The Chinese museums, centering round the churches of cities in Chinese coastal area,
have been established by western missionaries since the middle of 19th century. The first
modern museum was built by Chang-Gun in 1905. Though the situation in China has been
chaotic-which means ceaseless repetition of revolutions, military dictatorships and internal
wars between democrats and communists, more and more museums were built nonetheless
and the quality (as well as the number) of the museums increased dramatically after the
foundation of 'People's Republic of China.'
Especially, after they reformed their political system and accepted the open-economy
policy, the Chinese began to see their museums as parts of the important national
enterprises and felt the need to increase the number of professional personnel who can
manage the museums and research the archaeology. So several Chinese universities have set
up the departments of archaeo-museology and successfully brought up the professional
personnel for digging historical sites and managing museums. There are now fourteen
universities in China which have the departments of archaeo-museology that contribute to
cultivating the professionals in the related fields.
In these days, the Chinese universities, however, are facing new challenges-most of which
result from the lack of training expenses, the change of educational concepts, and
restructuring of school management. And only 29 universities have the museums that are officially registered to the 'Professional Committee of Chinese High-school Museums,'
though there are more than 50 museums since they began to found the university museums
in 1949. Most of university museums in China reach no more than the level for displaying
referential resources and do not open their doors except on some special occasions.
Moreover, due to the difficulty of adopting membership system and charging admission fee
(which can be effective ways to solve the problem of lack of expenses) and the increased
number of historical museums in local areas, the university museums can not overpass their
limitations to fulfill their functions in the right way.
And it's no exaggeration to say that this ongoing situation in the Chinese university
museums applies to that of Korean ones exactly in the same way. Based on this, it seems
to be rational enough to assert that the university museums have to be set up in accordance
with the foundational ideology of respective schools and their features. It also seems to be
fair to say that those museums, by concentrating on managing and researching with the
other professionals in the related fields of studies and aggressively developing new lectures
& courses for studying local cultures, have to try hard to decrease their sizes but increase
their effectiveness. They, moreover, have to employ the appropriate professionals who can
manage their collection efficiently and exert themselves intensively to study the museology.
They also need to make their efforts to manage their collection by using modern science
and technology.
More important thing than the all of the efforts mentioned above is, that they should
actively participate in the cultural events of their schools and concentrate on the research &
development of archeo-museology. It's also important that they have to play the role of
cultural bridge between the masses and the professional scholars by displaying their
conspicuous research achievements and conveying the basic knowledge of history to the
public.