Museum has no inventory of
treasures
By - John Burns.
The National Museum of Ireland (NMI) cannot control or
even monitor the environment in which it stores many of
its 4m artefacts, an audit has found.
In one of the most damning reports ever compiled about an
Irish cultural institution, the museum has been accused
of putting its collection at risk because it has no
proper inventory and its storage and conservation
standards are poor.
An investigation by the comptroller and auditor general
found that apart from environmental control systems in
some public galleries and storage facilities, the
museum's conservation staff had "limited capacity to
correct any changes in temperature or relative humidity"
in some areas.
The auditor's team tried to take readings from 14 storage
spaces, but these were not available in five. "This
suggests that the NMI is not in a position to
comprehensively monitor its environment", the report
said.
In one storage facility at Beggars Bush, described as a
poorly sealed building, "manual control of temperature
intended to reduce fluctuations in humidity was
ineffective". The building's antiquated heating system
cannot respond efficiently to changes in the weather.
This means the temperature rises to 22C in the summer
with humidity at 70%, but falls to 13C and 30% humidity
in the winter.
A temperature of 8C was recorded in one period when the
heating system failed. "Fluctuations of this sort can
damage objects", the auditor's report said. Some
artefacts were being stored outdoors and others were in
an agricultural shed in Daingean, Co. Offaly, where there
was no humidity control.
Among the other findings in the report released on Friday
were the absence of a central record of artefacts which
"poses a significant risk to the collections"; the museum
lacks a disposal policy and is allowing its collection to
grow without any calculation of the cost or the condition
of items; it was told in 2001 to document its collection
within five years but the management response was
"limited" and the work was never done; the museum does
not do systematic inventory checks and half the items on
display are either not recorded or recorded incorrectly;
none of its 4m artefacts can be viewed on the museum
website, nor is there a search facility or even links to
other organisations; and access to the collection for
research is "limited" and "cumbersome".
The report said the museum had been warned repeatedly
that storage was inadequate. A board of visitors report
in 1987 found that parts of the collection had been
damaged because of poor conservation. "Unsatisfactory
storage conditions were noted by me in a report on the
Collins Barracks development project in 1997", John
Purcell, the comptroller and auditor general, said.
The museum, whose artefacts include the Derrynaflan and
Ardagh chalices and Iron Age bog bodies, employs 207
staff but is open for only 38 hours a week. This is
almost nine hours less than the average Irish museum and
15 less than the international standard.
In a statement on Friday the museum's director, Pat
Wallace, "welcomed" the report, but blamed the problems
on lack of money and personnel and criticised Purcell for
not "contextualising deficiencies which are due to
shortages of resources, mostly staff". An inventory of
the collection was under way, he said.
Olivia Mitchell, Fine Gael arts spokesman, said yesterday
that the museum's difficulties were due to a governance
issue and a lack of accountability. "They're not
accountable to anyone as far as I can see", she said,
adding: "It may well be a resources issue too and with
all the excavation that has gone on the museum has been
getting a lot of artefacts in and that compounds the
problems".
Last year the museum, an independent body, received
€19.2m of funding from the Department of Arts, of
which €13.5m was for current spending. More than
half its budget is for staff.
Seamus Brennan, the arts minister, yesterday defended,
Wallace and said the museum's problems would be fixed.
"Whether it's staff or resources, Pat Wallace and his
people will get them", he said.
© The Sunday Times, 16th. March 2008.
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