Probe ordered over museum charges

Premier Yu Shyi-kun ordered an audit of the state-run National Taiwan Museum (國立台灣博物館) yesterday after several important objects were reported missing from its storehouse.

Yu asked the Council for Cultural Affairs to form an ad hoc team to take a thorough inventory of the museum's collection before the end of the year, address any mismanagement and find out those responsible for any wrongdoing.

Cabinet spokesman Chung Suo-hang (莊碩漢) said the premier gave the order one day after DPP legislator Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻) accused museum staff of selling off valuable objects and replacing them with reproductions.

Also yesterday the Control Yuan formed a six-member investigation team yesterday morning to look into misconduct at the museum after Chen's accusations.

Six Control Yuan members -- Lee Shen-yi (李伸一), Lin Chu-lang (林鉅鋃), Kang Ning-hsiang (康寧祥), Huang Chin-jenn (黃勤鎮), Li You-chi (李友吉) and Hsieh Ching-hui (謝慶輝) -- will be responsible for the investigation.

The museum, with more than 50,000 cultural and historical relics, was taken over from the Japanese in 1945. In 57 years it has never managed to complete its inventory.

According to Chen, more than 25,000 precious relics have been arbitrarily placed in a storage room, located in Taipei's Chingtien Street, for many years.

On Tuesday, the lawmaker said that at least 1,000 relics were missing from the storage room.

He also said that some of the relics have been replaced, hinting that staff members may have been collaborating with antique merchants outside the museum.

"Some paintings have been replaced by copies," he said, adding that perhaps the museum's anthropology department was responsible for the misconduct.

According to Chen, the department chief and his two researchers had only finished listing about 16 percent of the department's items in all these years, while other departments have finished listing more than 90 percent of their pieces.

According to Chen, a professional researcher is able to take inventory on about 500 pieces per month. But the anthropology department only inventories about 200 to 300 pieces per month.

A former researcher at the department even told the lawmaker that he was blamed for taking inventory too fast and was therefore transferred to another department by the department chief.

Chen also suspected that the museum refused to lend some of its relics to other national museums because many of the stored pieces had been lost.

"Obviously, it is necessary for the Control Yuan to actively investigate the case," Chen said.

The Control Yuan is to produce its report by the end of April.