A guided tour to national museum's treasure trove
July 19, 2018 | In the PressFrom The Korea Times (http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/art/2018/07/691_252545.html)
A long and wide corridor opened up beyond a 20-centimeter-thick door in the National Museum of Korea (NMK) office building, Tuesday, as the museum revealed its storage space for the first time in 13 years since it moved to its current Yongsan venue in 2005.
Park Jin-woo, manager of the Relics Management Department, said he unlocked nine security systems for reporters to enter the storage space of the nation's flagship museum. The security system is a combination of digital cards and old-fashioned keys as well as biometric verification such as the fingerprint of the person in charge to provide maximum protection.
Along the 140-meter-long corridor, 19 storage rooms are situated on either side of the hall. Each room houses different relics such as metalwork, stoneware, earthenware, wood and paintings. The NMK has about 200,000 pieces in storage, the largest in Korea.
"The museum's collection cannot be on view all at the same time and the storage is for artifacts that are not on view in the exhibition halls," Park said.
Park opened the door of Store No. 3, which houses ceramics. The room has 218 wooden cabinets and can store about 73,000 pieces.
"The storage room floor is beech. The cabinets are made from Douglas fir frame and paulownia tree boards. We don't use metal for the cabinet and the wood pieces are put together in a traditional connecting method," Park explained.
The ceramics storage has a wide range of artifacts from ancient earthenware to porcelain from Goryeo and Joseon. Each piece of pottery is labeled and all the relics in the NMK's collection are computerized and can be searched online for their exact location. "Some of the shards are stored in boxes for space-saving purposes," the manager said.
According to Park, the storage room filters adjust the air four times to provide the best condition for relics.
"The storage rooms are free of fine dust or other pollution," Park said. "We also care about the temperature and humidity, which are most important for conservation. For instance, the ceramics storage rooms are set at around 20 degrees Celsius and the humidity is about 50 percent. The optimal humidity is around 60 percent for paper since the material is likely to crumble if dry and 40 percent for metalwork to prevent rust."
"Since the storage is about 80 percent full now, we are planning to expand the area starting next year," Park said.
Currently, the storage rooms have high ceilings up to six meters and the rooms will be divided into two floors to keep more artifacts by the next two years.
The museum has many more artifacts in storage than those on view in exhibition halls and it recently renovated viewing rooms for academic purposes.
"Those who are in graduate school or have degrees in relevant majors can request the museum to bring certain artifacts from storage. They can see the relic up close, study it and even take pictures of it in the viewing room for up to three hours," the museum official said.
Conservation lab
Yoo Hye-sun of the Conservation Science Division gave a tour of the museum's conservation science lab.
"We acquired a CT (computerized tomography) machine last year and this is a big upgrade for us since it provides much more information than the X-ray machine we used previously," Yoo said. "Just like the medical field, we can diagnose better when we have more high-tech machines."
A seated Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva statue from the Goryeo Kingdom (918-1392) was being scanned when reporters visited the lab.
"Previously, an X-ray could only give two-dimensional images. Now we can see the inside of an artifact through this CT scanner," Yoo said. "For instance, this Bodhisattva statue is made from fabric. First they make a clay sculpture and cover it with layers of fabric and apply lacquer over and over. After it is dried, the inner clay is removed and the lacquered fabric is left in the shape of the Bodhisattva. By CT scanning, we can see the inner structure of the statue ? where clay is still left and where it is covered by gold leaf."
Since the scanning provides more information on the structure and status of the artifacts, the conservation scientists can find better ways to restore and conserve the piece.
The lab is subdivided by materials and each room has a nameplate such as metal, wood, earthenware and ceramics, paintings and murals.
Yoo referred to the lab as a general hospital for the relics. "There are specialists for each material."
