Managing cultural assets starts with a head count

Father, oil painting by Luo Zhongli. Provided to China Daily

To better manage the nation's fine art storage, the Ministry of Culture has started a census of collections at all State-owned art institutions nationwide. The census will stretch until the end of 2016.

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"Compared to the active trading on the art market, the State's collection of fine arts falls short in terms of investment and preservation and is neither systematically planned nor made full use of. It's mainly because we don't get an accurate picture of the national treasury," says Vice-Minister Dong Wei.

He says the survey will lead to a catalogue that includes more than 31 indexes to record each artwork and image, as well as give an idea of how the collections are distributed. It will also lay the foundation for establishing a digital database, in which the public will be able to access more artworks, and the museums can share their resources.

The survey is part of a national campaign launched in 2012 to manage, distribute and display its cultural assets. The project started as the annual exhibition season began. It encourages State-owned art museums and galleries to showcase their collections through carefully curated exhibitions, and to enhance the sorting and studies of these works.

During the 2013 exhibition season, which ran from August until November, 30 museums displayed more than 3,200 artworks from their collections, attracting some 1.5 million viewers.

There are now more than 250 State-owned art museums and galleries. The figure continues to rise as more art museums mushroom in Shandong, Sichuan and Shanxi provinces, and the Guangxi Zhuang and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions.