THE MUSEUMS AND

COLLECTIONS OF HIGHER
EDUCATION

The Museums and Collections of Higher Education provides an analysis of the historic
connections between materiality and higher education, developed through diverse
examples of global practice.
Outlining the different value propositions that museums and collections bring to
higher education, the historic link between objects, evidence and academic knowledge is
examined with reference to the origin point of both types of organisation. Museums and
collections bring institutional reflection, cross-disciplinary bridges, digital extension
options and participatory potential. Given the two primary sources of text and object, a
singular source type predisposes a knowledge system to epistemic stasis, whereas mixed
sources develop the potential for epistemic disruption and possible change. Museums and
collections, therefore, are essential in the academies of higher learning. With the many
challenges confronting humanity, it is argued that connecting intellect with social action
for societal change through university museums should be a contemporary manifestation
of the social contract of universities.
Much has been written about museums and universities, but there is little about
university museums and collections. This book will interest museum scholars and
practitioners especially those unaware that university museums are at the forefront of
museological creativity. It will also be of interest to academics and the growing number
of leaders and managers in the modern university.

Andrew Simpson has worked for Australian universities in professional and academic
capacities. This has included being a solo operator of a university museum and in­
troducing and developing Australia’s first undergraduate degree program in Museum
Studies. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Affiliate at the Chau Chak Wing
Museum, the University of Sydney and is active in UMAC, ICOM’s International
Committee for University Museums and Collections. His research interests include the
history, role and functions of museums, in particular, university museums, museum
education, natural history and the public understanding of science.
THE MUSEUMS AND
COLLECTIONS OF
HIGHER EDUCATION

Andrew Simpson
Cover image: The Chau Chak Wing Museum with The University of
Sydney quadrangle in the background. Courtesy of Anthony Fretwell
Photography.
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Andrew Simpson
The right of Andrew Simpson to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
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from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-032-03033-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-03007-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-18653-3 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003186533

Typeset in Bembo
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
This book is dedicated to Jo, Calum and Jamie with thanks for your love and
gracious acceptance of my obsessive interest in museums.
CONTENTS

Preface viii
Acknowledgements x

1 An introduction to the museums and collections of higher

education 1

2 Developing institutional narratives 25

3 Crossing discipline boundaries 45

4 Getting more from objects and collections 64

5 Involving people and communities 82

6 Lessons from university museums and collections 101

References 124
Index 159
PREFACE

It’s amazing the stuff you can find hidden in out of the way places on a university
campus, particularly a venerable old institution, but also in younger ones. Many
years ago in an institution far, far away, a seismograph dutifully sat in the corner of
a university museum recording signals from elsewhere. Needles would shake and
quiver, tracing out squiggles on large rolls of paper every time the crust of the
planet growled. A technician would come and change the paper on the machine
every day. This was the pre-digital world where piles of paper accumulated
rapidly. Fortunately, just across the way there was an old staircase with ample
room underneath for securely storing a “Manhattan” skyline of piles of paper.
Unfortunately, the same was also a convenient place for cleaning contractors to
store a variety of very effective cleaning products. What could possibly go wrong?
A dynamic new Head of Department had been appointed. A new broom,
destined to transform the research culture of the institution. New laboratories
would be built, new investigative techniques would be employed, a stream of
“Nature” papers were eagerly anticipated. New epistemological treasures were
within reach, it would bring academic esteem and research “rock star” status to the
place. The university was destined to rapidly climb the world rankings. Early on,
the new appointment met the department’s past. Rows and rows of specimens that
were the basis of the scientific understanding of this part of the world filled
cabinets in the museum’s storage areas. Here was the outcome of generations of
scientific endeavour, here was the history of research in the place and here was the
evidence of claims made in scientific journals from work done in the university’s
name. The new boss was horrified. “My department will not be a warehouse for
memorabilia!” The university leadership group nodded in agreement.
Elsewhere in the world others were contemplating the big questions about what
does all this stuff scattered across the campus actually represent. Could any of it
possibly be of use, or is it better of destined for landfill? Could there be any
 Preface ix

creative things that could be done with this old stuff? Could it be useful for
teaching, research or maybe even public programs? Would it be possible to
recreate how people did research in the past? What purpose would that serve?
Could it actually be something that might encourage people to come and study
here? Maybe it could become a new research centre in itself? We could get some
new academic staff perhaps, professors of materiality maybe? If we were really
clever, perhaps it could be used to attract some philanthropy?
Two contrasting scenarios, differing responses in different parts of the higher
education sector at the same time. Why such dramatically different approaches at
different institutions? Well actually it is even possible for both to happen at the
same institution; stuff discarded one moment is retrieved from the rubbish pile the
next (Nykänen et al. 2013). What is it about the institutional setting of the
university, is it more challenging for the materiality of knowledge than a civic
museum setting? Writing this book was an attempt to find answers to some of
these questions.
The best way to think about a university is to use an analogy from physics. At the
macroscopic level classical physics laws apply, at the micro-level (atoms, nuclei, etc.)
quantum physics laws apply. If you look at the organisation from the outside, as a
whole, at the macro-level, it is complex but steadily and resolutely carries out its
obligations in a careful and measured way. It looks serene and purposeful, like a large
ocean liner it can change direction, but this takes time and is not something that can
be rushed. It looks solid, trustworthy and steady. But drill down into the structure, to
the micro-level and the calm solidity breaks down straight away. At the micro-level,
it is complete chaos, continuous struggle, activity and change, nothing stays still for a
moment, randomness rules everywhere.
So how is it possible to have a museum with its concept of perpetuity, or at least
longevity, in this kind of institutional setting of continual churn? Hopefully, this
book shows that indeed, not only is it possible, but the closeness of materiality to
the intellectual mission means that museology in the academy can have poignancy
and relevance that humanity needs in these challenging times. Museology in the
academy is worthy of closer study and careful consideration.

Reference
Nykänen, P., Kuuva, M., Saukkalo, A., & Vähätalo, A. 2013. Final works of students of
Helsinki School of Technology 1850-1851 are safe now. Transactions of the Royal
Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters 2013 (3), 101–108.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are a great number of people with whom I’ve discussed university museums
and collections over recent years while this book developed from a vague notion
to an actual object. Many conversations occurred in person, others through the
ubiquitous interface of Zoom and Teams during the COVID-19 pandemic. There
are many more with whom I’ve had fruitful and interesting conversations on the
subject over a long period of both working in university museums and while
participating with professional and informal museum groups at a local, national and
international scale.
It would be impossible to list them all, so they are limited to those generous with
their time in discussions about university museums and collections and the contents
of this book, those who have actively supported the writing project, pointed me
towards hard to find documents or provided enthusiastic encouragement at crucial
intervals. For these people, it was usually some combination of a number of those
characteristics and generosities.
While their help was invaluable, they are of course in no way responsible for the
way any of the mad ideas in this book have come together. I am guilty as charged
and the only one to be held accountable for content and conclusions.
In no particular order I wish to thank the following friends, colleagues, intrepid
souls and fellow travellers: Gina Hammond, Jane Thogersen, Marta Lourenço,
Steph Scholten, Sébastien Soubiran, Hugues Dreyssé, Nathalie Nyst, Alistair
Kwan, John Wetenhall, Barbara Rothermel, Panu Nykänen, Dominick
Verschelde, Paul Bentley, Bernice Murphy, Ing-Marie Munktell, Peter Tirrell,
Michael Mares, Peter Stanbury, Barrie Reynolds, Andy Reed, Brian Shepherd,
Amareswar Galla, Leonard Janiszewski, Rhonda Davis, Effy Alexakis, Di Yerbury,
Lyndel King, Wenjia Qui, Zhao Ke, Kate Arnold-Forster, Akiko Fukuno,
Fatemeh Ahmadi, Margarita Guzman, David Ellis, Paul Donnelly, Jenny
Horder, Col Lynam, Cornelia Weber, Jill Hartz, Isidro Abaño, Christine Khor,
 Acknowledgements xi

Peny Theologi-Gouti, Luisa Fernanda Rico Mansard, Stephanie Chinneck, Kit

Nelson, Chantelle Dollimore, Giovanna Vitelli, Mirna Heruc, Anna Rivett, Caine
Chennatt, Narelle Jarry, Jane King, Jason Benjamin, Sian Tiley-Nel, Eve Guerry,
Joana Ślaga, Yu Homma, Sayuri Tanabashi, Carol Scott, Suzanne Bravery, Hakim
Abdul Rahim, Yingyod Lapwong, Svitlana Muravska, Ruth Mawson, John
Talent, Paul Meszaros, David Mathieson, Leon Satterthwaite and of course Jo,
Calum and Jamie. Thanks to the Horn family for letting me spend so much time at
Eudlo in the beautiful Paterson River Valley where a lot of the writing took place.
Thanks also to the kindly editorial folk at Routledge, both commissioning and
copy, who gently steered the project forward.

Front cover image of the Chau Chak Wing Museum at The University of Sydney
by Anthony Fretwell.
1
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE
MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS
OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Every group of people, through different means of communication, transmits their

collective knowledge, values and culture to the succeeding generation. This is a
broad definition of education (Dewey 1916). Universities and museums can be
viewed as different types of educational organisations. Universities, as we understand
them today, provide structured formal learning experiences from defined curricula
to equip graduates with knowledge, skills and intellectual capabilities. Museums, as
we understand them today, provide unstructured informal learning through ex-
hibitions and other programmes that pique curiosity and arouse interest in subjects
chosen by the visitor. When the two types of organisations are conceptualised in
this way, the obvious difference can be explained by who supposedly controls the
learning or educational agenda. For the former, it is controlled by the institution, for
the later it is controlled by the individual engaging with the institution.
It can also be broadly claimed that both organisations engage in a combination of
the generation of knowledge and the transmission of knowledge. For the purpose
of this introductory argument, knowledge can be defined as the acquisition of facts,
information and skills acquired through experience or education that provides a
theoretical and practical understanding of a subject or range of subject matter. It is
therefore worth considering whether these different types of organisation, the
university and the museum, apply the same methods to the generation of knowl-
edge. Do they have the same basis for discriminating between truth and belief ? Are
there fundamental differences in their methods? This is a complex question given the
history of knowledge and the intertwined historical concepts of museums and
universities. For now let us avoid the quicksand of epistemology and agree that,
more broadly speaking, both types of organisation can be seen as undertaking the
work of both cultural production and cultural transmission.
There is, of course, one place where these two institutional concepts intersect.
But it is an unusual form of intersection, where one occurs as an entire subset of
DOI: 10.4324/9781003186533-1
2 Introduction

the other. It is the world of the university museum and collection, where material
collections are a part of the academic enterprise. It is the subject of this book.
Everyone is familiar with the amazing objects that make up the collections of
world famous museums and art galleries. For example, objects such as the mask
of Tutankhamen, housed the Egyptian Museum Cairo, are quintessential that most
(particularly in the western world) associate with ancient Egypt. Similarly,
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in the Louvre, Paris, is an iconic and almost
instantly recognisable work of art, its mystique includes endless speculation about
the subject and endless crowds seeking a glimpse of the original work.
But there is another world of collecting that is not as well known, yet it can be
claimed to have equally extraordinary objects. These can be found in the museums
behind the walls of the gated academic communities of higher education. Some of
them such as the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Harvard Museum of Natural
History in Harvard University and the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University
of Melbourne are reasonably well known to the general public in their respective
communities. Some may have a high public profile and significant public visitation
and even a digital presence that connects them with a global audience.
Some of them, such as Manchester University’s Manchester Museum, essentially
provide the same level of regional cultural provision that many government-funded,
state-supported museums do. Others such as the National Museum of Natural
History and Science at the University of Lisbon perform the role of a national
museum of natural history for all of Portugal. Most university museums, however,
are not in this stellar class of well-known institutions, they do not have a significant
public profile. Most are only known to alumni who have been or still are engaged
with their university and have virtually no profile with the general public.
If we consider why universities would develop collections in the first place, we
need to understand the modern notions of the university and the museum, both
of which emerged, in the familiar form that has become the global model ever
since, during the Renaissance. The idea of the university emerged from pre-
existing notions of elite academies. Whereas the idea of the museum emerged
from pre-existing notions of the “cabinets of curiosity” or “wunderkammer.” It
made sense for universities to develop collections particularly at a time where
concepts of knowledge underpinned by the empiricism of the Enlightenment
were undergoing profound and fundamental change.
Objects have always been closely associated with knowledge. The ancestors of
the modern museum, the “cabinets of curiosity” were constructs through which
the elites of society could proclaim their connection to knowledge of the world
through collecting. It is therefore natural for a knowledge-based organisation, such
as a university, to want to collect objects and specimens. Collecting can therefore
be interpreted as a scholarly tradition that stretches back to the Renaissance and
probably much further.
Universities were undoubtedly amongst the earliest public institutions to house
collections. Some claim (Boylan 1999) that the oldest museum in terms of familiar
structures and functions was, in fact, a university museum. Oxford University’s
 Introduction 3

Ashmolean Museum opened in May 1683, its collections covered geology, zo-
ology, ethnography and objects of antiquarian interest. This was originally the
private collection of Elias Ashmole housed in a purpose-built building designed
“in order to the promoting and carrying on with greater ease and success severall
parts of usefull and curious learning, for which it is so well contrived and
designed” (Clark 1894). As an organisation it formed a centre for scholarship, a
specialised academy, in its own right.1 This model has been adopted universally
as the museum concept recognised throughout the world today. The affinity
between objects and knowledge is therefore an enduring relationship.
But is there evidence that the relationship of collecting for scholarly purposes
to inform structured learning within academies significantly pre-dates the
Renaissance? What sort of material collecting accompanied the search for truth
and knowledge; and were collections used in transferring information to new
generations of scholars?
History tells us that the urge to collect is a universal human trait. Even our close
relatives, the Neanderthals, made collections of naturally occurring objects
(Monnier 2012). But what was the purpose or reason for making such collections?
It was obviously related to tool-making, but the question is, were collections made
as a means of passing on information to others? This would require a capability for
symbolic thought (McBrearty & Brooks 2000) and at least a nascent development
of complex thought processes implying cognitive abilities such as language.
Evidence of symbolism in primitive human or humanoid societies is usually in-
dicated by manifestations of figurative art, ornamentation, use of pigments and
ritual burial. This has been recently recognised in Neanderthal society (Finlayson
2019). It’s hard to imagine a collection of shells and stones not being used for
instructional purposes such as which ones make what tools, what is safe to eat and
what isn’t etc. The impulse to organise and name objects in collections, a process
that is dependent on the cognitive development of language, is the basis of our
modern understanding of taxonomy.
There has been a number of theories regarding the purpose of some the earliest
cave painting in Europe, such as Lascaux and Alta Mira. The depictions of animals
in Lascaux has been linked with hunting rituals. Some infer an understanding of
relationships between species depicted and environmental conditions (e.g. Tauxe
2007). There are also claims that the visual representations in the caves at Lascaux
have links to cosmological knowledge (Rappenglück 2015), something that vastly
pre-dates the star charts of Babylon and ancient Egypt (Neugebauer 1952). The
difficult to access nature of these ancient cave paintings suggests their use was not
an everyday occurrence. The art of these times, it is argued, probably performed
multiple tasks such as depicting spiritual beings and asserting social power. Some
see a wider range of functionality similar to modern visual culture, including
interior decoration and as narration devices (Robb 2020). They can be interpreted
as materials of visual cultural production used for cultural transmission, in other
words the earliest form of art gallery as we understand it today. Similarly,
Palaeolithic collections, if used for ritual purposes, can be viewed as the earliest
4 Introduction

forms of museum education practice. On the other side of the world, the rich
artistic traditions of Australian Aboriginal culture are seen as ways individuals are
socialised into the Dreaming or ancient past (Morphy 1999), in other words, how
knowledge is passed on from one generation to the next. From the above pre-
historic examples, there exists at least the potential for uses in both cultural pro-
duction and cultural transmission.
One of the earliest forms of collecting in antiquity, in fact pre-classical times,
however, was driven more by ideology rather than a quest for knowledge. The
Elamite King, Shuttruck Nahhunte, conquered much of ancient Mesopotamia and
Babylonia 30 centuries ago. The spoils of conquest were brought back to the
capital of his empire, Susa, and put on display. This was to educate his citizens to
be in awe of his power and to show that the vanquished gods of other peoples
were no match. Some 1,400 years later, the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II,
took a great interest in the objects of earlier ages, conducted archaeological digs,
studied ancient inscriptions and amassed many of these into a museum for the
general public. It was named the “Wonder Cabinet of Mankind” and was one of
the earliest known history museums (Casson 1973, 54). While the contents are
partially known, we can only speculate about any associated educational activity.
There were botanical collections in antiquity, these gardens were a source of
knowledge about plants and their pharmacological applications. A well-developed
botanic garden is like an encyclopaedia or reference work on botany; like a
universal museum it is a source of information that could be used in both the
generation and transmission of knowledge. Royal gardens were often used for this
purpose, set aside for economic use and display. Often, many of the plants making
up these gardens were the result of military campaigns far afield or even special
collecting expeditions. They are known from the second millennium BCE in
ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Crete, Mexico and China (O’Brien 2010). The
Chinese Emperor Sheng Nung, said to have lived some 4,500 years ago, sent
collectors to distant regions searching for plants with economic or medicinal value
(Hill 1915). The collection was the basis of the Hortus medicus, the Sheng Nung
Peng Tsao is considered the earliest materia medica, c. 1500 BCE: Garden of the
King of Thebes, Egypt (Foster 1999).2 One of the earliest zoological gardens is also
found in ancient Egypt, 1460 BCE (Foster 1999), the Menagerie of Queen
Hatshepsut who reigned from c. 1473 to 1458 BCE in Thebes.3 While these
collections would have had a scholastic utility or application, it is not possible from
remaining sources to deduce the existence of any scholarly structures akin to a
university that accompanied these collections.
Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria collected plants and seeds from abroad for growing at
home during the 9th century BCE (Foster 1999). But it is one of his successors,
the wealthy and powerful king of Assyria, Ashurbanipal, who developed a Royal
Library in 640 BCE that was an attempt at capturing encyclopaedic knowledge in
textual form. His Library was based in the capital Nimrud (or Ashur) and con-
tained over 30,000 clay tablets. Many of the tablets were copies of copies; there
were scribes who worked for the King reproducing clay tablets. The Library
 Introduction 5

