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THE Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts yesterday opened its new school for preserving and restoring cultural relics, which institute officials say will help address a serious shortage in the field.

“Many repairers graduated from vocational schools and universities in related majors, focusing on archeology and archeological restoration,” Jiang Daoyin, one of China’s top ceramic restoration specialists and a professor at the school said yesterday at the opening ceremony.

“Our school will cultivate undergraduates in the techniques of restoring relics for exhibition, which is more sophisticated,” he said.

“We will train our students to be capable of not only identifying cultural heritage, but also conservation and restoration.”

The school offers bachelor degrees. It will start with majors in restoring paper, ceramics and painting, but will add other specialties, such as conserving bronzeware, ancient furniture, buildings, textiles and frescoes, said the dean of the new school, Xu Jian.

Forty-five students have been admitted for the three existing majors and specialists will be brought in from around the country for lectures.

The university also signed a cooperation agreement yesterday with the China Foundation for Cultural Heritage Conservation to promote education of talented students.

Half the 30 million relics in museums and other institutions need restoring. But there are only about 10,000 qualified specialists.

It would take them at least 150 years to restore all the pieces.