The incident also reminds the museum concerned of the means of improving the display and protection of cultural relics, and also reminds the public that museums should be cautious about their collections.
▲ On January 25, in Wuhan, Hubei Province, a student smashed cultural relics while visiting a private museum. Video/CCTV video number
Text | Zhou Wenhan
Recently, some netizens posted a video saying that the child participated in the off-campus winter camp to visit a museum for free, and as a result, the child touched the exhibit and accidentally broke a cultural relic worth 1.3 million yuan and was asked for compensation.
On January 25, according to the Beijing Youth Daily, the preliminary result of the current tripartite mediation between the museum, parents and winter camp training institutions is that the training institution should bear 60% of the responsibility, and the parents should bear 40% of the responsibility, but both sides believe that the proportion of the responsibility is too high.
The museum staff said that the damaged exhibits were bought from Japan 9 years ago, when more than 200,000 yuan was spent, and the museum never said that the exhibits were worth 1.3 million yuan, and it was impossible to claim compensation in this way. At present, the judicial office has intervened in mediation, and the museum only demands compensation for repair costs and appropriate compensation for the damage to the exhibits, but if it is necessary to do appraisal, it will also add appraisal costs.
This matter has also aroused the attention and discussion of netizens. Regarding the division of liability and the amount of compensation, netizens have different opinions.
▲ Broken cultural relics exhibits. Photo/Screenshot of Oriental News
View such "low-probability events" with a "normal mind"
It should be recognized that in addition to those illegal acts of deliberately damaging and stealing museum collections, the behavior of audiences accidentally damaging museum collections has occasionally occurred in Chinese and foreign museums, which is not a rare thing. Netizens should look at such "small probability events" with a "normal mind".
In each accident, the relevant departments will investigate and judge what kind of responsibility the specific participants should bear, whether it is the main responsibility or the secondary responsibility, whether the parties are intentional or unintentional, and will decide how much compensation is based on the price assessment of cultural relics, which is due.
Of course, museums have a responsibility to protect their collections. Such protection generally includes technical means, management means and insurance systems.
The technical means is to fix, prevent dumping and even prevent earthquakes, fires and other emergencies in the specific environment of transportation and display in the specific environment of transportation and display. For example, for the equivalent height of stone carving, wood carving, mud carving and the like, the means of protection that can be adopted include adding glass covers, installing base fixing equipment, and setting up fences.
Management means, such as important collections can find a special person to take care of, or there are obvious signs at the entrance of the museum and the exhibition hall to indicate that the collection must not be touched, or there is monitoring, inspection and supervision of the status of the exhibits.
The insurance system is to purchase corresponding property insurance for the safety of collection transportation and display in order to recover the economic losses caused by unexpected situations.
In the process of visiting the museum, the audience should also have basic common sense and etiquette, unless the museum clearly indicates that a certain collection can be touched, and the general museum collection is untouchable, and it is best to keep a certain distance.
In this incident, the children's awareness of the protection of the collection is not obvious, which requires parents, teachers or activity organizers to emphasize the precautions for visiting before the children enter the museum, and remind them during the visit. Of course, we do not draw conclusions about the division of responsibilities until the specific responsibility is determined.
▲In response to the students' smashing of cultural relics, the relevant person in charge of the museum responded on the social platform. Photo/Screenshot of social platform
Encountered a small probability event,
Specific problems can be handled specifically
What is happening today is a "small probability event", and the public does not have to overreact. After the occurrence of specific problems, specific problems can be dealt with specifically, and the relevant museums can be further urged to improve the means of display and protection of cultural relics, reminding the public to visit museums should be cautious about collections.
However, there is no need to mechanically "expand the view and deal with problems", especially the expectation that the government will "manage one by one" and introduce unified and strict regulations and the like in order to completely ban such "small probability events". This is not just a "luxury", it can also bring other drawbacks.
Protecting the safety of exhibited cultural relics is of course important, but this importance is interrelated with other factors, in a complex ecological relationship, and one-sided emphasis on any one aspect will cause other problems.
Is it possible for a museum to keep all its collections extremely tight? For example, can you add a thick glass cover for all the large and small collections of your collection as small as a ring and as large as a stone carved doorpost? Is there a blanket ban on visitors touching all collections, or is it forbidden for children under a certain age to visit such artifacts?
The economic situation and display environment of each museum are different, and taking a certain measure is not only a matter of technical choice, but also may involve economic costs. Which museum has enough money to provide the most comprehensive and high-end technical equipment protection for all the exhibits? This is probably a big problem, and I am afraid that the world's most famous and richest museums cannot confidently say that they can achieve this.
On the other hand, this also involves the level of display effect and audience experience, and the museum has adopted various strict protection measures to have a good exhibition effect. Does the audience like this way of displaying?
And for a viewer who is looking forward to entering the museum, do you want to enter the museum and see all the exhibits in the glass display case far away from you? Do you also want to be able to get up close to and even touch certain collections of the museum – of course, it should be specific collections that the museum has done to protect and allow the audience to touch.
Know that doing things in the real world is done with the associated costs and effects in mind, and there is no "perfect security solution" or "solution" once and for all. Museums should weigh between factors such as cultural relics protection, economic costs, display effects, etc. The audience will also weigh or react to the experience of each visit, and the situations that occur in the meantime are diverse.
It is important to give museums and visitors the right to choose different ways of displaying and visiting. While the audience has these rights to enjoy the beauty of cultural relics, different subjects also have to bear their own costs and risks, which is part of life.
Contributing Writer | Zhou Wenhan (art and architecture critic)
Edit | Ding Hui
Intern | Lu Yiran
Proofreading | Wu Xingfa