The protection of cultural relics is inseparable from the integration of industry, education and research

Author: Song Haichao (Deputy Director and Associate Professor, Center for Cultural Heritage and Digital Protection, Yangtze River Institute of Civilization and Archaeology, Wuhan University)

Some media quoted official sources as saying that the world-famous Leshan Giant Buddha will be ready to accept a new round of cultural relics protection and restoration work. How to protect the Leshan Giant Buddha quickly attracted widespread attention from the society. Prior to this, the repair plan of the Ying County Wooden Pagoda had also been discussed for a long time.

The public's attention to these cultural relics protection programs is a continuation of the "cultural relics fever" in recent years. From a professional point of view, the protection problems of these important cultural relics further highlight a common problem, that is, the lack of integration of research and practice in the mainland cultural relics industry.

At present, the mainland's cultural relics undertakings include archaeology, cultural heritage, museums, cultural relics protection and other fields, and its Chinese protection and museums have formed a relatively perfect professional division of labor, and the processes are interlocked, but the in-depth integration is insufficient, especially the seamless connection between theoretical research and project implementation. At present, the problems exposed by cultural relics protection projects and museum display projects are different, the former is manifested as marketization, and the latter is homogenized, but they are related to the deep integration of theoretical research, project design and project implementation.

Most cultural relics protection projects involve survey and design, supervision and construction, etc., and the implementation objects include ancient tombs, ancient ruins, ancient buildings, revolutionary cultural relics, etc., and the professional backgrounds and qualifications required for each link and each object are different. At present, most colleges and universities focus on the value of cultural relics, heritage and protection theory, and do not pay enough attention to the practice of protection. Each province has many public institutions specifically responsible for survey and design, and construction is often completed by market entities. Among some of the problems of cultural relics protection projects reported by the media before, a very important reason is the improper use of protection measures and restoration materials in the construction process.

For the protection of stone cultural relics, the applicability of protective materials and protective measures often needs to be tested for a long time. The construction responsible party takes the completion of the project as the starting point, and all kinds of companies invest less in research, and it is unlikely to have a large continuous investment. Colleges and universities and scientific research institutes, limited by scientific research attributes, often do not pay enough attention to or it is difficult to promote the effective transformation of relevant scientific research results.

The museum exhibition project involves content design, formal design, construction supervision and other links, and is jointly completed by the museum party, experts and scholars, design and construction units. The construction process requires many professional teamwork, and this working mode is easy to cause professional barriers, and there are often problems such as insufficient display of the original intention of content design and "form pressing content". In the end, it is easy to cause the homogenization of the exhibition effect. In addition, some of the current museum facilities have a tendency to modularize and mass-produce, such as display cabinets, exhibits, lighting, etc., which further exacerbates the homogenization of display styles.

How to solve this puzzle? The author believes that in the protection of cultural relics, we should accelerate the in-depth cooperation between colleges and universities, scientific research institutes and market players. At present, many of the key scientific research bases of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage are related to cultural relics protection projects, and universities also have a large number of scientific research forces. Deepening the integration of industry, education and research requires the joint efforts of universities, scientific research institutes and market players. On the one hand, in the training of students, colleges and universities should pay attention to the combination of practicality and theory, and help them master the mature protection concepts, methods and technologies at the same time; on the other hand, scientific research institutes should also strengthen cooperation with relevant market players in a targeted manner and increase the development of new materials.

As far as museum display projects are concerned, it is advisable to promote the integration of research and practice with the curator system as the center. In practice, curators need to understand all aspects of the display project and coordinate the resources of all parties, such as content design and form design, construction party docking, exhibition evaluation, etc. Museum exhibitions are essentially works of art, not industrial products, and curators should take content design as the starting point, seek a balance between content and form, present content in the best way, and achieve the best display effect. At present, some colleges and universities pay attention to practice in the process of teaching in museum exhibitions, and graduation theses are often presented in the form of display text design, which is a good trend. However, since universities are not the main body of museum construction, the promotion of this initiative also depends on the support of museums at all levels.

Guangming Daily ( 2022-01-19 02 edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily