Role of off-site museums for restoration - Experiences with salvage and restoration of natural history collection damaged by earthquakes and subsequent tsunami in East

Japan, 2011, part II 

Daisuke Sakuma1), Masahiro Ôhara 2), Mahoro Suzuki 3) and So Ishida1)

 1) Osaka Museum of Natural History, Osaka, JAPAN

2) The Hokkaido University Museum, Sapporo, JAPAN 3) Iwate Prefectural Museum, Morioka, JAPAN

 

After the Earthquakes and subsequent tsunami on March 11, 2011, we transferred 23,000 specimens from damaged museums to more than 40 museums and research institutions at remote-site all over Japan. It is because restoration and stabilization processing needs human resources and good conditions for deliberate work.

The role of ON-site MuseumsBackground: 

They had network of curators of the region. They can coordinate the salvage and restoration activities as local government’s cultural policy. So that they can work with local authority, military forces, national agencies etc...

  

The role of REMOTE MuseumsBackground:

• Stable, safe and clean. Suitable for deliberate works.• Local amateurs have high motivation, waiting for actions.• We have curators networks in western Japan and Hokkaido.• So, we could arranged entomologists to receive damaged 

specimen of their specific taxon.• Botanists exchanges specimens among museums, so it was 

smooth to receive damaged specimen by parcel.

 

Rikuzentakata City Museum

Rikuzentakata Sea & Shell Museum

The Whale &Sea Science MuseumAs wide region of Eastern Japan, including Tokyo and Tsukuba had shaken by earthquake in 3.11.2011, They had traffic, electricity and fuel problem in the following weeks. So, the salvage and restoration activities went to remote museums. Iwate Prefectural Museum in Morioka also damaged in earthquake,  acted as on-site cultural heritage rescue center in the Iwate region. Tohoku Univ. was the another center for Miyagi region.

Practice:• Salvage the museum specimen and 

record the status.• “Triage”, to determine which should be 

 treated first.• Then send-out to safe sight for 

stabilization process.• Restoration of specimens which cannot 

move to off-site because they are fragile/ heavy.

• Stabilization with amateurs in Morioka.• Stabilization as local workers’  job.

(especially in Rikuzentakata.)

 Practice:Plant collections:• Transferred, then washed for 

sterilization and desalting.• Record and dried.• Amateur scientists joined the activitiesInsect  collections:• Washed with acetone, restored shapes, 

record labels. • For fragile specimen, we send 

technicians to Iwate to restore.Geological collections• Send out team of geologists for re-

identify and restoration of the fossils, rocks etc.

Mollusca shell collections• Transferred small landsnail species, 

and washed for sterilization

Good points of restoration works in REMOTE-Museums • Risk hedge for secondary disaster.• Load balance with on-site and off-site museums in hard time.• Provide local amateurs chances of enrollment.• Chance for skill up to treat damaged specimens• Human resources for scientific analysis (which can be feed back to on-

site and future activities)   • Chance for promote museums and curators networks

2015, WestJapan-NHMuseum Network joined National“Cultural Heritage Disaster Risk Mitigation Network”, to prepare for disasters in future.

Natural History collections are not covered in “ Act on Protection of Cultural Properties” nor any other National legislation systems in Japan.Even in ”Museum Act”, there are no article for specimen conservation duty.History and Art museums are supported by the Cultural Agency, but no supporting agencies for Natural History.For the fast response of National government, some legislation should be done. But this time, activities went ahead to determine “de facto-standard”.

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Example.1Kumeda, Sakata, Takatori, Kigawa, Sato and Sakuma 2015  Fungal Deterioration of Tsunami-affected Plant Specimen in Great East Japan Earthquake.  Science for Conservation 54:75-82 (in Japanese with English summary)

Example.2Mikanagi and Ozaki 2011 Reports from museum rescue. JCSM newsletter 41(5) http://jcsm.jp/wp-content/uploads/news/PDF/vol41no5.pdf

Salinity and effect of wash-off

Many reports have published from off-site museums but mostly in Japanese.“Stabilization Processing” is an  official publication from Cultural heritage network, written in Japanese and English (Including natural history collections).

Present situation of Rikuzentakata City Museum RTCM is now working in temporal storage in mountainside, struggling with shells and archeological remains for stabilization.Plant and insect collections are now deposited in Iwate Prefectural Museum. They also need to be monitored for avoiding deterioration from salinity, and for accessing the results of emergency conservation treatments.

Role of Museum and curator networksThe western Japan network of natural history museums, Curators’ network for entomology, Hokkaido curators’ network and others were quite effective for knowledge exchange and coordination of activities.We need to accelerate the cooperation between networks.

Exchange methodology with cultural heritage conservator.In Japan, Cultural heritage rescue team have long history of their activities of restoration of damaged cultural properties since 1995.There are much deeper accumulation of experience in their activities.

This presentation is supported JSPS fund 26350396 

http://www.naturemuseum.net/blog/ http://www.nh-hokkaido.jp

http://ch-drm.nich.go.jp