Nanjing Museum in East China's Jiangsu province has presented documents to show that a presumably 16th-century Chinese landscape painting at the center of an ongoing donation controversy and lawsuits was recognized as a "forged" piece.

The response came amid growing public concerns about the whereabouts of five classical paintings which were part of a generous donation made by the descendants of noted collector Pang Laichen (1864-1949) to Nanjing Museum in 1959.

Earlier this year, the Pang family members learned that one of the "missing" paintings, titled Jiangnan Spring and attributed to Qiu Ying, a great artist of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), would be sold at a Beijing auction in May. The base price was 88 million yuan ($12.5 million). The painting was withdrawn from the salesroom before the auction after the Pang family protested.

In 2024, Pang's family had sought to know whether the donated artworks were intact, but received no response from the museum. The family then sued Nanjing Museum and was allowed to inquire into all the 137 pieces in the 1959 donation after mediation by the court. They found that five artworks, including Jiangnan Spring, were missing from the museum's storage.

They were told by the museum in July that the five pieces had been deemed "forged" and "reallocated" elsewhere. The reply failed to satisfy the family and the public. On Tuesday, Pang Shuling, a great-granddaughter of Pang Laichen, signed an application for enforcement to the court to compel Nanjing Museum to provide detailed records of the transfer of the five artifacts.

"The donation made by my father to Nanjing Museum in 1959 are all precious works, they are not forged," Pang Shuling stated.

According to Xinhua News Agency on Friday, Nanjing Museum showed a document dated November 1961, saying that Jiangnan Spring was deemed duplicated by a panel consisting of three scholars with expertise in authentication. It was deemed forged by a different scholars' panel in 1964.

Other records from the 1990s show that Jiangnan Spring was among the objects Nanjing Museum disposed of, in accordance with the country's museum collection management regulations then and approval from the Jiangsu's provincial cultural bureau, and were allocated to the Jiangsu Cultural Relics Store, which is now the Jiangsu Cultural Relics Store Co.

A store invoice from 2001, obtained by Xinhua, showed a commodity titled A Copy of Qiu Ying's Jiangnan Spring was sold at 6,800 yuan to an unnamed "customer".

A statement by Nanjing Museum on Wednesday said they were cooperating with the legal proceedings on the investigation of the whereabouts of the five paintings, and will further regulate and enforce the management of the collection.

Zhang Han, an attorney of Nanjing Museum, told Xinhua that the ownership of the painting had been transferred when it was donated, and that the donor had not retained the right for restitution, while Yin Zhijun, Pang Shuling's attorney, said donors should have the right to know whether their donations have been maintained properly.

In 2018, the National Cultural Heritage Administration released interim measures for deaccessioning management of State-owned museum collections. Article 6 regulates that when a State-owned cultural relics collection institution intends to deaccession donated items from its collection, it shall proceed in accordance with the agreement reached with the donor (s); in the absence of such an agreement, the institution shall obtain prior consent from the donor.

"The country's established museum industry has taken a long time to form," Pan Shouyong, a museology professor at Shanghai University, told China Daily. "People's understanding of what a 'cultural relic' is has also been constantly growing.

"It's unfair to always use today's guiding mindset to judge past deeds," he said. "But neither can we conceal a past blemish if we want to achieve more."

He called for more specific regulations concerning cultural relic collections and donations in history.