2025 Training Course for Museum Curators in Charge of Conservation (Advanced Course)
An annual course, called the “Training Course for Museum Curators in Charge of Conservation (Advanced Course) in 2025,” was held from July 7 to 11, 2025. This training course, which has been held at the Institute since 1984, was originally a single general course, and was reorganized into a “Basic Course” and an “Advanced Course” in 2021, with the aim of enabling curators in charge of conservation at museums to acquire appropriate expertise necessary for their work, from basic to advanced.
The “Basic Course,” conducted by the National Center for the Promotion of Cultural Properties, is designed to provide curators in charge of the conservation environment in museums with a wide range of knowledge and skills.
The “Advanced Course” covers not only the conservation environment, but also general conservation of cultural properties, and is conducted by the Center for Conservation Science. In the 2025 Advanced Course, lectures and practical training based on research results in various research fields were conducted by the Center for Conservation Science, and lectures on the conservation and restoration of various cultural properties and cultural property rescue were provided by external lecturers. This year, as the use of fumigants that are effective against mold has been restricted, there was a lot of interest in lectures and practical training on alternatives.
The lecture topics were as follows:
・Theory of restoration of cultural properties
・Scientific investigation of cultural properties
・Air quality (about air quality / effects of air pollution on cultural properties / concepts of ventilation)
・Theory and discuss of storage environment
・Introduction and practice of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) for cultural properties
・Types and characteristics of restoration materials
・Deterioration and conservation of outdoor materials
・Protection of heritage of modernization
・Conservation and restoration of various cultural properties
・Disaster prevention in museums
・Conservation and restoration of folk artifacts
・Preservation of large volumes of documents, and countermeasures against deterioration
・Conservation and restoration of works on paper
・Preservation and management of photographs
Participants commented, “I was able to gain a lot of knowledge that can be used in cultural heritage preservation throughout the region, not just at my own museum, so I would like to share the information with curators in the area and put the knowledge I gained into practice from a broader perspective,” and “Throughout the training period, I was able to connect with other participants, and it was a good opportunity to meet colleagues from all over the country who are in the same position and with whom I can consult more professionally about practical issues.” These comments suggest that this training served as a forum for building connections with other museums, which was one of the aims of the training. There were also comments that it would be good to have more opportunities for discussion and practical training in addition to lectures, and we will consider further enhancing the content of the training in the future.