included tales from the epic of creation, the Epic of Gilgamesh (Murray 2009).4
While using war loot as a means of stocking his library, it is claimed he sent some
of his scribes out to collect ancient texts and hired scribes to copy them particularly
from Babylonian sources (Polastron 2007). The King was a voracious collector
driven by a desire to accumulate texts, it is difficult to imagine that a resource such
as this wouldn’t also have been a centre for some forms of scholarship.
Instead of seeking out ancient collecting practices and attempting to retrofit an
organised and structured scholarly context, Boylan (1999), in discussing the
forerunners of university museums, makes the point that we know very little about
the collections that could have been held by the earliest university-like academies.
He notes there is some archaeological evidence from ancient Mesopotamia at Lasa
from the second millennium BCE and also from “museum rooms” from Ur dated
at 530 BCE (Woolley & Moorey 1982, Lewis 1984). The Sumerian school
museum at Ur had historic artefacts dating from 2000 BCE and even a “museum
label” in clay.5
These briefly summarised pre-classical examples seem to be attempts to under-
stand, or develop knowledge, through a collective accumulation of materiality,
including both non-living and living collections. It is difficult to infer any collection
and exhibition trends from the time, something that would give organisational in-
sights. Given such a significant historical distance, it is difficult to interpret the
purpose for their original establishment, how they were used and by whom. It makes
it difficult to judge how similar these collections were to modern day university
collections in terms of their original purpose, use and organisational structure. There
is always a danger where information is scant of projecting modern assumptions onto
ancient circumstances and coming to inaccurate, if not prefabricated, conclusions.
We should also be mindful that pre-modern belief systems, cosmologies and sys-
tems of categorising the natural world were often closely bound up with prevailing
religious beliefs in different ancient societies. So while the generation of knowledge
was socially and culturally specific, the transmission of knowledge often, in many
ancient societies, was largely an oral tradition with limited material intersections. In
some societies, such as Hindu, that oral tradition could be through an individual
teacher or guru (Kumar 2019) rather than through a formalised academic structure.
It has also been argued that in some ancient societies, such as ancient Egypt, there was
no general view of the animal world or any standardised nomenclature and set of
hierarchical structures as we’d understand from a more modern conceptualisation of
taxonomy. Yet, there are still examples of classification and even classification models
in some individual sources (Gerke 2017). This is a reminder that different sources can
imply different contexts rather than indicate a broader and widely accepted con-
ceptual understanding of how nature is structured.
Once we move to classical times, there are the earliest formulations of both the
academy and the museum as we might understand them. The Ancient Greeks are
generally viewed as laying the foundations of what is broadly viewed as Western
civilisation, including much of its scientific and epistemological frameworks. The
impact of one ancient Greek, Aristotle, is particularly relevant to the establishment
6 Introduction

of modern science and modern scientific methodologies, including the develop-

ment of museum collections.
The derivation of the word museum is based on the Temple of the Muses, the nine
goddesses of ancient Greece who underscored the creative activity of the elites of
Greek Society. The muses were all about inspiration and were linked to specific
activities. They were therefore sources of divine inspiration for creativity, inspiration
for expression through language. The nine muses were the daughters of Zeus and
Mnemosyne (literally memory personified) described enigmatically by Alexander
(1979, 6) as “sprightly and pleasantly amoral young goddesses.” They were Calliope,
Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania.
They were the muses of epic poetry, history, love poetry, music, tragedy, sacred
poetry, dance, comedy and astronomy/astrology, respectively. In this regard the
muses can be seen as specific personification of cultural transmission at the time. The
foundation of a free person’s education in ancient Greece was to be exposed to this
oral tradition through the muses. There was a clear difference and distinction between
lower classes working with their hands on crafts, and elite classes dealing with ideas.
There were no muses responsible for the things that have ended up in modern
museums, namely: artworks, artefacts and natural history specimens. All of them
were responsible for the oral transmission of knowledge. Sculpture and painting
had no intellectual status in ancient Greece because these were manual under-
takings. The inspiration of the muses was all about orality and rhetoric. The in-
fluence of Aristotle would fundamentally change this.
The Mouseion, or home of the muses, was at the Library of Alexandria thought
to have been established sometime during the rule of, and by, Ptolemy Soter
(323–283 BC). He was the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled Egypt until
30 BCE, turning the country into a Hellenistic kingdom and Alexandria into a
centre of Greek culture. The institution was a philosophical school or library,
the institution of the muses, home of music and poetry. The Great Library of
Alexandria was part of a larger academy, the Mouseion. While it was not the first
library with aspirations to be universal in nature, it did attract significant scho-
larship and a large number of people who would be considered, in modern terms,
as researchers. It was a centre of knowledge and learning largely because of the
Great Library. It is hard to imagine that it didn’t house collections at some stage,
especially because of the influence of Aristotle, largely as a result of Ptolemy’s
enthusiasm for developing a mythology around Alexander the Great as a way of
legitimising his own reign (Erskine 1995). Much of the material that found its way
to Alexandria consisted of books looted from other libraries, but also animals and
plants from newly conquered territory. There was a collection of statues, surgical
and astronomical equipment, animal skins (and even elephant’s trunks) and bo-
tanical and zoological collections (Danilov 1996). At its height the Library is
thought to have actively supported many scholars. It has been claimed that
Alexandria during the Ptolemaic period was as intellectually significant a location
as Athens, although some also note that the main achievements in Alexandria were
literature and science rather than philosophy (Blumenthal 1993).
 Introduction 7

Apart from the world of ideas, rhetoric and discourse being a pastime reserved for
the elites of society, the idea of scholarship being an associated privilege
reserved only for the upper classes was clear in ancient society. In discussing the
origin and transmission of Hellenistic science, Neugebauer (1952) notes that
Aristotle considered the existence of a leisure class as a necessary condition for sci-
entific work. The Museum and Library at Alexandria was established along the lines
of Aristotle’s Lyceum. Erskine (1995) argues that this went beyond the usual pa-
tronage of artists and scholars practiced by the wealthy, here was a whole learned
community supported by the ruler. Erskine (1995, 68) quotes Timon of Phlius as
saying of this community “In the populous land of Egypt there is a crowd of bookish
scribblers who get fed as they argue away interminably in the chicken coop of the
Muses.” This statement sounds like it could be an everyman’s complaint of academic
departments in the modern university. So, even though the Ashmolean, a university
museum, is seen as the archetype of the modern public museum, the organisational
elements of the university museum were in place in antiquity.
While the name Aristotle is closely linked with classical philosophy, he is also
considered to be the leading biologist of classical antiquity (Mayr 1982), the first
embryologist (Needham 1959), the first comparative anatomist, the first biogeo-
grapher and the first serious scholar of animal behaviour (Leroi 2014). Aristotle’s
philosophy is characterised by deductive logic and an analytic inductive method in
the study of nature and natural law. His thinking involved engaging with the
world through the senses, thus observation became the central method for un-
derstanding and knowledge. He used dissection as a way of investigating the
differences between animals. His understanding of the natural world was based on
the “scala natura” a progressive ladder from inanimate objects, such as stones,
through to the divine realm.6 It had a huge impact on medieval Christianity and
was pervasive as a natural world order in Europe for many centuries.
Observation meant the likelihood of developing collections for the purpose
of comparing different types. The Mouseion at Alexandria was conceived as a
community of scholars closely linked with, and supported by, the ruling dynasty,
a totalitarian colonial ruler, at the time. There is evidence of the existence of
collections of rarities and curiosities of various kinds indicated by recent scholars
(e.g. Canfora 1992) with ancient texts. This fed an interest in the study of nature
and systematic explorations and explanations of natural phenomena. Although the
term “metaphysics” was coined after Aristotle, he referred to it as the con-
templation of the divine or “first philosophy” in contrast with his studies of
mathematics and natural science (physics). This ensured that for Aristotle anything
other than the divine was the subject of direct observation, induction and de-
duction (Aristotle 1999).
Aristotle’s own academy, the Lyceum, representing his Peripatetic form of
philosophy, was established in Athens in 334 BCE. The location is believed to
have been discovered in 1996 in a park behind the Hellenic Parliament (Lakkiotis
2010). It is where he wrote many of his texts, not for publication, but thought to
be aids for giving lectures. Given the nature of his research work that included
8 Introduction

many dissections and the description of over 500 animal species, the existence
of collections for teaching and demonstration is highly likely (Boylan 1999).
The influence of Aristotle and his pupil Theophrastus, one of the first to compile
systematic descriptions of plant species, would have impacted many of the
elite academies and proto-universities in both the East and West for the next
800–1,000 years, particularly in the area of taxonomy (Boylan 1999).
While philosophers such as Aristotle would associate knowledge and meaning
with materiality, there are plenty of examples of the activity of collecting mate-
riality per se throughout Archaic to Late Classical societies. The political, social
and religious importance of such collections has been the subject of relatively
recent scholarship. Gahtan & Pegazzano (2015) identify public, private and virtual7
collections during these periods. Strong (1973) identified the growth of museum-
like structures for religious dedication and public benefaction. Public collections in
the ancient world were associated with collections of votive objects (Gahtan &
Pegazzano 2015) with a complex and ever-evolving range of interconnected
motivations between individuals, places and public administrations. Objects on
public display retained deep religious meanings while also serving other political,
cultural and aesthetic purposes. The conflation of the sacred and the political in
public displays is well understood (e.g. Becatti 1956).8 Another important de-
velopment in ancient Rome, during the reign of Augustus, was the appointment
of two curators for the administration of collections of public art. They reported
directly to the Emperor and had significant staff (Liverani 2015).
Pollit (1978) asserted that ancient Rome anticipated the private collecting
practices of the modern era and many public collections started as private ones,
establishing a resonant pattern throughout the history of museology, including the
history of university collections. Others have argued that some collections were
conceived specifically as an evocation, through objects, of a specific context (Marvin
2008) where a characteristic of elite Roman society was to show their collections
publically. Apart from catalogues and images of objects there is also evidence of
written accounts of comparison between objects and notions of style, history and
provenance (Prioux 2008, Steward 2005). Furthermore, authors such as Boardman
(2002) have noted the tendency of the Ancient Greeks in particular to anchor their
mythic history in objects giving significance to provenance.
While all of these activities in the ancient world give indirect evidence of
scholarship, there is little direct evidence of the entanglement between objects and
knowledge other than from the Mouseion in Alexandria. The texts, however, in
particular Pliny’s Natural History, were an attempt to unite all parts of the empire at
the time, by documenting the physical preservation of objects and natural
resources in a thesaurus-like compilation. As has been noted by some (e.g. Gahtan &
Pegazzano 2015) this attempt to capture the memory of all things is the same uni-
versal aspiration that Renaissance humanism would bring to the accumulation of
encyclopaedic collections many centuries later. These were sometimes described as
“Microcosms of the World” (Findlen 1989). The term “Microcosm” has recurred
firstly during the Renaissance as a description of some comprehensive cabinets of
 Introduction 9

curiosity and, in recent times, as a description of the entirety of collections in a

university (Robertson 2010).
In terms of the ability to collect and exchange materials from different parts of
the world, trade routes were well established by the first century CE. There were
maritime routes between Africa, India and the Middle East and overland trade
routes between India south-east Asia and China (later to be known as the Silk
Road). Many trade routes converged on Alexandria bringing together traders,
cultures and commodities from all over the ancient world. Some of this trade
would be associated with cultural practices centred on knowledge. For example,
Indian medicines and medical knowledge were available across Central and East
Asia by the middle of the first millennium (Touwaide & Appetiti 2013).9 India has
one of the oldest continuously practiced botanical-medical systems in the world;
the spread of this knowledge across Asia through Central Asian trade routes was
associated with the spread of Buddhism.
Lourenço (2005)10 noted that in many of the histories of museums, the university
has been omitted or downplayed. The same has happened in those histories that take
a disciplinary approach. There is little written in terms of historical analysis of
the development of university collections or the materiality of the academy.
Nevertheless, Boylan (1999, 44) rightfully supposes that during the Hellenic and
Roman periods several academies “devoted to particular philosophical traditions
would have had significant portrait collections, presumably on public display.”
Lourenço (2005) also noted that the early “universities” established in Muslim
Spain, particularly Cordoba, Seville and Granada, that evolved from mosques
(Zaimeche 2002),11 taught medicine and materia medica. While text and dia-
grammatic representations are useful in these disciplines, these subjects could only
be taught effectively with the use of material collections. There was also a tradition
in the Muslim world from the 10th to 13th centuries of hospitals being centres for
health education, attracting the best scholars from a wide geographical area (Hayes
1992). The oldest medical school in the West was the “Scoula Medica Salernitana”
established in the 9th century, it became the capital of Norman Southern Italy
(Kristeller 1955). It was positioned at the intersection of trade routes that brought
the East and West into contact. The school was closely associated with a com-
prehensive collection of plants and the provision of therapeutic herbs from the
Salerno botanic gardens (Della Monica et al. 2013). Muslim scholarship of the
same period extended well beyond medicine and encompassed all areas of human
intellectual endeavour. The Persian scholar Ibn Sina (980–1037), known in the
West as Avicenna, described fossil remains of aquatic and other animals found on
mountains and explained the mountains as effects of upheavals of the crust of
the Earth. Nothing is known of where this described material was stored, but it
is reasonable to infer some form of associated institutional repository for such
material could have existed at the time. Another possibility is that collections
associated with knowledge were not routinely institutionalised. It is possible they
may have remained the property of the scholar, a part of their tools of trade as a
learned teacher.
10 Introduction

In the Muslim world, the early establishment of scholastic organisations, in

association with religious and cultural centres, was supported by private bene-
faction. Al-Qarawiyyin University was founded in 859 CE, by Fatima Al-Fihri, in
Tunisia. She committed her entire fortune, inherited from her wealthy business
man father, to build a community mosque (Hoque & Abdullah 2021). The
centralised location of the mosque was reinforced by an official policy of building
Islamic colleges in the surrounding area. It attracted many scholars from northern
Morocco and other areas of the Islamic world who studied theology and other
subjects (Hoque & Abdullah 2021). There are only a small number of historical
sources on the history of knowledge over a large geographic area and a con-
siderable span of time (Savage-Smith 1988).12
Similarly, in the western Eurasian region during the first millennium, little can
be deduced about material collections for scholarly purposes. This period saw a
transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages accompanied by the decline
of the Roman empire and the rise of Christianity. Mass migration of peoples
occurred at this time. It is known that collections of curiosities were made by
the wealthy and powerful. Palaces of princes and noblemen accumulated art ob-
jects and treasures through trade and the Crusades. This was described as due to
the “magpiety of mankind” Alexander (1979, 7), quoting Taylor (1945).13 This
activity was to grow and form the forerunners of the modern museum. Any form
of advanced education at the time was usually associated with religious institutions,
learning was largely based on classical texts. Some scholars have noted it is difficult
to pinpoint an exact date for the origin of the “university” because of definitional
variations (Lourenço 2005), but it is generally accepted as within the interval
embracing the close of the first and the start of the second millennium.
Lloyd (2004) has compared the ancient Hellenic Schools of Philosophy, ancient
Chinese academies and the early Medieval Universities of Europe as organisations
that explored universal knowledge. Similarities and differences in levels of state
support are noted. There were similarities between some ancient Chinese aca-
demies and Medieval Europe in terms of supporting the professions. It is believed
that in both, at the time, the majority of the teaching was text based. One spe-
cialised academy in China was the Imperial Astronomical Bureau responsible for
interpreting celestial phenomena. It lasted for 2,000 years until the Qing Dynasty
(Lloyd 2004, 146–147), it would have held instruments and charts for research. In
ancient India, it has been argued that the Buddhist centre of scholarship known as
Nālandā, that existed between 600 BCE and 600 CE, was essentially a university
(Sankalia 1934). While teachings were also text based, an arts and crafts school was
part of this academy, so some form of materiality as part of the day-to-day work of
teaching is highly likely, apart from sculptures and paintings associated with the
spiritual side of instruction practiced there.
At the time when Thomas Aquinas was enshrining Aristotelian principles into
Christianity, we see the development of the earliest academic structures that re-
semble the modern university. Education was based on ancient natural philoso-
phical, mathematical and medical texts. Livesey (2016) noted the emergence of
 Introduction 11

certain organisational characteristics that represent the birth of European uni-

versities during the 12th and 13th centuries. These include a utilitarian application
of learning for new emerging vocations at the time, their establishment as cor-
porate bodies recognised under law and the development of fixed curricula and
accreditation through the granting of academic degrees. Scholars and students had
a form of legal protection as members of this new type of organisation. This
separated them from pre-existing medieval schools and gave them the ability to
draw on vast geographic areas to enlist students. Previously, Malden (1835), in
recognising the same developments across Europe in the 12th century, traced the
origins of the European university back to Charlemagne and the establishment of
the University of Paris around the year 800 CE. Malden (1835, 3) attributed
the revival of intellectual activity in the 12th century to “the violent excitement
of the first crusade.”
Different reasons have been offered to explain this change in education. These
include a struggle for autonomy, the influx of translated Greek and Arabic works
(Grundmann 1964) and the alliance of economic, social and political elites who were
seeking the services of scholars for the ruling class (de Ridder-Symoens 1992).
Livesey (2016) noted the curriculum was usually divided between arts, theology, law
and medicine; where arts was sometimes preparatory for medicine. There was a
focus on Aristotelian texts. Colleges became of increasing importance; this meant the
acquisition of pedagogic responsibilities including the development of libraries. Most
scholastic materials used in teaching were text based. There is little archival material
from these early organisations that reveal insights into their structures and operations.
What does remain reveals similar patterns from different institutions, Duranti (1994)
considered this a result of judicial thinking; only legally binding arrangements were
documented at the time. Most transactional institutional activity was orally based.
When pedagogy is essentially text based, identifying teaching collections in
medieval universities is a difficult task; lecture and disputation were the main
modes of teaching (Rudy 1984, Verger 1996, Livesey 2016). While there would
be little call in text-based areas of knowledge such as arts and theology, it is dif-
ficult to see how more vocationally based instruction, such as medicine, could be
done without some form of collected materiality. Observing the dissection of
the human body was an essential part of an education in medicine; as fundamental
as knowledge of materia medica, it allowed future physicians to understand body
morphology enabling the recognition of anatomical variations. Some of the ear-
liest European universities, such as the University of Bologna, were known to
have established body donation programmes. It’s hard to imagine that something
similar could not have happened at Salerno and Pavia.
Apart from the obvious need in medicine, some authors (e.g. Lourenço 2005)
find the general absence of collections in the medieval university questionable.
When we consider the medieval curriculum of the seven arts divided into the tri-
vium and quadrivium, the later entailing music, mathematics, geometry and
astronomy and the development of instrumentation for resolving questions, this
represents a form of materiality that would be needed to accompany the curriculum.
12 Introduction

Lourenço (2005) cites Leff (1996) with examples of instrumentation for measuring
the physical properties of bodies from both the universities of Oxford and Paris in
the 14th century.14 This, with the knowledge of dissections in medieval medical
schools and the need for knowledge of botanical pharmacology (Siraisi 1996), meant
that object-based teaching was already established in the medieval university
(Lourenço 2005).
Lourenço (2005) establishes a clear lineage for university collections back to
antiquity and throughout the history of universities. There are also parallels with the
broader development of museums that inform the development of the academy.
Wunderkammer, or “cabinets of curiosity,” were used by university teachers (Impey
& MacGregor 2001, Mauriès 2002). These “cabinets” are probably best char-
acterised as descended from the Middle Ages treasure troves of the church and
princes (Ball 2012) and were developed by wealthy merchants, rulers and other
aristocrats as a part of learning with entertainment. While curiosity cabinets were
collected as an artifice to proclaim the knowledge of the owners to the world, they
were not primarily structured on academic principles, rather they were an amalgam
of the rare, eclectic and unusual arranged to accentuate a form of wonderment,
proto-classification and symbolism. Many of these private collections, however, did
end up being transferred to universities to become the basis of university collections
and museums; others were developed at the university by (usually) individual aca-
demics (Schupbach 2001). Cabinets of curiosities would serve the advance of science
when catalogues were published, a well-known early example being the Museum
Wormianum (1655), used the collection of naturalia as a starting point for Ole
Worm’s15 thoughts on philosophy, science and natural history among other topics
(Tarp 2018). The tradition of the collections of wealthy individuals ending up in
higher education continues today.16
While the historic importance of botanical gardens and anatomical theatres as
the first types of material collections in universities, it was during the 16th century
that there was a concerted attempt to collect objects for specific purposes and
particular academic audiences. During the 16th century, wax models of anatomical
features and skeletal collections appeared associated with anatomical theatres
(Lourenço 2005). Collections for teaching medicine also attracted a diversity of
material; apart from botanical pharmacopeia, geological specimens could also be
found because of their supposed healing properties (Olmi 2001).
In the late 16th century, Lourenço (2005) identified the study collection as
distinct from a teaching collection. These were for advanced study by students and
professors and has a structure that would enable comparison and/or experi-
mentation. This was an early adoption of the museological capacity to compare
and contrast things that were alike or unlike. These collections were to become
more predominant with the disciplinary specialisation associated with the
Renaissance; they were the progenitor of the discipline-based research collection.
Similar collections were started by newly minted scientific or philosophic asso-
ciations, merchants, noblemen and even individual academics and flourished from
the 16th to the 18th century. Many of these would end up being absorbed into
 Introduction 13

university collections and museums. Some were to become impressively com-

prehensive as research collections, a three-dimensional encyclopaedia of objects
that approached a form of universalism within their speciality. The 18th century
busied itself with discovering the natural laws of the world. Intellectuals of the
time wanted to preserve the stuff of the world in museums. Alexander (1979, 8)
described it as “supposedly they would help educate humankind and abet its steady
progress towards perfection.”
Forbes (1853) argued that a museum should be an open textbook of reference.
The importance of observation in a rounded higher education is a counter-balance
to the cultivation of taste through purely literary studies of reasoning and logic, the
most useful museums are those made as accessory to professorial instruction.
Rather than being based on the symbolism of the Wunderkammer, study and
research collections were for systematic analysis. One of the earliest study col-
lections was put together by Ulisse Aldrovandi (1527–1605), professor de fossi-
bilus, plantis et animalibus at the University of Bologna (Olmi 2001). Study
collections were based on empiricism and paved the way for greater, more am-
bitious classificatory undertakings by the likes of Linnaeus,17 Buffon and others.
The literature generally accounts for the first university museum, in fact the first
museum, in a modern sense, as being the Ashmolean at Oxford University that
opened in 1683. It is considered “modern” because of evidence in its structure of
serving three distinct purposes, namely teaching, research and public engagement.
It was a place of exhibitions for the public, a laboratory, classroom and library. It
was an organised scholarly unit within a larger institutional scholarly organisation.
Lourenço (2005) argued that it was a disruption of the former tradition of teaching
and study collections because it institutionalised the university’s triple mission into
a singular structure. Based on the donation of Elias Ashmole’s private collection, it
was a major conceptual adjustment for the university. Lourenço (2005), however,
points out that the public had been involved with university collections prior to
this date through, for example, comprising a popular audience for dissections in
Bologna as early as 1316. Furthermore, there were pre-existing examples such as
the Basel University Museum. It resulted from the purchase of the privately
owned Amerbach Cabinet by the University and city of Basel in 1661. It opened
to the public in 1671. Nevertheless, the Ashmolean is viewed as the historical
pivot point in the development of the civic museum because the model was
subsequently widely adopted both inside and outside the academy.
Once the model was established, it flourished as a knowledge system because it
helped to consolidate the expansion of European science and culture across the
globe, a process that involved bringing the rest of the world back to Europe (Dear
2009). Explorations driven by economic imperatives were the tentacles of im-
perialism forced deep into the unknown seeking new wealth and opportunity, the
start of globalisation in a modern sense. The grand narrative of the enlightenment
drove these imperial ambitions; scientific facts and reasoning, universal truths, a
sense of evolution and linear progress, an accumulative sense of history and even a
notion of liberal humanism. These colonial interventions meant that for centuries,
14 Introduction

shiploads of material were drawn into the European centres of Empire from all
around the world forming the basis of many, now famous, museum collections.
Museums became a mechanism to show the extent and power of the empire
enhanced by international religious, scientific and mercantile networks that fa-
cilitated the movement of natural history specimens, cultural materials and even
human remains. The scientific imperative advanced through the empiricism of
observation and classification, the flourishing of natural philosophy and eventually
the fragmentation of knowledge into multiple disciplines ensued. All forms and
methods of accumulating knowledge were considered worthwhile. Previous ta-
boos that limited curiosity such as the veneration of ancient texts and the humility
induced by religious and cultural sensibilities was swept aside by this tsunami of
empiricism (Findlen 1994, Freedberg 2002, Ball 2012).
This splintering of disciplinary knowledge in the late 18th century onwards leads to
the formation of discipline-specific university museums, particularly in the sciences
that required observation such as botany, zoology, archaeology, palaeontology,
mineralogy and anthropology. This process was facilitated by developments in
preservation techniques and scientific illustration. A series of revolutions in our un-
derstanding of the natural world, starting with the grand taxonomic endeavours of
Linnaeus at the University of Uppsala, established the basis of botanical and zoological
classification. Identification relied on direct comparison, collections were essential
for scholarship. Collections expanded throughout the universities of the world as
people endeavoured to know every variation of natural forms. The acceptance of
Darwin’s evolutionary ideas as a framework for binding this breathtaking diversity
together in the 19th century, was the basis for expanding scholarship in the academies
that continues today with modern technologies that enable detailed molecular
characterisation of the living world.
Studies of the ancient world through archaeological excavations saw scholarship
that developed an understanding of Prehistoric, Egyptian and Classical time periods.
All of this required comparison of objects. In this way, reference collections were at
the very heart of university research. University collections contained information as
relevant as that in the university library. The 18th and 19th centuries have been
referred to as the “Golden Age” of the university museum (Lourenço 2005). As
study collections grew to be research collections with the influx of new material, the
objects in them gained both contextual and pedagogical value. The Humboldt re-
volution in higher education integrating research and teaching (Anderson 2004) also
stimulated the development of university museums after 1810. Research collections
in archaeology came to universities after 1836, a process of separating anthropology
collections from natural history collections occurred around the 1830s to the 1840s.
Many of the systematic collections were formed during the 19th century pre-
eminence of taxonomic study. Also during the 19th century, art history, an-
thropology, archaeology and other humanities gained disciplinary and institutional
recognition and identity. Peabody (1911) explained how processes for the study of
natural history can be applied to the social sciences, the eye was the primary organ
of scientific knowledge. He believed that the process of close observation and
 Introduction 15

induction as practiced in the natural sciences should also be applied to the social
sciences. Peabody (1911) claimed this was particularly needed in United States
higher education because of the flood of urgent social problems, many of them a
result of welcoming waves of migration from around the world, including from
nations unfamiliar with democracy. The study of objects, documents and archives
in a social science museum would give graduates insights into vagrancy, the drink
question, delinquency and other social problems. The social museum offered the
graduate a corrective to hasty judgements and becomes a prerequisite of judicious
conclusions in much the same way as the Museum of Comparative Zoology assists
the naturalist.
The artefact had changed from being an ornament to a document, giving it both
pedagogic cogency and research utility. Objects added an extra dimension to
the learning experience unavailable through text and talk. Collections were used
for learning in the laboratory or tutorial room as triggers for exceptional and unique
learning experiences. They could relate, bind and integrate spatial definition with
layers of contextual narrative about culture, science and society. Objects are sticky
with meaning (Simpson 2014a). The first-generation university museum (Lourenço
2005) had come of age serving all three missions of the university: teaching, research
and community engagement. Many art collections were established to supply a
cultural and aesthetic quality to university life, including at universities with no
curriculum in either fine or contemporary art. University museums and their
collections represented a practical manifestation of the spirit of discovery. In its
totality, by the 19th century university collections constituted a significant part of
the artistic, cultural, historic and scientific heritage of some European nations. This
European model of higher education, in more recent times, particularly in the
second half of the 20th century, has become global. Their purposes – education,
research and engagement – were not different from those of non-university mu-
seums; however, the emphasis on how those functions are equilibrated is more
diverse. Literature specific to university museums at the time emphasised their ability
to contribute to the tripartite academic mission (e.g. Guthe 1966).
However, with the compartmentalisation of the disciplines another problem
arose for academic collectors, one of value and relevance. It is an issue still highly
contested within individual institutions today. Despite the unequivocal success
of the Ashmolean model, this issue became apparent very early on in the history of
the same university museum. In 1755, Oxford University, on the order of uni-
versity authorities, burnt the natural history collections of the Ashmolean
Museum, a mere 72 years after the opening of the museum. These were seen as
legacy collections, or collections with little relevance or value to university
business. It included the only known specimen of the extinct giant flightless pi-
geon of Mauritius known as the Dodo.18 At the time the university’s leadership
could not have possibly anticipated the Linnaean and Darwinian revolutions in
understanding the natural world that would require large natural history collec-
tions to underpin research progress. This approach to legacy collections, seen as no
longer of value, has been described as the “curse of the university museum”
16 Introduction

(Lourenço 2005). Intervention by university leadership usually prompts such

events. The challenge of legacy collections has been a well-spring for writing
about university museums. Even during what was considered the “golden age” of
university museums, some authors such as Dill (1917) mention the “deplorable
conditions existing in some US college museums.” Also noted is the problem of
orphan museums in higher education, this (Dill 1917) is one of the earliest pieces
of writing on the subject. More recently, in association with a late 21st century
crisis for university museums and collections (see below) authors such as Mares
(1999) have outlined frustration between the short-termism of the rotating door
of university leadership and the long-term aspiration of collection building and
development, particularly where these two clash because of financial stringency.
Boylan (1999) identified the issue of orphan collections in universities as something
that requires collaboration outside the academy to minimise information loss.
While such an intervention might seem negative, there is always pressure on
university resources, things that are underutilised have no place. How does the
dynamic and ever-changing world of higher education sit with the concept of a
museum holding things if not in perpetuity, then at least for a very long time? This
core tension remains unresolved and it could be argued that this is a defining
characteristic of museums and collections in higher education. The same tension
has also led the formation of a completely new type of university museum during
the 20th century. This is the historical university museum, referred to by
Lourenço (2005) as the second generation of university museums. These are based
on university collections that are useful as expressions of university identity. The
objects that make up these collections and museums are no longer of relevance to
their original purpose. As noted by Lourenço (2005, 77) “the line between
practices of daily teaching and research and daily negligence can be very thin.”
These second-generation historic collections can consist of instruments, models,
machines, and prototypes etc., things that have been literally rescued from discarded
rubbish because an individual thought it worth keeping. Often a long and complex
campaign is required to convince university leadership of the value and relevance
of such material. This is frequently the case with scientific equipment that had a
specifically utilitarian original purpose, it will commonly be repurposed or even
deconstructed and cannibalised as a way of answering new scientific questions. This
sort of heritage is therefore often not identified as heritage in university settings
where there is pressure to produce data and move on to addressing new scientific
questions (Boudia & Soubiran 2013). Second-generation historic collections can of
course also include non-scientific heritage such as paintings, sculptures, particularly
of individuals associated with the history of the institution, and objects such as
university seals, symbols, ceremonial equipment and historic archival material.
There has been a big increase in the number of second-generation university
museums since the 1960s, there are many reasons for this. Firstly, this period has
seen major growth in population, the number of universities and the number of
museums globally. Many of these new types of university museums have been
established in accordance with institutional anniversaries (Lourenço 2005) as they
 Introduction 17

often prompt a period of reflection and celebration of institutional achievements

and identity. Material culture is a tangible manifestation of institutional identity.
Much of the material that makes up these second-generation university collections
may be dispersed in many corridor and foyer areas as informal displays for many
years (Lourenço 2005) before there are agreements to establish a new university
museum. The first- and second-generation museums and collections can also sit
alongside each other in the one institution. They will co-exist on campus despite
representing different origins, purposes and epistemologies.
The globalisation of the university museum as an organisational component of
higher education systems serving university purposes of teaching, research and
engagement has been thorough. But changes to the operating environment in
higher education precipitated another crisis of identity late in the 20th century.
Over the last decades of the 20th century and the opening decades of the 21st
century, as knowledge has become democratised and higher learning available to
many, we have witnessed an exponential growth in the number of museums and
the number of universities and also the number of university museums. Objects
can play a fundamental role in each of the university’s tripartite mission. However,
not all university leadership groups will view collections sanguinely, particularly if
they have slipped from the mainstream of academic life. Research agendas and
teaching pedagogies change over time, and this can affect both the visibility and
perceptions of value of the university museum and collection. While museums can
play a part in all three roles, depending on their purpose, what they were designed
for in the first place, may not be how they are used in the longer term. These
changes in perceptions of value led Meadow (2010) to apply rubbish theory to
university collections as a way of conceptualising changes in value.
In recent times a lot of this ambiguous tension can possibly be attributed to the
sometimes competitive duality of economic value and epistemic value. This can
pose serious threats to collections particularly if it is not possible to envisage any
further utility for knowledge production. When the focus of research shifts, it may
be considered simply economically prudent to discard a collection that was pre-
viously associated with scientific endeavour, but no longer considered relevant.
When organisations are busy working on new research issues, and there are no
adequate resources to take care of the collections, these easily become unvalued
objects stored in a backroom of the lecture hall, hence the term “orphan col-
lections” (Nykänen 2018). Quite often national legislative or funding require-
ments for research do not specify what should become of the material results of
collections made as a response to the research question, or, there may only be
short-term requirements specified about keeping the original materials. Many of
the scientific leaders in higher education today would consider it anathema that
their empires should become atrophied with material best considered by them as
“memorabilia” associated with bygone achievements.
The situation became difficult in Europe from the 1960s onwards. There was a
rapid development of universities’ administrative organisation. They were influ-
enced by declining government funding and a need to seek out more private
18 Introduction

capital. They readily adopted much of the corporate approaches found in the
business world. There were mergers of institutions, renovations of old buildings,
development of new forms of research infrastructure and even, in some cases,
abandoning the old campus in favour of a new modern premises. Another reason
for the undervaluation of collections came from changes in research agendas; there
was less focus on taxonomy in zoological and botanical science in favour of new
forms of biochemical analysis. The same applied in geology where the emphasis
was now on detailed geochemical analysis rather than basic mineralogy and
geology. In teaching, there was less focus on individual specimen observation and
more on data and data manipulation. In other words, there were new approaches
to the generation and transmission of knowledge.
These changes had an impact not only in Europe but on all universities based
on the European model around the world. Davis (1976) recognised the financial
challenges for university museums in the United States. Warhurst (1986) dis-
cussed university museums in the United Kingdom and identified them as
afflicted by a triple crisis of identity, identification and resources. The identity
problem stemmed from the patchwork of governance arrangements and a ple-
thora of diverse original purposes. The identification problem was a matter of
even knowing just how many existed in the university sector; the number,
particularly of collections, that could be hidden from the mainstream of campus
life were unknown, detailed surveys were required. Identifying the need to take
stock could be readily transferred to other national jurisdictions. There was a
general sense that university museums were marginalised from the mainstream
museum profession (Stanbury 2000) and that those who worked in them were
professionally isolated (Weeks 2000). Collections could lack a clearly defined
purpose and there was little recognition by senior management of their potential.
While now “lonely,” by the 1990s the university museum curator’s role was a lot
more complex. It needed to be one that understood that changes in higher
education brings changes in how museum collections are valued. Hamilton
(1995) discriminated between decorative and didactic collections, an interesting
early reflection on purpose and a hint of the coming importance of using col-
lections for institutional narratives.
Reports from other nations identified similar problems. Danilov (1996) in his
compendium of university and college museums in the United States concludes
that there is an inherent “precarity” for many university museums because of
funding constraints at the time. Arnold-Forster (2000) reported on the significance
of some UK university museums, but noted there is a vast majority of museums
and collections that are largely unknown, there was a patchwork of governance
arrangements for them at the time that left many openly susceptible to the risks of
disposal or dispersal. They also fell short of national management standards for
collections despite the significance of their holdings. The article also summarised
the findings of the (then) recent “Beyond the Ark” series of regional assessments of
university museums and collections. This was one of a number of national surveys
undertaken around this time.
 Introduction 19

