UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: Just two weeks after its formal opening, a huge blaze ripped through the new museum, destroying many priceless cultural artifacts
By Lin Mei-chun STAFF REPORTER
Five traditional Aboriginal fishing boats and 34 exhibits burned to cinders on Tuesday evening at a newly opened prehistory museum in Taitung County, eastern Taiwan. Museum officials yesterday estimated total losses at roughly NT$2.1 million. The fire was initially spotted at 6:40pm. The blaze started in an exhibition hall on the second floor at the National Museum of Prehistory, which opened on July 10. According to eyewitness reports, the fire turned into a roaring inferno within minutes. Firefighters put the blaze out after two hours. An initial investigation blamed the fire on an electrical short-circuit. The fire demolished a room in the second exhibition hall that featured Austronesian exhibits.
The blaze also destroyed the ceilings of adjacent rooms and covered every display room in the four-storey building with soot, said Huang Kuo-En, director of the museum's exhibition and education division. Exhibitions featuring ancient Chinese artifacts on loan from the National Palace Museum -- which remain intact because they were located in a separate building -- will be closed for three days. But the rest of the museum will be closed for an indefinite period, depending on the time needed for restoration, Huang said. Huang said the most serious loss was five traditional Aboriginal fishing boats of the Tao Tribe and 34 display items featuring the clothing, ornaments and pictures of the Rukai , Tao and Pyuma tribes. One of the large, twelve-seat fishing boats was bought for NT$600,000, Huang said. There are only a few of the boats left in Taiwan because the Taos' aging boatbuilders have long stopped making the fishing vessels.
Most of the remaining exhibits were saved, as a fire-prevention door automatically shut after the fire started. But renovation work will still be required throughout the entire building due to smoke and water damage, Huang said. People First Party lawmaker Diane Lee criticized the museum's management yesterday, saying the fire was caused by construction mistakes made in the rush to meet the museum's opening deadline. The museum's director, Chen Yi-yi, said construction had proceeded according to a pre-arranged schedule, and that "there was absolutely no sloppy work in order to make the deadline." Officials at the museum and the Ministry of Education, its supervisory department, are launching investigations and mapping out contingency measures -- including plans for compensation.
Museum officials said that since the museum opened two weeks ago, more than 50,000 people have visited. The high number of visitors indicates that the museum has played a vital role in chronicling the prehistorical culture of Aborigines, officials said. Museum officials hope that given their limited funding, the government will provide assistance financially to allow the institution to survive the aftermath of the fire. The museum -- which cost NT$ 3.7 billion to build on ten hectares -- took 11 years to plan and complete. It houses ancient artifacts dating back 3,000 years and is considered a major national project. The museum is also in charge of the 18 hectares that make up the Pyuma Tribe Cultural Park. The archeological site of the Pyuma tribe is one of the richest discoveries unearthed by Taiwan's archeologists in the 1980s.
More than 800 items of the Pyuma tribe's ancient artifacts are currently on display at the museum. http://www.taipeitimes.com/ from International Council of Museums Discussion List
Subject: ANNOUNCE:
The Melbourne Museum is replacing 26 glass panels after a series of problems in glass balustrades and doors in the $290 million complex. On Monday, a large glass balustrade in an interior balcony shattered, sending shards of glass falling on to the foyer on the lower-ground level. The museum had not opened for the day and no one was on that level at the time, said the museum's corporate services director, Joseph Corponi. Mr Corponi said the panel was three metres by 1.2 metres and 13 millimetres thick. It broke when a catering staff member bumped into it, probably with a table. Mr Corponi said glass balustrades and doors in the museum had been checked regularly after a glass door fell off its hinge in April. As a result of these checks, he said chips were found on 25 items, mostly balustrade panels and some in doors. The museum has about 240 glass balustrades. He said that since the incident on Monday, the museum had consulted engineers and spoken to the building's architects, Denton Corker Marshall, and its builder, Baulderstone Hornibrook. All said the building was safe. Everything in the building met or exceeded Australian standards. "If we perceived any danger whatsoever we would warn (visitors) but we don't perceive there is a danger," Mr Corponi said. The damaged glass had been or would be replaced, he said. In a memo to museum staff on Wednesday, Mr Corponi said: "In this latest case the design of the balcony resulted in this specific section of glass having an exposed edge which ... may have made it more vulnerable to impact damage. "With this in mind we have identified a small number of other areas with this design feature and immediate action is being taken to address these areas to reduce the vulnerability of these panels to impact damage." He said barriers had been placed around the other 12 glass balustrades with a similar design and the architects had been asked to design protection for those areas. Mr Corponi said in the memo that similar balustrades were used in other high-profile public buildings in Melbourne. The museum was asking the managers of those buildings for their experiences. A glass balustrade outside the museum broke last August. Mr Corponi said it was not known what caused that breakage, which occurred during construction. Calls to Denton Corker Marshall were not returned yesterday.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/news/state/2001/07/27/FFX29XFPLPC.html
Danger lurks in Dufy masterpiece
PARIS, France -- One of the world's largest paintings is coated in cancer-causing asbestos and plans are underway to remove the fibre, Parisian curators have said. Removal of the mineral fibre from the back of Raoul Dufy's 1930s masterpiece La Fee Electricite will begin in December, The Museum of Modern Art in Paris told Reuters news agency. "No other artwork has been found to contain asbestos so this procedure has no precedent and has had to be carefully planned down to the last detail," museum officials said.
The fibre will be removed from the back of the 250 wood panels that make up the 6,450 square foot masterpiece. "An art restorer will be on hand to oversee the work of the industrial asbestos removal team in order to ensure they are sensitive to the particular demands of this delicate job," officials added. Asbestos was a popular insulation and fire retardant in the building industry after World War II. French law requires the removal of all asbestos since it has been identified as a cause of lung disease and cancer. Whether Dufy and his team treated the panels with asbestos themselves to protect them from fire or if the work was done after the oil painting was moved to its current location in 1964 is not known.
The painting poses no risk to those who come in contact with it, the museum said, however they are obliged to remove the asbestos. "All tests done showed the level of airborne asbestos was well below danger levels," officials said. The panels of the painting are a tribute to the thinkers and scientists who contributed to the discovery of electricity and what it represented. The intricate process is expected to last seven months and an estimated 50 panels will have to be removed from the wall, according to the museum.
Le Parisien newspaper said the procedure would cost seven million francs.
Each panel will have to be individually treated in the display room which will be closed to the public while work is in progress. Fauvist painter Dufy, who died at the age of 75 in 1953, painted La Fee Electricite for a Paris electricity company as decoration for its Hall of Light at the 1937 world exhibition in Paris. It took four months to complete.
Find this article at: http://europe.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/07/26/paris.painting/index.html