003)
