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What We Do
Antiquities Collection Management
We safeguard and document Bhutan’s sacred objects, ensuring that every object, from ancient manuscripts to ritual artifacts, is properly cataloged, stored, and preserved.
Our services include inventory management, condition assessments, secure storage, and monitoring, protecting Bhutan’s tangible heritage for future generations.
Conservation Studios
Our studios provide specialized care for thangka, textiles, paper, and objects, combining traditional techniques with modern conservation methods to serve living heritage pieces.
We offer restoration, stabilization, and preventive care services, ensuring that each piece retains its cultural, spiritual, and material integrity.
Research and Outreach
We generate knowledge, deepen understanding, and facilitate informed decision-making. Our services include heritage research, documentation, exhibitions, training workshops, and educational outreach.
By sharing expertise and fostering learning, we empower monks, nuns, and the wider community to actively care for Bhutan’s living heritage.
Recent Projects
Digitize Dratshang
For centuries, Bhutan’s sacred texts and ritual records were carefully preserved on handmade paper and palm leaves, later held in paper archives without a complete digital record. With the blessings of His Majesty the King and His Holiness the Je Khenpo, ZDPACC began Bhutan’s first systematic digitization of monastic heritage. Monastic custodians carry this responsibility forward, documenting sacred collections within their own temples, even in remote and high-altitude regions. These treasures are never removed from their spiritual homes; they are recorded with patience, reverence, and care.
This work goes beyond preservation. It protects a living tradition—ensuring that Bhutan’s spiritual heritage endures not only as history, but as a sacred inheritance still alive in daily life.
If you wish to support the preservation of this living tradition, learn more
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Monastery Restoration Projects
Lhadzong Tashigang Monastery: Thimphu District
November 2020 - October 2023
One of the oldest meditation retreat centers in the Kingdom of Bhutan, founded in 1768 by the 12th Je Khenpo, Kunga Gyamtsho.
In this video witness the monastic conservation work as the team carefully restores a monastery severely damaged by the 2011 earthquake back to life.
Tashigomang Project: Portable Altars of Bhutan
2016-2019
Tashigomangs are portable Buddhist altars representing the celestial palace or realms of Guru Rinpoche, Avalokiteshvara or Amitabha. The Lam Manip or lay ritual practitioner travereses mountains, carrying these portable altars to display them in the remote towns and villages.
As the Lam Manip's spiritual songs are carried by the Himalayan winds, the Tashigomang is slowly uncovered, its many small doors and windows are opened layer by layer, revealing multiple sacred figures and deities of whom he sings of. This experience of an unfolding, living mandala, accompanied by chants and spirutal songs is a moving site of devotion as the local community gather around it to listen, making thier offerings and receiving its blessings.
The monastic team, together with craftspeople worked in the Tashigomang Project, under the Royal Patronage of Her Majesty the Royal Grandmother Gyalyum Kesang Choeden Wangchuck of Bhutan; restoring over 35 Tashigomangs from monasteries and temples from around the Kingdom of Bhutan. The very last two Manips, who were 75 and 90 years old at the time, also trained over 20 young lay monastics the spiritual songs and how to care, handle and use the Tashigomangs.