Almeida & Martins (2000) gave a description of the situation for university
museums and collections in Brazil at the turn of the millennium. They concluded
that some university museums in the country have only survived by serendipity
and noted that although there are many spectacular museums and collections,
many more struggle to continue offering services. Hudson & Legget (2000) de-
scribed a fairly small university museum sector in New Zealand and a fairly bleak
portrait of government and university disinterest. There was a perceived dis-
connect at the time between museum professionals and university museum pro-
fessionals, with the later described as a rare and endangered species. Similar
situations were documented for Belguim (van den Driessche 2000), Japan
(Kinoshita & Yasui 2000), Mexico (Herreman 2000) and the Philippines (Labrador
2000). There was a particular concern about US university natural history mu-
seums (Tirrell 2000). Some individual university responses to the situation in-
volved creative reconfigurations of known material collections as a way of
attempting to extract a new value proposition from the collections. These new and
very recent moves are characterised by Lourenço (2005) as the third generation of
university museums. They are new ways of using materiality in universities, related
to the more complex and competitive operating environment. Like the second
generation, they are led by the institution, but go much further than just iden-
tifying historical material to form a new museum. Some are outlined and described
in the chapters that follow.
Three of the most significant national surveys from the late 20th century are
briefly noted here as examples, while there have certainly been others; these
capture the same picture of great diversity of university museums and collections
facing similar issues at the time. There is the comprehensive survey (at the time by
Danilov, 1996) in the United States. The results categorise most university mu-
seums around disciplinary areas and provides extensive short summaries (Danilov
1996). There is discussion covering history, governance, research and other topics
of operational relevance. Over one thousand (1108) museums, galleries and similar
facilities were identified. It was recognised that plenty may be missing and the real
number may be much higher because of survey definitions and the low organi-
sational profile of some collections and even museums. In Australia, two sector-
wide reports were compiled in the late 1990s after lobbying by the Council of
Australian University Museums and Collections (CAUMAC), an organisation that
was formed in 1993. Two reports were produced known as the “Cinderella
Reports” (University Museums Review Committee 1996, University Museums
Project Committee 1998), the first identified 256 university museums and collec-
tions in Australia and identified a widespread poor level of awareness on the part of
the universities. A raft of recommendations relating to industry standards and policy
development were forwarded to various stakeholders with mixed results. As this was
an “opt in” survey, later work has shown that the actual number of museums
and collections in Australia is much greater (Simpson 2012a). The Museums and
Galleries Commission in the United Kingdom undertook a series of regionally based
surveys of university museums between 1998 and 2002. Over 400 university
20 Introduction

museums and collections were identified with similar characteristics of complexity

and diversity, results were summarised by Arnold-Forster (2000) and Merriman
(2002).
The database compiled by the University Museums and Collections (UMAC)
International Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) has
just under 4,000 entries at the time of writing. This is the best possible approx-
imation of the nature and scale of material collections in higher education globally.
However, like many of the pre-existing national surveys it is probably a gross
under estimate. This is because, like the “Cinderella Collections” survey, it is an
“opt in” system. Someone who works with or knows a university museum or
collection has to put it forward for the database. The database is dominated
by European university museums and collections which comprise over half the
entries. Just over 500 are listed in the database for North America19 and just over
300 for South America. Only a mere 43 entries represent museums and collections
of higher education in China, this is undoubtedly a massive under-estimate as the
Chinese university sector has been investing heavily in cultural infrastructure in
the form of museums and galleries for their higher education sector in recent years.
Only 21 university museums and collections are on the database from the entire
continent of Africa, with more than half of these from South Africa. However, as
seen throughout the history of universities, they are more likely to have collections
than not.
The database can only be considered as a partial view of the global reality, the
real number is probably closer to 10,000 than 4,000. The database divides the
museums and collections into a number of subject areas, the largest being natural
history and natural science collections followed by cultural history and art col-
lections. The database also divides entries into a variety of institutional types. The
majority of the entries in the database are split almost evenly between museums
and collections, but there are a few other categories that are represented by
multiple entries. These include botanic gardens and herbaria, house museums/
memorial places, science centres, observatories, zoos and aquaria and sculpture
parks. There is a single entry for a campus prison, it is at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-
Universität Greifswald; enigmatically it can only be visited “by appointment.”
Danilov’s (1996) survey turned up some unusual university museums that
couldn’t be placed into regular categories. This included the Delaware Technical
and Community College Treasures of the Sea exhibition of shipwreck-related
artefacts; the Johnson and Wales University Culinary Archives and Museum and
the University of Hartford’s Museum of American Political Life. The first two of
these are still operational while the last has closed at the time of writing. Also in
this group (Danilov 1996),20 the Transylvania University Museum of Early
Philosophical Apparatus, essentially a collection of historic scientific equipment,
has morphed into the Monroe Moosnick Medical and Science Museum. This
illustrates a couple of salient points about university museums. They come and
go,21 or they combine and change as their host institution sees fit,22 and they are
often named after significant figures. This is not just a North American
 Introduction 21

phenomena but a global one. The entire collection of the Edith Cowan University
Museum of Childhood in Australia (Pascoe 2013) was transferred to a state mu-
seum. While childhood was a transient thing in higher education, the Museum of
Death at Airlangga University, Surabaya, Indonesia, seems to be a more permanent
fixture. The Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University, the Petrie Museum at
University College London, Mendel Museum at Masaryk University, Czech
Republic, the Percy Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne valorise
universally known individuals in the history of science and culture. The Vilamajó
House Museum, Universidad de la República Uruguay, celebrates the work of the
famous South American architect. Apart from those already noted, outside of
the UMAC database there are a limited number of surveys and general compi-
lations of data at a national or regional level.23
We’ve seen how university museums and collections can support teaching,
especially in those disciplines that require observation and comparison. We’ve also
seen how they can support research, both by being a repository of specimens or
objects used by the university in carrying out research. This may also include the
deposition of type specimens in university collections, there are varying practices
around this from one institution to the next. For example, type specimens have always
been part of the Sedgewick Museum’s palaeontological collections at Cambridge
University. Type specimens have all the diagnostic characteristics that define a certain
taxon such as a species or a genus. Having a systematic research collection can generate
new research questions and attract researchers in the same ways that the cabinets of
curiosity attracted the virtuosi in 16th century Italy. Museums and collections can also
play a role in community engagement; they are the shop window of the university.
They can help recruit new students, maintain connections with alumni and foster
engagement with a wide variety of audiences and institutional partners. Alternatively,
university museums can make a general non-specific statement about the type of
institution of which they are part (Tucci 2002, Burman 2006).
One way of considering how a university values its museums and collections is
to look at the governance arrangements in place. While there has been a massive
recent expansion in the literature on higher education management, largely an
analysis of the corporatisation of the academy (e.g. Olssen 2004, Sanderson &
Watters 2006, McACarthur 2011, Aspromourgos 2012), relatively little has been
written on the management of university museums and collections. Simpson
(2012b) proposed a sliding scale of governance with increasing centralised control.
The most basic are those, usually collections rather than museums, that are es-
sentially ungoverned, do not have any status at any level of the university in terms
of funding or statutes and are unlikely to have any associated staff. The second
category were described as disjunct museums and collections. These are recognised
within individual sub-institutional structures, usually departments responsible for
individually governing each. There would be little or no contribution or input of
funding or strategic initiatives from any higher level institutional organisation or
the institution itself. These first two categories essentially represent the first gen-
eration of university museums and collections of Lourenço (2005).
22 Introduction

The third governance model involves some form of centralised management. It

was described as converged (Simpson 2012b), and could be either administratively
or physically converged.24 This form of centralisation within the institute is
analogous to Lourenço’s (2005) second generation of university museum. The
converged model involves some form of centralised support either through
funding and/or strategic input. This could be as simple as having a centralised
museums and collections service within the university. The other end of the
spectrum of the converged model is when there is a form of physical convergence
of museum and/or museum and collection assets. The case of physically converged
museum spaces is analogous to Lourenço’s (2005) third generation of university
museum. Deliberate planning has enabled a rearrangement of assets and a certain
type of presentation to both university and non-university audiences within a
specific space or series of spaces. Some examples of these are explored in this book.
The fourth governance model was one where museum and collection assets in a
higher education setting are externally partnered. This is an uncommon form of
governance at present; however, it will be argued towards the end of the book that
this is likely to become a more common form of governance in the future.
This introductory chapter has essentially been background information for the
following four chapters, where individual case studies elaborate on the functions
and roles of university museums and collections. There are close historic links
between the, at times turbulent and at other times quiescent, journey of material
collections throughout the history of higher education with the history of mu-
seology itself. Reasoned argument based on observation is the Aristotelian tradi-
tion born in antiquity. The links between collecting and knowledge go back to the
birth of collecting prior to the establishment of complex societies. This provides
prehistoric context for university museums and collections through to the earliest
organisational forms of purposeful collecting in antiquity. The connections be-
tween objects and knowledge are fundamental to our understanding of the world.
Objects in a collection context or museum technology or methodology have
always been associated with the generation of knowledge. The results of this can
be seen in the rush to develop university museums during the Enlightenment.
Furthermore, it can also be argued that the original model of the museum, as we
know it today, was one inside an elite knowledge-based organisation. This model
became entrenched through the empiricism underpinning the Renaissance when
collections were essential infrastructure for the knowledge enterprise.
A general analysis of the roles and functions of university museums and how
they relate to the tripartite mission of universities, namely teaching, research and
community engagement has been outlined. Many academic disciplines are reliant
on observation and these therefore need collections to enable teaching. Also,
collections have developed at many universities that are the empirical basis of
research. The third mission of the university is broadly defined as engagement
with, and impact on, society. It is another area where objects and the museum
methodology can be harnessed by higher education. This introductory chapter has
concluded with some brief insights and analysis into modern governance practices
 Introduction 23

for museums and collections in higher education. It therefore allows the four
following chapters of case studies to be understood within a framework of historic
and contemporary university museum practice.

Notes
1 As an alternative to considering the university museum as the intersection of two
different types of organisation, the establishment of the Ashmolean can be seen as an
outward-facing academy folded into an existing academy.
2 Other early examples of the establishment of botanical gardens include the Garden of
King Thutmose III, at Temple of Amun, Karnak, Egypt; planted by Nekht, the King
reigned from 1520 to 1504 BCE (Foster 1999).
3 It is said to have included monkeys, leopards, wild cattle, giraffe, and birds (Alexander 1979).
4 While there were plenty of other libraries that focused on administrative documents,
this one was important as the first Royal Library that is known from the contents to
represent the concept of bringing together a comprehensive collection of literary texts
to represent all existing knowledge.
5 The school was established by En-nigaldi-Nanna, daughter of Nabonidus, the last king
of Babylon (Woolley & Moorey 1982).
6 The “scala natura” is also referred to as the “Great Chain of Being” a hierarchical
structure derived from Plato and, in particular, Aristotle’s ordering of the natural world
from god, divine beings, humans, animals, plants and minerals (Lovejoy 1960).
7 Virtual collections at the time refer to textual sources such as collection catalogues of
natural and cultural objects and artworks depicting original objects in collections.
8 Becatti (1956) also noted Pliny’s plea to wealthy, elite collectors to make their col-
lections public rather than hiding them in country villas.
9 Manuscript fragments on Indian medicines in many Central Asian languages were
discovered at the caves of Dunhuang in China (Salguero & Macomber 2020).
10 Lourenço (2005) provides the most comprehensive analysis of the development of the
European university museum.
11 The author compares the Islamic reverence for education in Andalusia at this time with
Italy during the Renaissance some 600 years later.
12 There are many ancient madrasas (Islamic educational institutions) that taught all ages
and levels of education some of which have recently become universities. These include
Al-Azhar University in Egypt, first established in 970 AD. There were also the
Nezamiyeh, a group of Islamic higher education institutions established in Iran in the
11th century.
13 The same occurred in Islam, China and Japan. The Shōsō-in from the 8th century at
Todaiji Monastery at Nara near Kyoto is claimed as probably the oldest museum in the
world (Bazin 1967).
14 The establishment of universities outside Europe followed the expansion of European
empires. Two of the earliest were the National University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru
and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both were established in 1551.
The later dates back to then when its predecessor, the Royal Pontifical University of
Mexico, was founded. It was governed by the Spanish colonial administration up to the
beginning of the 19th century.
15 Worm was a professor of humanities at the University of Copenhagen, and later, professor
of medicine.
16 The Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos, is a recent ex-
ample (Reilly 2020).
17 The great Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) modestly described his scientific
contribution as “God created, but Linnaeus organised” (Blunt 2004). He was a teacher
at the University of Uppsala for many years. About one-third of his students are thought
24 Introduction

to have died during field work, a record that might raise an eyebrow on a modern
university workplace safety committee. The Linnaeus Garden is the oldest botanical
garden at Uppsala University.
18 It was rescued from the fire and is now emblematic of the Oxford University Natural
History Museum.
19 Compare the former with the figure of over 1,000 from the survey by Danilov (1996).
20 None of Danilov’s (1996) uncategorised university museums are currently listed in the
UMAC database.
21 At the time of writing, the Bob Doran Museum of Computing at the University of
Auckland is due to be a most recent addition (opening in July 2022).
22 Malyasova (2013) outlined the evolution of the Museum of Stroganov’s School of
Decorative Art to the Museum of the Moscow Architectural Institute.
23 For example Italy (Corradini 2021), Poland (Kowalski et al. 2020) and Europe (Bremer
& Wegener 2001).
24 Wolfschmidt (2013) discussed Hamburg University collections and concluded physical
convergence was impossible because of the dispersed nature of the institution and
immovable nature of some heritage items.
2
DEVELOPING INSTITUTIONAL
NARRATIVES

The University of Adelaide was established in 1874, the third in Australia, based
on European university models to prepare young South Australians for leadership
positions in science, education and the arts.1 It is one of Australia’s elite “group of
eight” universities, in prestigious national company as a comprehensive, research
intensive university; there are many famous alumni and staff.
There are university museums at Adelaide such as the Tate Museum (geology),
the Vernon-Roberts Museum (pathology & anatomy) and a Museum of Classical
Archaeology. The university also has a large number, and wide range of, collections
from different academic disciplines, including a philosophy collection.2 Ullin T.
Place (1924–2000) was a lecturer in philosophy and psychology at the University of
Adelaide from 1951 to 1954. He was the brother of British poet Milner Place and
Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith. A Place publication in analytical philosophy
(Place 1956) was considered an important step in establishing identity theory. Along
with the philosopher Jack Smart, Place displaced the previously accepted paradigms
of philosophical behaviourism. Place contended mental states should be identified as
neural states and not be defined in terms of behaviour. In other words, consciousness
was nothing more than a brain process. He therefore became one of the founders of
the materialistic mainstream of the philosophy of the mind. The position adopted by
Place and Smart has been referred to internationally as “The Identity Theory of
Mind” or “Australian Materialism.”
Place bequeathed his preserved brain, one of the sources of this new theory of
the mind, to be displayed with the message “Did this Brain Contain the
Consciousness of U. T. Place?” at the University of Adelaide. Viewing the brain of
U. T. Place immediately foments questions in one’s mind about what went
through the brain that was once situated (in Place so to speak) in the University
of Adelaide philosopher. It can be considered a researcher’s unique post-mortem
provocation to future generations of aspiring scholars seeking to understand the mind.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003186533-2
26 Developing institutional narratives

The object itself carries a unique and specific institutional narrative; institutional
context resonating with object and vice versa.
While single objects can capture institutional narratives, so too can collections
and museums. Furthermore, institutional narratives can be complex or simple and
manifest in multi-layered ways. They can simply be ways the institution is promoted
to different audiences through a university museum, or may relate to how one
subsection of the institution presents itself to the public. The narrative may be a basic
elaboration of the institution as a preferred place for study, in other words with the
purpose of student recruitment; or it may be a grander story about imparting in-
stitutional values and aspirations on the surrounding community. The narratives may
be specific to the institution itself, or may be about higher education more generally.
It may result from a specific museum exhibition or be part of a long-term institution-
level strategy. It will be shown that some institutional narratives can align with
regional, or even national, narratives and also connect with international issues of
relevance to the future of humanity. The examples below illustrate this complexity.
It is easy to understand why the development of a strong and distinctive institutional
narrative is a worthwhile institutional pursuit. Reputation is derived from the in-
stitutional narrative, it can, not only benefit student recruitment, but also attract
scholars, research partnerships and philanthropic support.
Institutional narrative in the modern competitive world of higher education has
become synonymous with branding (Osman 2008, Wæraas & Solback 2009).
But branding can entail much more than the academic museum; it can embrace all
the tangible and intangible heritage dimensions of the organisation. It is often
coordinated by large, centralised marketing departments and can include all the
buildings, advertising, ceremonies and symbols of the organisation. Institutional
narratives are symbolic entities and practices that construct identity through
making sense of social context and events (Drori et al. 2016). Even logos, mottos
and slogans are considered valuable branding and identity contrivances (Shahnaz &
Qadir 2020). These can be protected and guarded by a phalanx of operational
actors who exude the fierce intensity and focused purposiveness usually asso-
ciated with the equivalent staff at massive, multi-national corporations. Watch
them bubble with enthusiasm and joy when a Nobel Prize, or even a far less
worthy accolade, is heaped upon “one of their own” institutional colleagues.
With the marketisation of higher education, the process of branding is derived
from the professionalisation of university management and the culture of
globalisation.
In terms of organisation theory, universities are portrayed as partial organisa-
tions; they do not have complete control over things such as their membership,
hierarchy, rules and processes (Ahrne & Brunsson 2011). External legislative,
cultural and social practices can play a role. Museums are also partial organisations,
described as a “loosely coupled system” (Rounds 2012) in terms of their multiple
relationships. They are impacted by a range of legislative requirements framed
by national legal context and are bound by professional standards and ethical
frameworks (both national and international). University museums are therefore
 Developing institutional narratives 27

partial organisations within a partial organisation but also compliant with, and
impacted by, institutional rules and procedures.
What separates the university museum and what happens in it from other
fodder for institutional branding is its location. Their value to institutional nar-
rative is by virtue of their position as boundary-spanning structures. They form a
unique type of connection, or bridge, between the life of the academy and the
society of which they are a part. Some universities will use their museums as a
welcoming open doorway onto the campus (Stanbury 2000, 4). For many of the
public, it may be their only interaction with the academy. They are a link between
academic knowledge and lay knowledge; between academic cultural production
and mainstream society. University museums are positioned to serve multiple
expectations by operating on either side of the academy’s walls.
Some authors have described this positioning, with two distinct masters, the
university and the public, as invoking a form of organisational schizophrenia (e.g.
Tirrell 2000). Some university museums have reassessed their mission and re-
considered their programming to address this supposed dichotomy (Bianco 2009).
But the museum’s boundary-crossing location has implications for the authority of
knowledge and how the university is perceived as a knowledge-generating or-
ganisation, how this plays into public debates and the decision-making processes of
democratic (and non-democratic) governments.
How extensively material collections and museums are a vehicle for pro-
claiming institutional identity depends on the nature of both. In a European
university with an Enlightenment history that includes famous historic scientific
pioneers, there is likely to be material suitable for this purpose. Two examples are
the Whipple Museum of the History of Science at Cambridge and the Museum of
the History of Science, in the former building of the Ashmolean at Oxford
University. Both are 20th century institutional manifestations, though their col-
lections are a lot older.3
The Museum of the History of Science, Oxford University has collections of
mathematical, time-telling and surveying instruments including armillary spheres,
astrolabes and calculating devices; optical instruments such as early microscopes and
telescopes, quadrants and sundials. A report (Standing Commission on Museums and
Galleries 1977, 37) noted there were only two other comparably significant col-
lections in the world at that time. One of the popular collection items is a blackboard
used by Albert Einstein during a lecture at Oxford on 16 May 1931. The lecture was
attended by a large, standing room only crowd and the blackboard recorded
equations on the relationships between the age, density and size of the universe.
In some ways this object is similar to the brain of Ullin T. Place because it resonates
with the institutional setting, despite the fact that Einstein was a visiting scholar
rather than a member of staff. The museum gives the institution a material
connection through this object with a secular hero of science.
At Cambridge, the Whipple Museum of the History of Science commenced
from a donation of instruments and rare books by Robert S. Whipple in 1944 to
generate interest in studying the history of science. Without an individual’s
28 Developing institutional narratives

