Devotion to duty in lockdown

On April 7, museum staff experienced an unusually busy day amid the lockdown as a batch of lacquer artworks had to be handed over to the museum. Yang, for example, had to monitor the entire process via a web conference and check the condition of the works. The artworks, he says, were loaned to a South Korean company for an exhibition in Seoul. The works returned to the Shanghai Museum on March 24 but were kept in a warehouse for 14 days due to the pandemic-containment measures.

A museum team laid cables and set up cameras to provide multiple parties involved in the project with high-resolution visuals to check the artworks remotely.

"We had to ensure not only smooth communication, but also high-resolution visuals as we needed to check every small detail during the inspection," Zhu says.

In the afternoon when the handover started, some staff members of the museum had to open the packages to examine each object and compare it with reference photos.

"We would zoom in on the details so that the researchers who did the curatorial work and other colleagues at the storage department could examine them via video conference," says Zhu.

It took them more than four hours to thoroughly examine the 24 lacquer art pieces.

"I hope such successful operations can show our international colleagues that the Shanghai Museum is trustworthy, and we are determined to keep on with international communication," says Yang.