A partial view of the scroll painting "Spring in Jiangnan" by renowned Ming Dynasty painter Qiu Ying Photo: The Paper

East China's Jiangsu Province has established a joint investigation team to conduct a comprehensive probe into the management of cultural relics at the Nanjing Museum, CCTV reported on Tuesday.

The Jiangsu provincial investigation follows an earlier announcement on Tuesday that China's National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA) has formed a working group to investigate the matter. According to NCHA's official website, the working group has already been dispatched to Nanjing to commence its work.

The newly formed provincial team is composed of officials from a wide range of departments including discipline inspection, publicity, political and legal affairs, public security, culture and tourism, and cultural relics. 

Its mandate is to carry out a "comprehensive and in-depth investigation" into issues related to the preservation and handling of donated artifacts at the museum, along with broader collection security concerns. The provincial investigation task vowed that any violations of laws or regulations uncovered by the investigation will be dealt with strictly, and that its progress and outcomes will be released to the public in due course, according to CCTV.

This came after the Nanjing Museum has been under spotlight for the whereabouts of some of its collections.

The Xinhua News Agency reported on December 19 that descendants of late renowned collector Pang Laichen discovered that five out of 137 ancient paintings and calligraphy works donated by their family to the Nanjing Museum in 1959 could no longer be located. The Paper reported that one of the "missing" paintings, "Spring in Jiangnan" by renowned Ming Dynasty painter Qiu Ying, appeared in a preview exhibition of a Beijing auction house in May this year with an estimated value of 88 million yuan ($12.50 million). 

In response to public attention, the Nanjing Museum issued a statement on December 17 and stated that the five works had been identified as "inauthentic" decades ago by experts and were later "reallocated" according to regulations. The museum provided expert appraisal records and procedural documentation, indicating that the works were first reviewed in November 1961 by a national panel led by Zhang Heng (Zhang Congyu), and again in June 1964 by three other specialists, including Wang Dunhua, Xu Yunqiu, and Xu Xinnong, who concluded that the painting in focus was not genuine, Xinhua News Agency reported.

According to Xinhua, on May 8, 1997, the painting "Spring in Jiangnan", identified by experts as a forgery, was allocated to the former Jiangsu Provincial Cultural Relics Store and was later purchased by a "customer" for 6,800 yuan on April 16, 2001. The sales receipt clearly listed it as "Landscape Scroll Imitating Qiu Ying".

The incident is still under investigation.

Global Times