enthusiasm for the subject and an ability to make a donation of a significant

collection, it is questionable whether such material would have ended up in a
university museum. Other collections associated with the university or the region
were subsequently received, either as donations or long-term loans. For example,
their collections include 19th and 20th century botanical teaching diagrams from
the university’s Department of Plant Sciences, including ones drawn by John
Stevens Henslow, a teacher and friend of Charles Darwin (Taub 2003). As a way
of reflecting the institutional narrative the museum has established exhibitions such
as “An University within Ourselves” (Whipple Museum 1998). This was about
18th century astronomical science at Cambridge, including the observatories es-
tablished at colleges and various teaching facilities. Although the original physical
sites and some equipment haven’t survived, the instruments that were preserved
and constituted the exhibition are an institutional link to the past (Meli 1998).
Other universities with deep European history retain extraordinary collection
items, such as the Jagiellonian University Museum in Kraków that has astro-
nomical equipment from the time Nicolas Copernicus studied at the university
(Abbott 2008).4
Not every university has a narrative that involves historic scientific equipment;
for those that do, not all such equipment survives through to contemporary times.5
There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, items are usually dispersed
throughout a number of departments and/or laboratories (Jardine 2013) and not all
universities will have a centralised approach to historic material. Secondly, as noted
previously, scientific equipment is often recycled (Lourenҫo & Wilson 2013) or
even completely repurposed (De Clerq & Lourenҫo 2003) in the relentless pursuit
of scientific answers.
Different types of science museums can be identified. Tucci (2002) articulated a
specific role for those in university museums. He differentiated history of science
museums from science museums, science centres and scientific collections in re-
search institutes and argued that the first is particularly pertinent for university
museums. Apart from the obvious manifestation of institutional narrative and the
capture of scientific heritage, much historical context is missing from science
education and these university museums play a vital role in disseminating scientific
culture by demonstrating that science is a culturally situated activity (Tucci 2002).
Whether models, instruments, technology, either ancient or more contemporary,
are used in a university museum for either cultural or educational purposes, it is
still a reflection of institutional narrative. It has been argued that repurposing more
recent scientific and technological equipment as museum objects in a university
setting is appropriate, because they are “good to think with” (Jones 2013). Questions
on what constitutes a recent archive of science and should be collected have also
been raised in the literature (e.g. de Chadarevian 2013).
In the days before interactive experiences, scientific models were a popular
focus for educational programmes in science and technology. The Industrial
Museum of Scotland was originally a university museum at Edinburgh University.
It was established in 1854 and closed over 100 years later in the late 1970s. Models
 Developing institutional narratives 29

and original artefacts were given to, or purchased by, the museum. Scottish
manufacturers donated6 to support the development of the museum (Swinney
2013). The university’s first professor of technology, George Wilson, was also the
first museum director. He used the museum, not just for university classes but also
for teaching non-academic audiences and working people of both genders
(Staubermann 2009). This gave the university a reputation for a close association
with the cutting edge industrial technology of contemporary Edinburgh and a
distinctive, liberal, progressive attitude to the dissemination of knowledge.
In 1755, the first state medical university was opened in Moscow.7 However, it
wasn’t until 1990 that the university opened the Sechenov University Museum of
the History of Medicine (Osadchuk et al. 2020). It contains over 80,000 items
such as archival documents, paintings, sculptures, instruments and textbooks as-
sociated with the history of medicine at the university. The collections also include
a copy of the Imperial8 decree proclaiming the establishment of the university.
The museum presents the various organisational iterations of the university
through the pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet eras and focuses on contributions
to the Russian Health Care system. The museum provides a narrative for students
and staff (current and prospective) and citizens that reflect the institutional identity
as a pre-eminent medical teaching and research institute with a deep history and
national significance. In comparison, the Nursing Museum at Charles Darwin
University in the Northern Territory of Australia tells a regional narrative with
historic data and artefacts covering the history of nursing in remote tropical regions
of Australia (Mason 2022).9
The University Museum of Utrecht also maintains a collection (over 180,000
items) that reflects university history. This university museum sees itself as a bridge
between society and the academy. It aims to increase the understanding of science
and elevate interest in both scientific research and scientific education. The uni-
versity believes its scientists are working on some of the most relevant issues
confronting society today, so the museum seeks to demonstrate not just the in-
genuity, resourcefulness and creativity of its scientists, but also the relevance of the
work they do, and hence the societal relevance of the university’s mission (Mourits
2014). There are many universities that promote the work they do to the public in
a similar fashion through their university museums.
Sometimes the nature of the institution and the associated museum are so in-
terrelated that the role the museum plays in reflecting the nature of the parent
institution is obvious. The Musée des Arts et Métiers, in Paris, is the museum
centre of the large higher education and research institution, the Conservatoire
des Arts et Métiers. The collections date from the foundation of the institution
in 1794 during the French Revolution. The collections reflect the notion of
“invention” and consist of engines, models, diagrams, drawings, photography,
machinery, samples etc. It is perhaps best known in popular culture, through the
fiction of Eco (1989) for housing Foucault’s Pendulum. The institution has a
strong articulation between teaching, research and life-long learning. While the
institute, a university for artisans and workers (Jacomy 1995), is well known and a
30 Developing institutional narratives

model for other European institutes; the collection and its history is under-researched
(Jacomy 1995). From a museological perspective, however, the achievements have
been significant. These include pioneering open plan display, and claims to being a
forerunner of the modern science museum (Corcy et al. 2017).
While the examples above are focused on science and its value to society, others
see university museums as a vehicle for communicating university values. Here are
two examples: one through programming and the other through architecture. The
Museum of Ancient Cultures10 at Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) was a
teaching museum in the Department of Ancient History. The collection consisted of
objects from the daily lives of people from a number of ancient cultures. Secondary
school teachers in regional areas don’t, in general, have ready access to material that
supports the ancient history school curriculum. Often the only option for directly
experiencing such material meant lengthy travel to a city-based museum. The
university museum developed a “traveling road show” to take education pro-
grammes to regional schools (van Dyke 2009). This specialised community outreach
programme builds goodwill with teachers, students, their families and the local re-
gional communities. It also helps the university recruit potential students for Ancient
History and leaves the impression that university education programmes will include
object-based learning options. This builds an identity for the types of programmes
the university offers as an institutional narrative.
Burman (2006) discussed the Gustavianum, the oldest building at the University
of Uppsala, and the university’s museum. Professor Olaus Rudbeck redesigned the
building in the 17th century adding an anatomical theatre. Rudbeck,11 a professor
of medicine, also established the first botanical garden in Sweden (Eriksson 2004).
He wanted the buildings to “impress foreigners” and convey a sense of authority
(Burman 2006). The role of the university museum was to make the riches of the
university more vivid, give them physical form with accompanying heroic stories of
intellectual endeavour that illustrate the underlying values of the university. The
museum is the direct voice of the university.
Humboldt University was established in Berlin in 1810. It has provided an
influential model for higher education where the philosophy of teaching and
research, the first and second missions of the university, are structurally iterative.
Around the turn of the last century the university adopted the “Wissenstheater” or
“theatre of knowledge” concept of Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz as a way of
communicating with society (Weber 2001). The concept builds on the idea that in
early modern Europe, museums, gardens laboratories and anatomical theatres all
played a role in the transference of knowledge from a discursive to a visual mode
(Weber 2003a). The university had over 100 collections, mostly inaccessible to
the public. Their “Theatre of Nature and Art” called on the creative use of those
collections with lectures, demonstrations, music and theatre as performative events
drawn from different parts of the university.12
Other universities give their university museums a broader historical remit. The
University of Helsinki was founded in 1640 and is the oldest in Finland. The
University Museum is responsible not only for historical material but also for
 Developing institutional narratives 31

preserving the “continuity” of the university (Heinämies 2008a). It collects both

tangible and intangible heritage. During renovations of older university buildings,
the museum was responsible for documenting and archiving materials related to
the original institutional uses of the buildings pre-renovation. As the first uni-
versity of Finland they also see themselves as having national responsibilities to
collect the culture of higher education. Although the main focus of their col-
lections policy is on items relating to the history, research, tuition and staff of the
university, other significant material can also be included when there is no other
obvious Finnish museum better suited for the material (Heinämies 2008a).
Centuries-old university traditions are also a focus for the museum. Many have
been little changed over time. The ceremonies associated with academic degree
awards can last for days and involve sword whetting, dinners and excursions.13
The university museum becomes an active guardian of university traditions and a
central resource for information. Exhibition works have included features on the
leading thinkers in Finnish history and significant moments in the development of
the university. The museum is a great means of fostering a sense of connection for
new staff and students and is also a great shop-front window for visiting dignitaries.
The university museum has become a focal point that captures and expresses the
nature of the university community.
Changes in the higher education of France during the 1980s led to an enhanced
focus on what has been described as the cultural mediation of science (Boudia et al.
2009). It commenced as projects about archiving data and material scientific
collections from various laboratories and institutes (Soubiran 2006). The aim was
to make material accessible and enable studies of the heritage and history of science
and, additionally, to change the attitude of scientists towards the heritage of their
own work. It was argued that these changes were prompted by disengagement of
the state, increased international competition, reconsideration of the values of
applied and pure research and concern about public perceptions of science and
technology (Soubiran 2008). A restructured University of Strasbourg initiated the
“Jardin des Sciences” project in 2004. It is a university department that organises
and coordinates the promotion of science to a large external regional audience,
including educational activities for school children. It operates through a dis-
tributed set of campus museums and collections and the university’s planetarium.
The planetarium was recently reconceptualised and rebuilt for increased public
engagement (Soubiran 2017). The “Jardin des Sciences” projects a distinctive
institutional identity to the surrounding society focused on scientific engagement.
Scientific heritage (architecture and instruments) is researched and preserved.
The Chau Chak Wing Museum at Australia’s oldest university, the University
of Sydney was the result of a 16-year strategy by the university’s museum service.
Rather than provision through scattered campus sites like at Strasbourg, this
museum was the result of a new build that brought previous museums into a new
structure.14 Building completion during a pandemic (Simpson 2021a) and opening
in 2020, it brought together the antiquities of the former Nicholson Museum, the
natural history and ethnographic collections of the MacLeay Museum with the
32 Developing institutional narratives

university’s art collection. The museum was the first physical co-location of
collections and discipline-specific university museums in the history of Australian
higher education (Simpson & Ellis 2019). As well as projecting an image of cross-
disciplinarity and heritage in the European tradition of universities, it also enables
some other interesting narratives through the collections, museum and geography
of the campus.
The Chau Chak Wing Museum is located alongside the Fisher library, the main
centralised campus library at the university, and opposite the University of Sydney
Quadrangle. This is the original and oldest part of the university and is considered
by some as the most significant group of gothic revival buildings in Australia
(Britton 2015). The triangulation of museum, library and quadrangle therefore
represents a geographic consilience of object, text and the traditions of knowledge.
Elsewhere, the university also uses collections as a creative expression of institu-
tional narrative. Many universities deploy their art collections across campus
buildings and offices as a way of creating an interesting working environment
for staff and students. A recently constructed senior administration building on
campus15 features cabinets within the office walls displaying items from the col-
lection. It is a cabinet of curiosities especially for the leadership groups at the
university, a reminder that material collections are an important and perennial
aspect of the university’s heritage and business.
Many, like the Chau Chak Wing Museum embrace a collection spanning the
arts and the sciences. The University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines is a
Catholic university, originally established as the Colegio de Nuestra Seňora del
Santisimo Rosario and later gaining university status in 1645 (Seow & Gobal
2004). It is the oldest surviving university in East Asia (Sanchez 1929) and the
museum has collections that date from 1682, almost as old as the university itself.
They consist of natural history, ethnographic and religious items. The natural
history materials were used in a “Gabinete Fisica” for the university’s medical
students for biological, and other scientific studies in one of the earliest iterations
of the collection. The historic pedigree has allowed some to claim it as the first
established university museum, a modest contemporary of the Ashmolean (Meriño
Antolinez 1975), but this claim is disputed by recent scholarship (Baluyut 2019).
Nevertheless, the museum projects an institutional identity with a sense of long
traditions of knowledge grounded in Catholicism since colonial times.
Although museums have been established by different social and cultural
agencies, Rodeck (1968) suggested that in the university, the museum perhaps
comes closest to its perfect form. The author was the long-term director of the
University of Colorado Museum and therefore possibly predisposed to favour
university museums over non-university museums. The same article noted that
“the presence of a fine museum is an expression of confidence in the future of the
university.” In this way, a university museum can make another statement about
the nature of the host institution, one of prestige. This is a role that has become
increasingly important in recent decades in the Western world with the decline of
public support. A prestigious university museum can be a basis to attract
 Developing institutional narratives 33

philanthropy to the university. There are many art museums that fulfil this
function for their universities, particularly in the United States, but increasingly so
outside the United States. Zeller (1985) made the point that the United States has
a tradition for university art museums that is not seen in Europe.
The Weisman Art Museum, affiliated with the University of Minnesota,16 was
established in 1934 based on the support of Frederick R. Weisman, a Minneapolis
entrepreneur and art collector. The museum holds large collections of Marsden
Hartley, Alfred Maurer, Charles Biederman, Native American Mimbres pottery,
and traditional Korean furniture, an eclectic mixture of collections. In 1993, the
museum was located in a modern building designed by renowned architect Frank
O. Gehry. The building is in the style of his genre-changing design of the Bilbao
Guggenheim. It can be considered a smaller experimental example of museum
architecture trialled in the higher education sector (Sirefman 1999) before making
an impact in the non-university museum sector. Later extensions to the museum
were also designed by Gehry. Even without considering the nature of the collec-
tions, this museum proclaims an institutional narrative of boldness and creativity
through its architecture. It is known that the distinctive architecture of a building, or
a precinct within an institution, can evoke a sense of belonging to an institutional
narrative for those who work in them. The physical surrounds provide a “sense-
making” structure (Islam 2013); they can also be seen as a marker or enhancement
of organisational change (Holloway Cripps 2013).
Generous philanthropy for the establishment of university art museums of
striking and distinctive architectural character is not restricted to the United
States of America. There has been spectacular growth in these museums,
particularly in recent decades in the higher education sector of China. This is a
result of government planning to support the burgeoning middle classes with
advanced educational opportunities and grow the nation’s research capacity,
not just in science but across all areas of intellectual attainment. Wuhan
University is a prestigious research university in Hubei province, China. It is
recognised by the Chinese Ministry of Education as a Double First Class17
University (Peters & Besley 2018), the highest rank possible. Its origin dates to
the foundation of the pre-existing Ziqian Institute in 1893. The Wanlin Art
Museum of Wuhan University opened in 2015. It was financed by a wealthy
alumnus, Chen Dongshen (Han 2015). Designed by leading architect Zhu Pei
it features over 8,000 square metres of display space over four floors, one of
which is underground. The building is designed to look like a large flying stone
and was built with a technically challenging extensive concrete overhang that
looks like the museum is leaping out of the ground (Tang 2015). The museum
is touted as an “artistic palace that houses national sentiments and idealism”
(Li 2015). The opening exhibition, Fusions, was a survey of contemporary
Chinese art from the 1930s to the present day exhibited with a chronological
structure. The museum is located in the centre of the university and is seen as a
means whereby people can understand the nature of the university and its
aspirations (Li 2015).
34 Developing institutional narratives

Universities can project regional narratives as well as national ones. Keimyung

University is a private institution based in Daegu, the fourth largest city in South
Korea. The university offers a wide range of courses in English and has a large
number of international research partnerships. Keimyung University has had a
museum ever since it gained university status in 1978. However, this was spec-
tacularly redeveloped as part of commemorative activities for the 50th anniversary
of the institution. Unlike many other nations, Korea has always had a strong
university museum sector, it has been estimated that approximately one-third of
all museums in the nation are university museums (Simpson & Noach 2005). A
Korean University Museum Association was formed in 1961, some 15 years before
a Korean Museum Association (Kwang-Shik 2009). During the 1970s, Korean law
mandated that universities must have museums. This was to ensure that teaching
and research on Korean archaeological material culture would continue in the
country’s higher education system. The legal requirement was eventually dropped,
but it did result in the development of significant collections in universities. The
layout in the exhibition halls of its museum show some subtle differences from
many Western museum exhibitions. The more significant an object is, the greater
the space required and the less the interpretive material. The objects spoke for
themselves (Simpson & Noach 2005).
The initial display at the redeveloped Keimyung University Museum was es-
sentially chronological in aspect, but included a range of regionally sourced ar-
chaeological material covering an extensive time period. These included Palaeolithic
hand axes and other stone tools; patterned and un-patterned Neolithic earthenware,
mortars, pestles and grinding tools; Bronze Age earthenware, stone and metal tools;
and an extensive collection of artefacts from the early Iron Age, the Proto-Three-
Kingdoms Age; the Three-Kingdoms Age; the Unified Sil-la Period; the Go-ryeo
Dynasty and the Jo-seon Dynasty with the last two containing Buddhist artefacts and
an extensive range of different porcelain styles and typologies (Keimyung University
Museum 2004). In this way, the university museum is setting out an institutional
narrative entailing both regional and national perspectives.
There are some unusual collections in universities that also say something about
the quirky nature of higher education. The University of Auckland has a bacteria
collection of 6,000 genetically marked E. coli strains. The Soil Museum at the
Hugon Kołłątaj University of Agriculture in Kraków is the only museum in
Poland and one of few soil museums in the world. There is a coal utilising microbe
collection at Flinders University (Australia), a living collection of 300 fungi and
bacteria able to use coal as their sole carbon source. The University of Coimbra
(Portugal) has a Colecção de Modelos Matemáticos consisting of mathematical
models in cardboard, clay and other materials, made by Martin Schilling in the end
of the 19th century. The University of Rennes (France) has a zoological collection
that includes 250 type specimens of fleas.18 The Thomas McCulloch Museum
in the Department of Biology at Dalhousie University, Canada, has a collection
of ceramic mushrooms. Apart from the long history of botanic gardens in higher
education, many universities also maintain arboretums, the UMAC database lists
 Developing institutional narratives 35

42 of them in 15 different nations. Their existence represents a statement about

institutional interest in the natural world. In an unusual variation, the University of
Aveiro has a salt pan in the centre of the university campus.
Using people associated with a university is another way of developing an
institutional narrative. It can either be through a fleeting visit (as noted above) or
the lifetime achievements of an outstanding alumnus (see below), but usually it is
something in between these two extremes. In 2018, the University of Tartu
Museum in Estonia undertook a project entitled 100 faces of the University of
Tartu.19 This project portrayed current scholars with historic objects from the
museum collections in a photographic exhibition and an accompanying book
(Raisma 2019). Matching scholars and objects opened a plethora of interesting
stories about the relationship between scholarship and materiality at the university
through an institutionally specific narrative.
Exhibitions can be focused on individuals. The exhibition “Profession and
Passion. A Life in Science” at the Steno Museum, Aarhus University (Denmark)
explored core themes for the research community. One key exhibition object
was the entire office of Nobel laureate Jens Christian Skou.20 Other programmes
about institutional identity can feature students. Art and Heritage collections at
the University of Adelaide engaged with students where magnified photos of
students’ heads in black and white, were pasted up around the student’s Hub
area (Pascale 2012).
In completing this brief survey on the ways in which university museums can
be used to express and institutional narrative, two final examples with more detail
are offered. The first, an Australian example, is a very small university museum
with a focus on a specific aspect of institutional narrative unconnected with the
academic mission of the university. The second is a Chinese example from another
Double First Class university that portrays a complex- and high-level university,
national and disciplinary narrative through one of its museums that is focused on a
single person, an outstanding alumnus of that institution.
Sporting museums are a rarity in higher education even though there are some
centres actively engaged in research and teaching in this area. One example is the
International Centre for Sports History and Culture at de Montfort University in the
United Kingdom, there is no sports museum here. The de Montfort University
Special Collections, however, archive documents and objects of relevance to re-
searchers and students, as they do for other research groups across the campus
(Vamplew 1998). Sport researchers have linked external organisations with their ar-
chivist enabling the Special Collections unit to take in major sporting accessions from
England Boxing and the Ski Club of Great Britain. These include documents,
photographs, programmes, memorabilia, artworks and artefacts. They tell a specific
story of institutional research, not a story of the institution itself. Similarly, there is the
archive of “Carl and Liselott Diem” at the German Sport University (Molzberger
2020), Cologne with collections of cultural history, medicine and sports science.
Some university museums that present a narrative history of their institution
may incorporate the sporting achievements of alumni. For example, the Kazan
36 Developing institutional narratives

