Museums and other cultural institutions, threatened by tsunamis, earthquakes, war and terrorism, must rely on more than art specialists to safeguard their treasures, said conservation experts meeting in the Thai capital this week.
When trouble is brewing, everyone -- from the gallery guard to the curator to the board of directors and the local community -- has a role in protecting their cultural heritage, museum professionals from eight Asian countries were told.
Last December's Indian Ocean tsunami caused little damage to museums but it did raise awareness of the need for disaster preparedness, said John Zvereff, secretary general of the Paris-based International Council of Museums.
PHOTO: AFP PHOTO
Zvereff was speaking at the opening Monday of a seven-month course on emergency management for the protection of cultural property, attended by representatives from Cambodia, India, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.
Many of those taking the course, which will be carried out mostly over the Internet after an initial 12-day workshop, are representing their country's national museums.
Saving human lives in situations such as a tsunami is a priority everyone shares, said Nicholas Stanley-Price, director-general of the Rome-based International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property.
Cultural identity
But safeguarding the tangible features of a cultural identity can also help restore post-disaster confidence, he said.
The use of temples and mosques as recovery centers after the tsunami, with monks and clerics offering moral support, shows the enduring strength of cultural elements, he told reporters at a news conference to introduce the training course.
The course will also cover civil strife and war, at least as threatening to cultural treasures as natural disasters, with the looting of museums that took place after the US invasion of Iraq a marked example.
Preparedness
Earl Kessler, deputy executive director of the Bangkok-based Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, and an instructor for the course, said Iraq was a good example of disaster preparedness.
He said the looted items were recovered because of an informal contingency plan that had evolved after Iraq's earlier war with Iran.
Timothy Whalen, who is director of the Los Angeles-based Getty Conservation Institute -- one of the three organizers of the course -- said responsibility for disaster management could not be left to museum conservators alone.
Successful conservation and preservation of cultural heritage -- whether in the face of disaster or a daily stream of visitors -- depends on effective management at all levels, he said.
At the same time, improving the physical surroundings of collections and cultural sites to limit damage is crucial.
Quake-proofed
The wealthy Getty Museum, in southern California's risky seismic region, has been as quake-proofed as possible. Among its innovative measures is the giant "base isolator," which can cushion objects as heavy as one ton sitting atop it from earthquake tremors.
Turkey's Topkapi museum, which sits on a seismic fault in Istanbul, has chosen a more practical approach, said disaster expert Kessler.
One measure is to "use catgut to secure a chalice against the backdrop, so if it shakes it doesn't fall off the stand," he said.
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