Welcome to the Homepage of the Conservation Office. As you navigate through our webpage, you should be able to have a better understanding on our organization structure, scope of service, Vision, Mission and Values, as well as our facilities and work disciplines, in relation to conservation and preservation of the local cultural property.

Conservation is a primary function of museums, which serves to preserve the invaluable and irreplaceable cultural property for the future generation. It basically consists of preventive and interventive conservation. In essence, preventive conservation emphasizes on preserving the physical condition of cultural property through the control of environmental parameters, biological activities, and human factors; whereas interventive conservation addresses the treatment needs of individual items and execution of the identified treatment plans. Conservation is therefore a long term commitment which requires the provision of proper care for the cultural property with life-long responsibilities. Inadequate provision of such can result in the loss of cultural property through courses of deterioration, and very often the loss is irrecoverable.

As necessitated by the material nature of our diverse collections, the Office has now 8 specialized units, namely Paintings, Photographs & Prints, Historical Documents, Textiles & Natural History Specimens, Organic Materials, Ceramics & Inorganic Materials, Metals and Archaeological Finds, to deal with the conservation demands from our client museums, Art Promotion Office and the Antiquities and Monuments Office. Operating from 13 purpose equipped conservation laboratories, specialist conservators will conduct detail examination on the physical condition of objects, formulate treatment proposals, implement the treatment plans, monitor the condition of the objects after treatment, and maintain documentation records for the objects. On the side of preventive conservation, they will identify what specific display and storage conditions are required for the well-being of the objects and how the museum environment can be modified to suit the conservation requirements. Also, they will research on the suitability of different conservation methodology as well as the composition, reversibility, permanence, properties and compatibility of various conservation materials for use on cultural objects.

While we hope you would find our homepage both interesting and informative, we look forward to share with you the joy and challenge in our everyday work. Please let us know your views.