Federal University of Russia, that presents a two-century history of the university

(Burdina & Saifullova 2017), is located in a central building that was once a
gymnasium after the October revolution. There is a university focused on sport,
the Shanghai University of Sport, it incorporates the Chinese Wushu Museum of
Sport (Ma & Zhang 2022). While the focus here is on sports science and tech-
nology, this museum is as much a museum of Chinese culture, philosophy and
history as it relates to sport and physical activity. The museum’s exhausting in-
teractives include large granite spheres traditionally used for fitness and training.
Sport and history also combine where there is a history museum within a sporting
institution, such as the History Museum of the Armenian State Institute of Physical
Culture in Yerevan.21 The high-profile nature of elite sporting programmes in the
US higher education college system is well known. There are many museums
valorising the athletic achievements of students and alumni on behalf of these
institutions. Many of these are referred to as “Halls of Fame”22 and are sometimes
associated with campus sporting stadiums or other sporting infrastructure. Such
museums project a sense of competitive success that is reflected in the identity of
the parent institution. This often attracts philanthropic support. In general,
however, sport is not a major or consistent theme globally in higher education
museums and collections.
At Macquarie University,23 Sydney, Australia, the expansion of campus sporting
facilities in 2006 was an opportunity to develop a new museum. The University’s
Sports Association wanted to build links with sporting alumni and develop a sense of
institutional identity. They partnered with the university’s museum studies pro-
gramme providing opportunities for student interns reconnected with sporting club
alumni looking for stories and objects (Anderson et al. 2013). While university
museums typically have antecedents grounded in specific teaching programmes
(Chatterjee 2010, Simpson 2012b) this one was purpose designed for telling a
specific institutional narrative. A small locally produced booklet (Phillips 1995) was
one of the few sources available as a starting point. There was little documentation
on the history of individual sporting clubs. Tangible heritage of these clubs was
dispersed. The intangible heritage consisted of memories, stories and recollections of
participating individuals. These were gathered by interviewing alumni once the
student researchers had made contact (Anderson et al. 2013). At the time it was the
first new museum developed on campus in the previous 20 years. It was envisaged as
not being a static exhibition venue that only celebrated past sporting achievements,
but was also intended to express healthy lifestyle aspirations for staff, students and the
local community and support broader aspirations of community building through
sport. This approach set it apart from other Australian university museums; surveys
indicated this was the first of its type in the Australian higher education sector
(Simpson & Reed 2011).
Gammon & Ramshaw (2005) have argued that the inclusion of cultural mores,
values and traditions make sport an excellent thematic area that will connect with
the personal experiences of many. The university’s Sports Association had a sig-
nificant history but nowhere to aggregate or display this. The proposal to establish
 Developing institutional narratives 37

the museum allowed the institution’s unique cultural sporting heritage to be

celebrated and preserved.24 There was also an interesting difference in internal
governance for this museum and others at Macquarie University. Other museums
on campus were related to academic disciplines and slotted into existing admin-
istrative structures. The Hall of Fame at Macquarie University is owned by the
Sports Association. The Sports Association, however, is an independent entity in
itself, it still falls within the category of a university museum through close af-
filiation with Macquarie University. The museum development project was
driven by a committee chaired by the chief executive officer for the Sports
Association.25
An early task for the committee was the development of a series of documents
informed by the mission and purpose of the museum. The development of a
collection management plan with clear guidelines and criteria around what was
collected and what was not collected also allowed Sports Association staff, sporting
club members and others without museum training to have a reasonable notion of
the types of material the museum was seeking. Students developed collection
protocols that focused on collecting trophies, sporting equipment, plaques, pho-
tographs, sporting uniforms, videos of Macquarie athletics and books that have
relevance to Macquarie athletic history such as the annual reports of individual
sporting clubs (Anderson et al. 2013). Student researchers built relationships with
sporting alumni and managed to secure donations of trophies, uniforms and other
sporting memorabilia.
The Working Group established the museum’s primary subject areas as
Macquarie athletes, Macquarie competitions and Macquarie alumni who achieved
to elite athletic levels. Social issues such as women and sport, sport and the media,
disability and sport, sport and age, sport and body image, sport and technology and
sport at universities in general were seen as areas and subjects of equal importance
within the remit of the museum. Apart from the collection of objects, many of
these themes can be explored through the museum with an oral history archive
complementing the material collections. Oral history was also the responsibility of
the museum studies students. Student curators worked with the sporting clubs
encouraging individuals to donate memorabilia, ephemera and other relevant
material in the private hands of sporting alumni. This form of relationship building
through proactive collecting played an important role in engaging clubs, athletes
and alumni with the Sports Association and informing them about the museum. A
full set of operating policies, including processes for bequests, deed of gift, ac-
cession, deaccession, storage, conservation and loans were also developed
(Anderson et al. 2013).
The Macquarie University Sporting Hall of Fame was opened on 26 March
2009. The first exhibition entitled “Our Sporting Community” consisted of a
selection of high-profile university athletes who had achieved success in swim-
ming, rowing, athletics, softball, ultimate frisbee and wheelchair basketball. A
rowing coach was also featured. The opening of the museum helped develop
further connections with sporting alumni and encouraged the donation of more
38 Developing institutional narratives

objects to build the museum’s collection. Most of the athletes featured in the first
exhibition, with their friends and family, managed to attend the launch (Anderson
et al. 2013). A series of exhibitions followed, some with a historic focus such as
“Origins of Our Sporting Heritage” and “Our Sporting Evolution” others had
more specific themes such as “Macquarie at the Olympics.” Obviously it was
delivered during an Olympic year (2016) and while celebrating contemporary
athletes, the exhibition also included athletes who had participated in past
Olympics and Paralympics (back to 1976) as a historic frame. This type of ex-
hibition obviously demonstrates an institutional narrative that the university em-
braced the broad Olympic spirit of goodwill, unity, reconciliation and peace
through the pursuit of sporting excellence.
The initiation of the Sporting Hall of Fame Museum at Macquarie University
was informed by a philosophy of purposeful community development to build
institutional identity. For this reason it can be argued that the Macquarie
University Sporting Hall of Fame museum represents a distinct type of university
museum, perhaps best characterised as a “Museum of Institutional Identity.”
Anderson et al. (2013) argued that while identity and institutional purposes have
previously been invoked as one of the value-adding roles undertaken by university
museums, these are usually construed as secondary outcomes rather than as pri-
mary cornerstones of their original foundation.
As we’ve seen in some of the earlier university museum examples, it is common
to ascribe a purpose in terms of the preservation of institutional heritage and history;
this is a distinctive aspect of many European universities and those well-established
elsewhere in the world that are based on European traditions. It is a function that is
seen as a responsibility, with an emphasis on preserving what exists rather than
extending what is possible (Heinämies 2008a). While this form of institutional
identity through a university museum is largely an institutional requirement, based
more on memorialisation than constructivism, some new university museum de-
velopments focus on preservation as the establishment paradigm (e.g. Menezes De
Carvahlo 2012 in discussing the Museum of the Federal University of Alfenas, Minas
Gerais, Brazil). Other discussions of purpose in the literature tend to focus on the
tensions between serving different audiences (e.g. Bianco 2009) rather than a focus
on building new audiences.26 As discussed above, purpose is more readily reflected
in the work of university museums through more specific narratives such as com-
municating scientific values and heritage (Soubiran 2006).
As can be seen from the previous discussion, institutional identity is more
commonly a feature of other types of university museums and collections. Sport,
however, like art, is also an integral and unifying conceptual framework that
expresses the human condition. But unlike art it is rarely linked to the values and
aspirations of a higher education institution. The development of the Macquarie
University Sporting Hall of Fame Museum was an innovative new way of building
higher education identity through museum work. While the university art mu-
seum keeps you creatively healthy, the university sports association keeps you
physically healthy.
 Developing institutional narratives 39

Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University27 is familiar with many people in higher

education. Established in 1896, it is one of the oldest, most prestigious and se-
lective higher education institutions in China. It is dominated by postgraduate
programmes and caters for around 40,000 students with a strong tradition and
focus on engineering and science. There are substantial research and teaching
linkages with many significant European and North American institutions and
companies.
The university’s name, however, is most widely known for the ranking scheme
of higher education institutions. The Centre for World-Class Universities
(CWCU) of the Graduate School of Education (formerly the Institute of Higher
Education) of Shanghai Jiao Tong University produced an Academic Ranking of
World Universities from 2003 until 2008, after which the work was undertaken
by a private Shanghai-based consultancy. It is one of a number of similar global
schemes that senior executives in the competitive and corporatised world of higher
education take very seriously. An improvement in the rankings has launched the
marketing arms of many universities into a blitz of self-congratulatory publicity.
The basis of the various ranking schemes differ, this fuels ongoing debate about
their perceived value (or lack of it) among higher education observers (e.g.
Stringer et al. 2008, Soh 2017, Pinar et al. 2019). Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s
scheme was based on quality of faculty, research output, quality of education and
performance verses size. Its ranking scheme is exclusively about research uni-
versities, mainly those with strengths in the enabling or empirical sciences. Apart
from the ranking scheme, another important characteristic of this higher education
institution is its ambition. It is also a Double First university and have recently built
a new 330 hectare Minhang campus site and opened a new Museum of Shanghai
Jiao Tong University History in 2021.28
There has always been a strong tradition of Chinese university museums and
it is generally accepted in China that the best universities, the Double First
universities, have university museums. There is a growing recognition of how
links between university culture, public culture and the public understanding of
science can be fostered through university museums. There are a number of
university museums that are unusually different from those located in the
European and North American academic traditions. At the original Xuhui
campus there is also a Shanghai Jiao Tong University Museum. It contains an
eclectic mix of artefacts, relics, documents, natural history and technology. The
university also houses the C. Y. Tung Maritime Museum, the Chen Ji Art
Museum and the Tsung Dao Lee Library. While using museum spaces to project
a sense of institutional identity is a well exploited strategy in higher education as
we have seen above, one particular university museum development at Shanghai
Jiao Tong University goes a lot further.
Dr Qian Xuesen is nationally acclaimed as the pioneer of China’s aeronautics
industry and the father of China’s space programme (Harvey 2004). He was also an
alumnus of Shanghai Jiao Tong University earning a mechanical engineering
degree there in 1934. He was an inveterate collector and compiled an extensive
40 Developing institutional narratives

and very detailed archive over his long, diverse and highly productive scientific
career. So on the 100th anniversary of his birth, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
held a series of seminars, memorials and other activities to remind the public of his
extraordinary achievements. The university opened the Qian Xuesen Library and
Museum to the public. This remarkable higher education facility has an exhibition
area of over 3,000 square metres spread over four levels in a strikingly designed
building by architect He Jing-tang. There are over 68,610 pieces in the museum’s
collection, and it functions as a management centre for historical documents and
objects associated with Qian Xuesen’s life as well as an embodiment of his sci-
entific spirit and his university’s pioneering quest for new knowledge. It is in-
tended to not only valorise the host institution, but also inspire an interest in the
enabling sciences among a new generation of national and international students
and the general public. Qian Xuesen’s life was certainly a remarkable one, he was a
person with an outstanding intellect caught up in a series of significant historical
events (Wang 2011).
After qualifying from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, he left China in 1935 at
the age of 24 on a Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship to study mechanical
engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned a Master of
Science degree from there a year later. He was inspired by the focus on experi-
mentation in American engineering education at the time. He then moved on to
the California Institute of Technology in search of an academic environment that
would test and extend his mathematical skills. Here, he pursued his studies in a
group led by Theodore von Kármán and gained his PhD thesis in 1939.
Early on after his arrival at Caltech, Qian was attracted to the rocketry interests of
Von Kármán and associates. They gained the nickname the “Suicide Squad” because
of the dangerous nature of their work (Qiu 2009). In 1943, during the Second
World War, Qian and two others drafted the first documents to use the term
“Jet Propulsion Laboratory” seeking research support in response to Germany’s
V-2 rocket development programme.
He worked with Von Kármán after the Second World War as a consultant to the
US military, he was commissioned with the rank of colonel. The two went to
Germany to investigate advances in German aerodynamics research during wartime.
Qian investigated research facilities and interviewed German scientists, including
Wernher von Braun. Little did the two know that at this point in history, the father
of the future US space programme was being quizzed by the father of the future
Chinese space programme. There is a wealth of fascinating historic material relating
to the Second World War and its aftermath on display in the museum. In 1947, Qian
married his long-term sweetheart, Jiang Ying, an accomplished and famous opera
singer and the daughter of a highly placed military strategist and advisor, Jiang Baili.
They were married in Shanghai, Qian continued to maintain his faculty position at
Caltech. Their two children were both born in the United States.
By the 1950s, a wave of anti-communist hysteria inspired in part by Senator
Joseph McCarthy spread across the United States. Qian fell under suspicion and
eventually, the equivalent of house arrest. He no longer was allowed access to
 Developing institutional narratives 41

classified research programmes. His research papers were seized by US authorities

in fear that Qian may have been sequestering state secrets. A long period of ne-
gotiation between Chinese and US authorities began, ending finally in 1955 with
the family’s deportation to China (Qiu 2009). Because he was a fastidious col-
lector, the museum has an extraordinary collection of documentation from this
period on display, including a house arrest form where Qian was required to
regularly report to various officials.
Back in China he was welcomed as a national hero and was soon back working
in the field of aeronautics that he loved. The perceived need for China to develop
capacity in this area meant that his work was well supported. Under his leadership,
China developed its first generation of “Long March” missiles and, in 1970,
launched its first satellite. Qian had a highly successful and very prominent career
leading and becoming the father of the Chinese missile programme with the
construction of China’s Dongfeng ballistic missiles and the “Long March” rockets.
For many of these initiatives he had to build research teams from scratch, he
became an enthusiastic proponent of good science education and a public un-
derstanding of science as his career in China progressed, mainly after the late 1970s
(Wang 2011).
His reputation as a prominent scientist who defected from the United States to
China, gave him influence in the China of Mao Zedong during the late 1950s. He
was highly regarded as a scientist who sought to advance humankind and did not
seek personal glory through his work. Despite the enormous benefits his work
brought to China, he lived a frugal and austere life, something that is promoted
through the exhibition halls.29
While he received the highest awards possible for his work in China from the
Party, in 1979 Qian received Caltech’s Distinguished Alumni Award. In the early
1990s, the filing cabinets containing Qian’s research work that he had not been able
to access for decades were offered to him by Caltech. Most of these works became
the foundation for the Qian Xuesen Library and Museum. The museum has plenty
of other extraordinary objects in the collection including a Dongfeng II Ballistic
Missile donated by the People’s Liberation Army to the museum and models of
spacecraft like the Shenzhou 1. The missile is a central object that greets visitors to
the museum and is the focus of a sound and light show about Qian and his work that
greets group visits as they congregate beneath a large sculpture of the scientist.
From the early 1980s, Qian studied and published (e.g. Qian et al. 1993) in many
broader fields, and created systematics, contributed on science and technology
system and somatic science, philosophy, natural sciences, engineering science, lit-
erature and art, military science, systems science, geography, social science, and
education. He advanced the concepts, theory and methods of system science, and
opened up a Chinese school of the Science of Complexity. He organised many
scientific seminars and looked to train and mentor successors. He was a true poly-
math with extraordinarily diverse interests. One of the most fascinating parts of the
collection of the Qian Xuesen Library and Museum is over 300 folios of clippings
built up by Qian over many years. They not only provide insights into the diversity
42 Developing institutional narratives

of his interests, but also give clues to areas of science that he was scoping at the time
because they were perceived as potentially useful to China.
Qian rose through party ranks to become a Central Committee member. He
remained associated with China’s space programme after he retired in 1991 and
lived quietly in Beijing. The government launched its manned space programme
in 1992 and used Qian’s research as the basis for the “Long March” rocket, which
successfully launched the Shenzhou V mission in October 2003. The elderly Qian
was able to watch China’s first manned space mission on television from his
hospital bed. Chinese astronauts developed a tradition of paying their respects by
visiting Qian after each successful mission. A total of 68,610 documents and
historical objects are held by the museum and library, of which about 15,000 are
on public display. The collection includes academic publications, notes, and
manuscripts from his time spent at universities in both Shanghai and the United
States. There are also personal items, such as letters and photographs with
Communist Party leaders after his return to China in 1955.
In 2008, China Central Television named Qian as one of the 11 most inspiring
people in China. He died at the age of 98 on 31 October 2009 in Beijing. Science
fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, in his novel 2010: Odyssey Two, named a Chinese
spaceship after him as a tribute to his pop culture status alongside his eminent po-
sition as an accomplished engineer and scientist.
Collections of material in higher education that focus on the life of an in-
dividual usually tend to be archives, quite often those of politicians who have
made a profound difference to their societies, their archives represent a research
resource for future scholars. But what is being undertaken at Shanghai Jiao Tong
University with the Qian Xuesen Library and Museum is a quantum level ad-
vanced in its ambition. Not only is the archive a resource for researchers, it is also a
platform for advancing the university’s science and technology credentials through
the spotlight on a famous alumnus. It is a platform for introducing a new gen-
eration of students to the value of the enabling sciences and their importance to
society. It is also an example of the Party’s aim to build a role model for in-
tellectuals to emulate, what Wang (2011) refers to as “Maoist practices of hero
construction” through a process of selecting certain elite scientific individuals for
commendation and eulogisation.
In terms of projecting an institutional narrative, this museum codifies an interest
in the enabling sciences, an austere work ethic on behalf of society rather than for
individual glorification and an agenda of national advancement and self-sufficiency
through science and technology. The Qian Xuesen Library and Museum is evidence
that Chinese museology, at least in its higher education system, is dynamic and more
ambitious than in many other parts of the world.

