Behind the 0.1-millimeter vibration sensing: How are Zhejiang’s cultural and museum institutions embracing cutting-edge technology?
Release date:
2025-03-31 00:00
Author:
Ningbo Bangda
How “hot” are museums? According to publicly available online data, the National Museum of China welcomes roughly 20,000 visitors per day on average, with “low season is not slow, and peak season is even busier” becoming the norm. Against this backdrop, the recently held “Technology Empowers: Academic Symposium on Smart Construction of Museum Storage Facilities” in Ningbo has sparked vigorous industry-wide discussions about new directions for museum storage development.
How “hot” are museums? According to publicly available online data, the National Museum of China welcomes roughly 20,000 visitors per day on average, with “off-peak seasons remaining steady and peak seasons even more bustling” becoming the norm. Against this backdrop, the recently held “Technology Empowers: Academic Symposium on the Intelligent Development of Museum Storage Facilities” in Ningbo has sparked vigorous industry-wide discussions about new directions for museum storage‑facility construction.
The museum is the guardian of civilization, while the storage facility is its beating heart.
Ningbo Museum
China’s museum sector is thriving, with the total number of registered museums nationwide reaching 6,833. These institutions host more than 40,000 exhibitions annually and welcome over 1.4 billion visitors. Underpinning these impressive figures are the museums’ collections of cultural relics. “Museums have three core functions; the first is collection,” said Yan Hongming, president of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum Society. “Safeguarding cultural relics for the nation and future generations is both the bottom line and the red line of cultural heritage work—and it is also the minimum standard.”
Zhejiang is a major province in the cultural and museum sector, currently home to 443 registered museums with a total collection of over 1.92 million items (sets). Safeguarding these cultural relics is a responsibility of paramount importance. On the one hand, Zhejiang has amassed extensive experience in pursuing high-quality museum development; on the other, it is also a leading province in digital infrastructure. Leveraging its technological strengths to deepen the integration of cutting-edge science and technology with museum‑storage facilities represents another key avenue of exploration for Zhejiang.
Signing Ceremony for the Industry–University–Research Collaboration on Collection Preservation and Intelligent Management
Over the years, museums across Zhejiang Province have been steadily advancing their practices. The Ningbo Museum has equipped its storage facilities with “breathing” smart systems, caring for each artifact as if it were an infant. Meanwhile, the China Port Museum in Ningbo has assigned a “digital ID” to every item in its collection, enabling full traceability of its past and present through a simple QR code scan. At Tianyi Pavilion, the ancient‑book repository is fitted with a “surveillance system” that instantly alerts curators on their smartphones whenever temperature or humidity levels shift even slightly. Behind these seemingly straightforward innovations lies a profound convergence of technology and cultural heritage preservation.
As one of the organizers of this conference, Ningbo Bangda serves as a vivid example of how technology is empowering cultural heritage preservation.
“We use wisdom to build state-of-the-art storage facilities, ensuring that cultural relics can rest in peace,” says Zhu Jianhua, founder of Ningbo Bangda. Over nearly three decades, this small township enterprise has become the custodian of tens of thousands of national treasures for hundreds of cultural and museum institutions across China, including the Palace Museum and the National Museum of China. It provides comprehensive solutions and integrated services for the storage, display, conservation, and management of collection repositories in museums and cultural venues, serving more than 100 first‑class museums alone.
“Practice and Exploration in the Intelligent Development of Collection Repositories” Exchange
In Zhu Jianhua’s view, a “breathing” smart storage facility requires multi‑dimensional, technology‑driven conservation measures. For instance, in a room housing ancient silk paintings in color, even vibrations as small as 0.1 millimeter must be detected with millisecond precision.
Luo Wenli, Deputy Director of the National Cultural Heritage Administration, identified three major shifts in museum storage facility development: a transition from a “custodial” model to a “research‑oriented” one, driven by the rapid growth in the number of collection items and the urgent need for intelligent management to enable fine‑grained classification and robust research support; a shift from a “closed” approach to an “open” one—where openness does not imply physical accessibility but rather leverages digital technologies to transcend spatial and temporal boundaries, offering public access to collection resources through virtual exhibitions and cloud‑based sharing; and a move from a “traditional, experience‑based” paradigm to a “technology‑empowered” model, harnessing emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence to strengthen preventive conservation and provide technological underpinnings for the long-term preservation of cultural heritage.
This also sheds light on the direction of museum development in Zhejiang: on the one hand, leveraging technology to achieve intelligent management; on the other, deepening cross-sectoral integration, fostering robust engagement between collection resources and diverse stakeholders, strengthening collaborative academic research, establishing a cultural heritage data‑sharing platform, supporting universities and research institutions in conducting interdisciplinary studies, and expanding the interpretation of cultural heritage value.
(Chao News reporter Chen Zui, correspondent Xiang Congying)
The article was reprinted on media platforms including the Zhejiang Daily.
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