Notes
1 Today it has over 20,000 students and 3,000 staff with research income of around
200 million dollars (AUD).
 Developing institutional narratives 43

2 The philosophy collection at the University of Adelaide is a collection consisting of

only one object, the brain of Ullin T. Place. The university originally had a collections
unit that was dedicated to collecting the materiality of the institution. The unit intended
to develop a collection around the brain that would represent the teaching of philo-
sophy at the university. These plans were abandoned after the university closed the
collections unit in 2019 and transferred responsibility for collections to the university
library.
3 These two are what Lourenҫo (2005) would categorise as second generation collections
because they have been recontextualised in a new institutional setting.
4 Copernicus was a student in Kraków from 1491 until 1495.
5 The University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (Chendgu) have a
policy of not disposing of any scientific equipment without reference to the university’s
Electronic Science and Technology Museum.
6 They also sold material to the museum at very cheap rates as a way of supporting its
development.
7 Московский государственный медицинский университет им И.М. Сеченова.
RIA Novosti (in Russian). 18 November 2013. From https://ria.ru/20131118/
977203153.html
8 Decree by Empress Elizabeth (Yelizaveta Petrovna), Empress of Russia from 1741 to
1761.
9 The museum was established with the commencement of Nursing programmes at the
university in 1987.
10 This museum was combined with the Australian History Museum to make a new
Macquarie University History Museum as part of a building project during 2019–2021.
11 He was the father of Olof Rudbeck, a tutor of the prodigious Swedish taxonomist, Carl
Linnaeus.
12 Weber (2003) concluded that university museums are perfect institutional structures to
be theatres of knowledge.
13 There are not enough award ceremonies involving sword work in contemporary higher
education so this would seem a tradition worth preserving.
14 The new museum was funded by a combination of significant philanthropy and uni-
versity investment. It is an example of Lourenҫo’s (2005) third generation of university
museum.
15 This senior administration building was originally known as the F23 building but was
renamed the Michael Spence building after a departing Vice-Chancellor in late 2020.
16 Not to be confused with the Weisman Art Foundation in Los Angeles and the Weisman
Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu. Frederick R. Weisman’s philan-
thropy supported multiple art endeavours.
17 A tertiary education development initiative designed by the People’s Republic of China
in 2015 (Li & Xue 2021).
18 All examples from the UMAC database, see https://university-museums-and-
collections.net/
19 This project won the 2020 UMAC Award, see http://umac.icom.museum/university-
of-tartu-museum-wins-the-umac-award-2020/
20 This project won the 2021 UMAC Award, see http://umac.icom.museum/umac-
award/umac-award-2021/
21 The Armenian State Institute of Physical Culture is a higher education institute founded
in 1945 that awards diplomas to graduates.
22 As examples, the Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Tech University both
have an “Athletic Hall of Fame.” The United States Naval Academy also has an
“Athletic Hall of Fame,” whereas the United States Military Academy has a “Sports
Hall of Fame.”
23 The university has close to a total of 40,000 students, it was the third university es-
tablished in the Sydney region and is relatively young, being established in 1964.
44 Developing institutional narratives

24 For more detail on the development of the museum see Anderson et al. (2013).
25 This was important because it demonstrated institutional commitment to the project
and quick access to decisions on project components when required (Anderson et al.
2013).
26 Bianco (2009) uses the example of Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art to argue
it is possible to align serving both a civic and academic audience through reconsidering
mission and strategic planning.
27 The following outline of the Qian Xuesen Library and Museum is based on an earlier
blog post for the Council of Australian University Museums and Collections
(CAUMAC) in 2016; A University Museum about a National Hero.
28 This was a remodel and upgrade of a pre-existing museum undertaken for the 125th
year anniversary of the university.
29 The museum has the leather briefcase he used for over 40 years and a recreation of the
simple living room he shared with his family as an illustration of his work ethic as a
symbolic representation.
3
CROSSING DISCIPLINE BOUNDARIES

The first chapter gave an outline of how the university, as an institution, parti-
cularly the European model that became the global standard, has changed and
adapted to different socio-cultural conditions in carrying through its mission of
generating and transmitting knowledge. The second explored how the museum
reflects that specific institutional setting. This one is focused on knowledge itself.
In a discussion on the subject of what makes a museum, in the landmark book on
museums and the shaping of knowledge, Hooper-Greenhill (1992) described how
the structure of knowledge, of both the cultural and natural world, has changed
through history and how this has impacted on the way museums developed and
operated, as our relationship with material collections changed. Knowledge has
always been viewed as a commodity that universities and museums amass, analyse,
codify and dispense.1
Of particular significance is the time period around the early 17th century. This
was when both the university and the museum, in a guise familiar to us today, first
took shape. In terms of the structure of knowledge, this time of change was re-
ferred to as a rupture of the Renaissance episteme by the Classical episteme
(Foucault 1970).2 The medieval form of knowledge consisting of vast accumu-
lations of varying forms of evidence based on similitude, ancient texts and quixotic
meaning-making methodologies, was replaced with the classificatory table, ob-
servations and comparisons and a rebirth of universal aspirations for knowledge in
a new era. The symbolic interconnections, or symbiotic relationship of these two
types of knowledge-based organisations, the university and the museum, em-
blematically and performatively fused together, like zooxanthellae in coral, with
the birth of the Ashmolean Museum.
It was a time of rampart and renewed curiosity, the “discovery” of a world be-
yond Europe driven by the expansion of European empires, collecting on a mas-
sively increased scale and relentless rational experimentation. Unlike the preceding
DOI: 10.4324/9781003186533-3
46 Crossing discipline boundaries

era, no question was off limits. It was a time that brought on the revolutionary
epistemic splitting, division and diversification of knowledge. Natural philosophy
fractured into numerous scientific disciplines and sub-disciplines. The Lucasian
Professor of Mathematics3 at Cambridge University put white light through a prism.
The same curiosity behind that experiment of turning light into many colours also
turned natural philosophy into many classical scientific disciplines. The seemingly
chaotic and unstructured “cabinets of curiosity” with their materialistic aphorisms
and ghosts of similitude, were replaced with the encyclopaedic collection and
museum exhibition as a reference work for a knowledge system shaped by the new
Classical episteme.
Leaving aside the notion that knowledge and power are the same interlinked
concept and the more recent contentions that knowledge can be defined as a
higher form of information, let’s reconsider the impact of these changes on ob-
jects, as the basic working materials of knowledge. The same objects that were
once found in the “cabinets of curiosity” can still be found in museums, they serve
our knowledge systems in new ways. How rigid and clearly defined are the
boundaries between different disciplinary specialities in our modern system of
knowledge? Can these boundaries be readily transgressed, and if so, how is this
done? Or are the discipline boundaries policed by an epistemic “borderforce,”
determined to maintain a form of disciplinary purity by rejecting dataset refugees
seeking asylum from other disciplines?
Physics, and an understanding of the different wavelengths of light, would suggest
that the Lucasian Professor actually discovered a continuum of colour on the other
side of the prism rather than discrete individual colours. By analogy, objects can also
be considered as evidence for knowledge or information in multiple ways because of
their ability to provide pertinent data for a range of different questions. The same
object can appear in different positions on the spectrum. For example, an insect in a
natural history collection can provide information of relevance to both evolutionary
biologists and engineers. An artefact in an ethnographic collection can provide both
anthropological and historic data as can a painting or a photograph in an art col-
lection. Objects cross discipline boundaries effortlessly, they have a property of
epistemic fluidity. Objects are evidence. A specimen from the natural world can be
evidence of the existence of a particular variety of a particular species in a particular
place at a particular time. A human-made object can be evidence of human in-
genuity and/or cultural beliefs.
Objects have a dual character, or contradictory nature. They are definitive,
observable, readily described and immutable. They also lack fixity, are readily re-
contextualised, multiply reinterpreted and ascribed highly variable values in their
engagement with our ever-changing knowledge systems (Thomas 2016). There is a
dynamic tension between object and context that can make them very effective tools
for pedagogy. Objects are islands rising up out of a roiling ocean of metaphysics.
Some academic disciplines, particularly those with a basis of observation and
comparison, are more likely to develop collections because of their utility in
teaching programmes. These have included geology, anthropology, art history
 Crossing discipline boundaries 47

and, for much of last century at least, biology as well. In recent times there has
been an increased interest in the use of authentic historic objects for the teaching
of history; material from library special collections at the University of Canterbury,
New Zealand are an example (Cobley 2022). While objects can cross boundaries
and provide multi-disciplinary perspectives and opportunities in all three areas of
university activity namely teaching, research and engagement (Simpson 2019), it is
mostly through object-based learning that the power of material collections in
higher education to enable border crossings is invoked.
Anyone who has used objects, either in person or online as part of an open ended
learning experience for students will be amazed at how people’s experience of
objects can be connected through intricate patterns of association, confluence and
consilience. The American educational philosopher, John Dewey, conceptualised
engagement between observer and object as being transactional (Jackson 1998).
Teachers using objects for pedagogy can observe this transaction when a student
gains a realisation or insight from an object engagement. Object-based learning
draws on embodied and experiential pedagogies via multiple senses to construct
meaning. Objects are utilities to build meaning and vehicles for a journey of
learning. Educational theorists call this constructivism. Another educational theorist,
David Kolb, integrated Dewey’s ideas on object engagements into his theory of
experiential learning (Kolb 1984). Learning in this context is seen as the process of
knowledge creation through the transformation of experience. Students can con-
struct meaning interactively and collaboratively through an object (Hannan et al.
2013) and develop knowledge through shared conceptual understanding (Chatterjee
& Hannan 2015). They can ground abstract experiences (Hooper-Greenhill 1999)
and aid the retention of didactic information (Simpson & Hammond 2012).
There is a common exercise used in the teaching of museology because of the
primacy of objects4 in museum theory (Alberti 2005, Marstine 2006). It is used in
many museum studies or museology programmes and involves students bringing a
specific object into class and talk about it. It is extraordinary some of the things
that people will bring in, but even more extraordinary what these objects can
mean to those acquainted with them. Common items can carry vibrant stories.
Carr (2008) wrote about his experience of doing this with a university class in
New Zealand, where one student brought in a small black sample of rock from
Mount Erebus in Antarctica.5
One of my experiences running a similar class in Australia was a student who
brought in a simple shell collected from the beach on the southern coast of New
South Wales (Australia) during a summer holiday as a child. It was a low-spired
shell, where the whorls of the mollusc grew in size rapidly, yet it was still small
enough to be held in one hand. The shell had interesting patterns of dark and light
on the outside. The beach where the shell was found was a place where the forest
came right down to the sea. The patterns of light and dark on the shell were a
reminder of the way summer light played through the forest canopy. For the
finder of the shell, it sparked memories of long hot days, cool blue waters full of
sea grass, hot sand between the toes, the noise of sea gulls and even the smell of salt
48 Crossing discipline boundaries

in the air. This was a classic example of an object acting as an anchor. The shell
provided a rich personal aesthetic context for the owner of the object, one that
triggers memories that are recalled through all the senses.6
For some time it has been recognised that “objects are great to think with”
(Lévi-Strauss 1964). But only in more recent years have researchers argued that
object-based learning has particular potency and efficacy in higher education (e.g.
Chatterjee 2010). The rationale for using object engagements to fuel constructivism
in interesting ways in some academic disciplines is known; for example, the use of
objects in the teaching of history can enhance empathy (Frigo 2019, McCann 2019).
However, it is through cross-disciplinary engagements that the utility of material
collections in higher education specifically brings a unique value proposition to the
academic mission. This chapter will therefore mostly focus on outlining some of
those examples, rather than covering examples of object pedagogy within their
traditional disciplines. But before doing so, it is worthwhile reflecting on the rapid
growth of material culture and material culture theory that has, at least in part, been
aided by the existence of museums and collections in higher education.
The term material culture is used where objects are considered as evidence for
insights about those associated, or somehow connected, with the objects. This often
concerns questions of value, ideas, assumptions and world views. Heightened aca-
demic interest in this was described as a “spontaneous and largely uncoordinated
response to a perceived scholarly need and opportunity” (Prown 1982). It has re-
sulted in a torrent of scholarship on and about objects and their relationships. This
surging interest in material culture, objecthood and thingness (Mitchell 2001) has
not always been imbued with academic solemnity and reverence, with some (e.g.
Brown 2001) questioning whether there is “something perverse, if not archly in-
sistent, about complicating things with theory.”
Much material culture scholarship, calling on the ontological dialectics of
object and context, is centred on the object and its relationship with the museum
(Stocking 1985, Dudley 2009). There is plenty of problematising the very nature
of materiality itself, and much analysis of the changes that occur through the
decontextualisation of objects when removed from their original context and
recontextualised as part of a museum collection. In their original contexts objects
are interpreted as having an essential connectedness. In the process of removing
them from that context they enter a state of liminality until they are reframed,
when on display, with the addition of a museological parerga of vitrine (von
Zinnenburg Carroll 2017). Objects in material culture theory are thus con-
ceptualised as mobile, occasionally transiting contextual landscapes seeking a form
of contextual stasis (Basu 2017). Material culture theory also ascribes agency to
objects, something that has provoked some detractors (e.g. Robb 2004, Ingold
2007). Others defend the concept of material agency by eliciting arguments that
the concept of object agency was a rebellion against the linguistic dominance of
archaeological and anthropological practice, and an attempt to move the debate
beyond the dualism of object and subject (Jones & Boivin 2012). Dudley (2017)
argues that an object’s agency is evidenced in a museum setting when it is part of
 Crossing discipline boundaries 49

an “intensely affective engagement between the object and a museum visitor.”

This is evidence that the object has been incorporated and is active within a social
life in a new museum context, either the affective equivalent of their original
contextual setting or purposeful engagement and utilisation.7
There is, however, surprisingly little written about the changes to perspectives
on materiality when an object enters a university. This is particularly so for the
objects of archaeology and anthropology unless, of course, the object is entering a
university museum (e.g. Chapman 1985, Hinsley 1985); it also applies to com-
mentary that depicts the museum as an object in itself (Burrell 2013). One piece of
scholarship that deals with changing object values when they enter the university
museum is an adoption of Thompson’s (1979) rubbish theory. Meadow (2010)
noted that objects in university collections can change function and value and can
migrate in and out of the university and also move from one academic discipline to
another. This last characteristic enables the cross-disciplinary capabilities or, some
theorists might argue, even the agency of objects themselves within the university
environment. Meadow (2010) does note some differences with rubbish theory
when it is applied to a university environment. Originally the theory was about
commodities; as they lose their monetary value they are described as “transient,”
to a point where they become rubbish and can either be destroyed or become
durables in a museum or archive system. In the original theory (Thompson 1979),
the movement is only in one direction, but Meadow (2010) argued that in the
university the movement can go the other way or even change directions during
migration. The theory captures the same qualities of travel, boundaries and li-
minality that mainstream material culture theory propounds.
The microscope collections at the University of California, Berkeley, were one of
Meadow’s (2010) two cases illustrating rubbish theory. Scientific objects can be used
in a specific scientific context, possibly repurposed a number of times, then reframed
in a museum where their role may be analytic, didactic, exhibitory or illustrative
(Alberti 2005). A further complication for the relocation or “inbetweenness” of
objects within the university is the fact that they can travel without transgressing
discipline boundaries, but still change their function and value. A professor of as-
tronomy at the University of Bologna in the early 1920s, Guido Horn-D’Arturo,
was interested in studying the shape of our galaxy and the distribution of nebulae. To
do this, he used a 1792 Cassini celestial globe by affixing the positions of nebulae to
the globe using a form of astronomical “confetti” (de Clerq & Lourenço 2003).
Cassini celestial globes depicted constellations as if one were looking at the reverse
image of their form as seen by the naked eye from Earth (Baldwin 1995). It was a
perfect template for recording Horn-D’Arturo’s observations. After 150 years, the
globe changed its function from being a teaching aid to being a research aid, while
remaining within the same academic discipline.
A similar transition can be seen with the repurposing of objects at the Historical
Collection of Physics Instruments and at the Museum of Chemistry of the
University of Palermo. The university was officially established in 1806, although
earlier iterations date back to 1498 with the teaching of medicine and law
50 Crossing discipline boundaries

(Nef 2013). The oldest instruments date to the early 19th century (Gallito et al.
2017). At that time, experimental physics and chemistry was used as demonstra-
tions during lectures. The instruments in the historic collections were also used for
research experimentation. The museum has devised a one-week programme for
school students using some of the historic instruments. Gallito et al. (2017) outline
how the Bunsen burner was first used and demonstrate how the old instruments
have been conserved and restored. Students, with the guidance of museum staff
also reconstruct some of the early experiments with the Bunsen burner, in par-
ticular to investigate the different colours of light emitted by heating different
elements, the basis of spectroscopy. This reconstruction of experiments is a form
of investigative (i.e. constructivist) learning based on the historic record (e.g.
Kirchhoff & Bunsen 1860). Gallito et al. (2017) argue this is a particularly focused
form of science educational provision, not covered by the modern science centre
and is specifically relevant and appropriate for university museums such as theirs.
The transitioning movement of the Bunsen burners from research to teaching
tool is the opposite of the Cassini globe moving from teaching tool to instrument
of research. This would seem to demonstrate Meadow’s (2010) contention that
rubbish theory doesn’t cover all the possible transitions of objects in university
collections. Also, the examples of transitions within the same discipline with only
functional changes seem to differ from the experience of non-university objects, as
depicted in material culture literature, as they transition vast metaphysical and
physical distances. Perhaps material culture objects in universities are different
because of their multiple and frequent transitions, frequent interim periods of li-
minality and their diverse repurposing potential.
The great advantage of having objects in a scholarly environment for use in
learning programmes is the way they engage the senses. Aristotle opens Book one
of Metaphysics with the following quote:

All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we

take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for
themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view
to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing
(one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the
senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.

These words also mark the idea that the visual sense is the preferred mode of
engagement with the world as a way of truly knowing it. While the other senses
can also be important in learning situations, such as feeling the weight or surface
texture of an object, or being able to recognise the scent of flowers in botany, or
being able to hear the way an engine murmurs in engineering; the visual sense and
the power of observation give collections of artwork in higher education a specific
disciplinary motility and learning utility in a range of programmes.
Visual literacy is seen as very much a 21st century skill. In terms of working
across disciplines, the campus art museum is often seen as having a unique,
 Crossing discipline boundaries 51

frequently central, position. University art museums can be crucibles for the de-
velopment of visual literacy and observational skills (Alvord & Friedlaender 2012).
There is a plethora of visual data saturating every aspect of modern life, largely as a
result of recent technological changes in how we produce and consume information.
Visual literacy is a constructivist pedagogy (Brown 2001) about decoding and
reading meaning and emotional and intellectual value from visual data (Wileman
1993). Many campus art museums offer programmes that sharpen the observational
skills of medical students. One example is the “Enhancing Observational Skills”
programme developed by the Centre for British Art at Yale University. In an article
on, what has been described as, the frantic arms race of university art museums in the
United States Urist (2016) reported on another Yale programme at the Yale Art
Gallery entitled “Making the Invisible Visible: Art, Identity, and Hierarchies of
Power.” Doing the programme was a requirement for incoming medical students.
The gallery had a fibreglass sculpture by artist Duane Hanson made in 1974 of a
young man with a rubber tourniquet and needles. It is very realistic and can be used
to elicit empathy and is a focal point for discussing a range of medical and ethical
issues with students.
The University of Virginia runs a programme entitled the “Clinician’s Eye.” It
uses art to teach medical students visual analysis and pattern recognition (Urist
2016). It hones clinical competencies such as diagnostic acumen, collaboration,
compassion, self-awareness, reflection, continuous improvement and problem-
solving. The programme is a partnership between the University of Virginia’s
Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities and the University’s Fralin Museum
of Art. The programme was designed by the museum’s academic curator and
piloted with medical students. It became a compulsory part of medical training in
2014. The University Art Museum has subsequently offered the programme to
other professional groups as a training package.
These art and medical education programmes have been running for many years
and are considered highly beneficial (Reilly et al. 2005). When a campus museum is
not readily available, medical educators will often partner with civic museums. The
study of portraiture in terms of visual literacy training is considered valuable in
developing a sense of the wellness of, and empathy with, future prospective patients.
An early pilot study of the benefits was done on a programme by the Frick Museum
in New York and the Weill Cornell Medical School. Students in the trial looked
first at portraits using visual literacy training techniques and then later at patients
(Bardes et al. 2001). Any previous art history knowledge or understanding of
aesthetics was discouraged during the programme. Improvements in students’
skills in description, interpretation and presentation were noted by both the
medical school and the museum.
Pellico et al. (2009) reported similar benefits from a nursing education pro-
gramme that used the university museum to sharpen observations using the mu-
seums descriptive text, they then made observations on images of patients.
Wikström (2003) reported on the use of art as part of an empathy training strategy
in nursing. Similar outcomes have been reported in ophthalmology, Gurwin et al.
52 Crossing discipline boundaries

(2018) have noted that medical education does not provide explicit training in
these areas, and medical students are often criticised for deficiencies in these skills.
There have been attempts to standardise approaches in this area (e.g. Jasani & Saks
2013) using visual thinking strategies (Housen 2002). The aim of the study by
Jasani & Saks (2013) was to produce a useful exercise that could be replicated
without specially trained personnel or art museum partnerships. The sheer number
of art and medical educational partnerships in the university sector prompted
regular annual conferences so those engaged in these sorts of partnerships could
share programmes and insights about their work. “The Art of Examination” was
first held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in June 2016. It brought
together 130 art museum and medical school professionals. The programme has
been driven by the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, University of Texas
at Dallas.
The importance of observation linked with an ability to use accurate descriptive
text in pedagogies is well established. Grounding an ability to draw meaning from
observations, however, can arguably require other knowledge gained through
training. There has been a long history of Kantian discourse on whether it is possible
to make observations untainted by any theoretical context (see Daston 2008). Such
skill, honed through experience, brings together the acts of seeing, describing,
understanding and communicating, and is relevant to many of the goals of the
medical humanities (Wellbery & McAteer 2015) and other areas of professional
practice. The importance of observational skills in geography (Bryce 1902), sports
(Franks & Miller 1991) and acting (Nemiro 1997) has been documented. The value
of observational skills developed through the museum setting by museum-object
engagements has also been the subject of considerable literature (e.g. Hein 1998).
The predominance and importance of visual culture in modern society has
meant a whole range of cross-disciplinary opportunities for the university art
museum. Some have recently argued that the ubiquity and nature of the internet
has redefined what is expected in terms of visual literacy (Heffernan 2016). The
visual focus of the university art museum can act as a focal point for a whole range
of campus based cultural activity as well as providing educational opportunities
across different faculties and departments. The importance of being able to think
creatively, as would an artist, has relevance in a whole range of human endeavours
(Whitaker 2016). This suggests the aesthetics of the art museum can be a source of
learning for any of the academic disciplines found on campus.
Here are some examples of university art museums that have undertaken the
process of extending beyond the museum walls to impact other learning areas
on campus. One is a partnership between the Master of Arts in Historical
Administration Programme at Eastern Illinois University and the Tarble Arts
Centre on the same campus (Ricco & Barnhart 2012). One reason for this was the
lack of collections in the history departments. The collaboration was focused on
student exhibition development with the Arts Centre. The centre brought aes-
thetics to the process, while the students bring history in the form of historical
narratives to be illustrated by objects in an exhibition. It is recognised that an
 Crossing discipline boundaries 53

overlap between art and history exist, both intersect in singular objects such as
portraiture, sculpture, ceramics and folk art. Collaboration through exhibition
development was formalised and structured (Ricco & Barnhart 2012), where
students apply for team positions as curator, registrar, educator, designer and
photographer/digital technician. There are mutual benefits for both partners, for
example, the provenance of many folk art items in the Arts Centre’s collection was
greatly improved by student research, and an exhibition on a well-known local
landscape artist involved a public programme of geocaching the artist’s historic
locations.
Another productive interaction between a university art museum and an aca-
demic programme can be found at the University of Kansas. For many years the
Spencer Museum of Art has fostered an interesting partnership, inspired by the
profusion of medicine arts programmes, with the School of Pharmacy (Martin-
Hamon et al. 2012). This is made possible by the museum’s vision that sees itself as
a resource and classroom for every campus group or programme and is fostered by
a distinct philosophy of faculty museum collaboration (Villeneuve et al. 2006).
The programme also has an early component of visual thinking strategies con-
structed using Fink’s taxonomy of significant learning (Fink 2003). This is a
scalable meaning-making process that is intended to augment student professional
knowledge with reasoned judgement, empathetic values and sound ethical stan-
dards. The programme aims to sharpen student’s observation skills and broaden
their appreciation of concepts of human health. Artworks used in the programme
challenge them to think critically about health and the whole person (Martin-
Hamon et al. 2012). Martin-Hamon et al. (2012) reported that the artwork be-
came a neutral sounding board for students to explore ideas about health, wellness,
the clinical context and the complexity of pain and suffering. One interesting
physical outcome of this was the establishment of a discussion board in the School
of Pharmacy Building. Here students could post images of artworks, either from
the Spencer’s collection or elsewhere, and generate interpretative and creative
group discussions that were recorded on the board. Two of these were sculptures
of the saints Cosmas and Damian, the patron saints of medicine and pharmacy.
They were purchased by the museum (Martin-Hamon et al. 2012). These were
supposedly two brothers converted to Christianity who practiced the healing arts
in Syria in the late 3rd and early 4th century.8
Many art museums in higher education were originally established to service art
historical teaching and learning and studio practice. Apart from the interesting art
partnerships with specific disciplines noted above, there are some institutions
that reconceptualise their art museums as being another form of teaching la-
boratory or a different type of classroom experience. They aimed to be of use to all
the academic disciplines represented on campus. Oberlin College is a small private
liberal arts college; it is the oldest co-educational college in the United States. The
extensive collections of the Allen Memorial Art Museum are made available to
all teaching staff on campus. The collection is seen as teaching infrastructure.
Collection use is done through a partnership between teaching and museum staff,
54 Crossing discipline boundaries

again with a starting point of visual training strategies. The approach has been
labelled “crossing the street pedagogy.” This reflects the physical requirement of
students to cross the road to visit the museum and the metaphysical notion of
crossing into a different teaching and learning environment (Volk & Milkova
2012). The art collection is broadly used to scaffold student learning in different
disciplines through a variety of pedagogic uses that consider visual literacy, cultural
context, conceptual frameworks, primary text and creative focal point. Chemistry,
mathematics, Russian and neuroscience are just some of the disciplines using the
Allen’s collection (Volk & Milkova 2012). The academic community is seen as the
principal audience and the museum’s role is to cultivate a familiarity with the
collection that will enable integrating the use of artworks into experiential learning
programmes. Because the approach is a museum and academic staff collaboration
they report an interesting benefit. By having academics separated from their au-
thoritative positions by being temporarily removed to outside their disciplinary
domains, this enables them to become more aware of the challenges faced by those
without their expertise.
Like Oberlin College in Ohio, Lynchburg University is a small private higher
education establishment in Virginia approximately the same size. It has an art
museum with a different approach to using the museum in the curriculum. The
Daura Museum of Art regularly develops exhibitions as collaborative ventures to
support different faculty teaching programmes. In contrast to classes using the
museum with a focus on individual works on display, here the focus is on the
exhibition and associated programmes as a whole. Where the gallery’s own col-
lection holdings don’t cover requirements for specific exhibitions, partnerships
with other collecting agencies allow a wider variety of subject matter for ex-
hibition themes to be developed. Faculty staff become members of the museum’s
advisory board to ensure museum programming is relevant to the curriculum. The
role of the museum staff is to convince faculty their research is relevant to the art
museum, and then leverage their experiences and knowledge as a catalyst for
discourse. To produce exhibitions and public programmes the museum has
worked with the University’s Center for the History and Culture of Central
Virginia, and the academic programmes of English literature, Spanish language,
history, sociology, theatre, physics, environmental science, communication studies
and international relations (Rothermel 2012, 32).
Here are a few examples from their programme. The gallery holds archival
material of Pierre Daura,9 after whom it is named, the exhibition “Powers of
Protest & Persuasion: The Role of the Artist in War” included this material
documenting his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. In 1999, in cooperation
with the English programme, the museum exhibited “Divine Rhetoric: Medieval
and Renaissance Art as Communication and Expression.” It included 9th to 16th
century manuscripts, engravings and woodcuts and illustrated how art was used as
a means of communication and expression that supported Christian church doc-
trines. Faculty from the disciplines of art history, history, literature, religion and
rhetoric incorporated the exhibition and associated programmes in their course
 Crossing discipline boundaries 55

curricula. “Dynamic Symmetry: Paintings and Sculpture of Marie Tiner” was

based on the art works of physicist Marie Tiner and used by science faculty.
“Botanicos: Specimens from the Ramsey-Freer Herbarium”10 and “Transitions:
Photographs by Robert Creamer” also became part of the science curricula
(Rothermel 2012, 46). The exhibition “Cinema Politico” went from ballot box to
box office, with a collection of motion picture posters of the most important
politically-significant films of the 20th century (Rothermel 2012, 48). Along with
a series of public lectures and film screenings this proved of great value to cultural
and communication studies programmes. The process of producing thematic
exhibitions through collaboration with different parts of the academy continues at
Lynchburg to today (Rothermel 2022, pers. com.).
A philosophy of inter-disciplinary exhibitions and programmes expand the re-
levance of the art museum within the academic community. In pedagogic terms, it
involves adopting an approach of educational unity between seemingly unlike
curricula such as the sciences and the arts. This is similar to medieval education, seen
as a foundation for civic life (Klein 2005), where in this case, the art museum
provides the template for linking different disciplines through programming. But
exploring inter-disciplinarity runs against the discipline-based structures of many
universities. Disciplinarity inspires depth of knowledge; inter-disciplinarity inspires
breadth and wholeness of knowledge, the integration of different sources, frame-
works and approaches. Many argue there needs to be a role for both in the modern
university. The important point here is that the museums and collections can fill the
interstitial spaces between departmental and faculty programmes. Lattuca (2001) sees
disciplines as powerful but constraining ways of knowing. A disciplinary focus means
fragmentation of knowledge (Brewer 1999) and persistently difficult, seemingly
unresolvable, problems and issues that require input beyond singular disciplinary
frames or paradigms. What is done at Lynchburg has the museum as a forum for
testing cross-disciplinary collaboration. Their approach as an art museum embraces
the idea that what’s needed for supporting the knowledge enterprise is con-
textualisation not compartmentalisation. In other words, art and visual material
produced in a social, cultural, historic context are inherently inter-disciplinary
(Rothermel 2012). It is a multi-disciplinary conceptual remapping of the university
art museum beyond its original functions and remit.
It is not just art museums that can reach out to other disciplines on campus to
offer cross-disciplinary experiences, the same thing can be seen when the starting
point is a collection of objects. Anthropology is a discipline with a pedagogy and
academic history of engaging with material culture and therefore developing
collections in higher education settings. Increasingly, in recent decades, the an-
thropology collection is seen as having a much broader disciplinary reach in how it
serves the university. Bartlett (2012), writing about the Beloit College’s Logan
Museum of Anthropology, argued that the days of the discipline-specific collec-
tion in American higher education may be over. There is no reason why most
curricula can’t be built around material culture. The idea of an engagement with
an object being transactional is seen in what Latham (2013) refers to as numinous
56 Crossing discipline boundaries

experiences with objects; they unite intellect with affect, as a mechanism for
scaffolding learning experiences. Bartlett (2012) argued that objects can be thought
of in two different ways when applying them to curriculum, either as prisms or as
anchors. For the first, the analogy of a prism breaking white light up into com-
ponent colours represents the object releasing different cultural layers. These
cultural layers are essentially different contextual frames available for exploration
through the same series of questions used in visual thinking strategies. The other
use of the object championed at Belloit, objects as anchor, separates the object
from its cultural context to service a specific learning goal. This involves using
them as a focus for task-based instruction or as an inspiration or talking point for
creative activity. Bartlett (2012) argued that this is an appropriate object ap-
plication for teaching in the sciences, literature and language. One creative use
at Beloit is having an object as a focus of creative team writing exercises, perhaps
a combination of haiku, limerick and/or short fictionalised biography, and then
swapping with other teams in an attempt to identify their respective objects.
Two Australian examples of cross-disciplinary uses of higher education col-
lections follow. The Australian artist Neil Frazer has a common theme of imagined
coastal landscapes. Several works from the Macquarie University Art Gallery were
matched with items selected from the university’s geology collection. Exhibition
text was written to explore ideas surrounding landscape formation from a geo-
logical perspective (Simpson 2018), this was used in a display at the University
Library. A new collaboration between the Business School at Sydney University
and the Chau Chak Wing Museum (Sydney University) taught students about
creativity. Students were presented with a variety of objects including natural
history and archaeological objects and had to construct a narrative connecting
them (Wardak et al. 2021).
While the above are examples where a collection of discipline-specific objects
or a collection of artworks can expand curricular impact across the campus, there is
also an argument for using objects in art education. This is done by using the
tension between aesthetic and functional characteristics of the object. Martín-
Piñol & Calderón-Garrido (2021) argued that, as objects can be used in a didactic
way, they can also be used in an art historical way. As noted by Laskey (2009)
“objects house the human drama and help reflect the human condition back to
learners.” Martín-Piñol & Calderón-Garrido (2021) adopt a concept of the object
from Moles (1974), seeing them as layered things existing outside of ourselves
(i.e. external entities) that are thrown against our senses, the opposite of subject.
Objects also form part of a network interconnected by human perception, context
and understanding of function (Moles 1974). Eight separate object values are
identified (Martín-Piñol & Calderón-Garrido 2021), a mixture of aesthetic,
functional, spiritual and even monetary value propositions, all subjective attribu-
tions derived from our perceptive and interpretive capacities. Yet unlike modern
material culture theorists, despite the reliance on human perceptual agency, Moles
(1974) conceptualised the object as always passive (Devèze 2004). Martín-Piñol &
Calderón-Garrido (2021) outline ten different object attributes that give pedagogic
 Crossing discipline boundaries 57

significance, based on the work of Santacana & Llonch-Molina (2012), including

that fact that they are memory supports, triggers for imagination and even just
aesthetically attractive. The argument shows that in many ways artworks, art
objects and other objects are pedagogically interchangeable because their use in
teaching programmes deploys the same set of principles of observation and con-
text. Visual literacy is principally the same whether it is based on two or three
dimensions.
There are plenty of other examples of projects based on anthropological material
collections in higher education in the United States being used to extend the dis-
ciplinary boundaries or even transgress them. The study of anthropology in higher
education was originally based on ethnographic collections. Many of these were
derived from colonial era interactions with colonised peoples. But in the latter half of
the 20th century anthropology took a drastic linguistic and cultural turn away from
the material. This had the effect of either marginalising the collections within the
academy or even jeopardising the survival of many. But this changed with the
material turn and a surge of interest in material culture in anthropology in the late
20th century allowing new uses for many of these collections. For example, new
experiential learning and engaged practice was developed at the Denver University
Museum of Anthropology. Kreps (2015) described a “renewal of sensory engage-
ment” in anthropological practice. This has meant the integration and adaptation
of new research practices borrowed from performative arts practice. The new re-
lationship with objects was described as “inverting the study of how people make
things to how things make people.” The change is about re-engaging with
the multisensory nature of objects, overcoming a reliance on text and visual data
(Howes & Classen 2014), opening up opportunities for collaboration between artists
and anthropologists, and has even been described as an “ethnographic turn in
contemporary art practice” (Schneider & Wright 2006, 2010).
Kreps (2015) noted the importance of “animating the agency of objects and
exhibitions” through experimentation with participatory, interactive, multisensory,
dialogic approaches and invokes the concepts of “transition” in her work. The
examples used to illustrate this approach give insights into how the history of this
disciplinary area is interpreted and how this form of enhanced museum anthro-
pology at the University of Denver university museum projects can engage across
disciplines. Kreps (2015) concluded with reference to the assertion by Marstine
(2007) that all students, regardless of their discipline, should gain skills in how to
read the museum critically. The material turn is theorised in Human Geography
(Anderson 2014), International Relations (Mac Ginty 2017), Game Studies
(Apperley & Jayemane 2012) and the Study of Religions (Schilbrack 2019) to name a
few. These provide motivation for developing collections in the academy.
The material turn in anthropology has also opened up new teaching, research and
engagement opportunities for many other university collections. The primacy of
a multisensory engagement with the object evokes “resonance and wonder”
(Greenblatt 1991), similar to “numinous experiences” (Latham 2013) being a mixed
effect of cognition and emotion. But now, post-material turn, the resonance is a
58 Crossing discipline boundaries

characteristic of the object, a form of object agency perhaps and the wonder an
outcome of the resonance, similar to the transactional engagements of John
Dewey.11 In more recent work with object-based learning, some practitioners now
speak of “learning with objects” rather than “learning from objects” (Schultz 2018).
With this change in museum anthropology, there is an expanded agenda for using
objects in university museum programmes. The Peabody Museum of Archaeology
and Ethnology at Harvard University now recognise that by recovering and re-
storing Indigenous significances, through the object’s voice (agency), there is an
opportunity to deconstruct the Western systems of scientific classification and cri-
tique the now discarded paradigms of “salvage ethnography” (Edwards et al. 2006).
The objects have become evidence of how epistemic frameworks have shifted, how
knowledge has been recontextualised and how positionality is a critical element of
ontology. The objects are now relevant and poignant for use in a whole range of
cultural, social, philosophical and historic academic disciplines.
The profound crisis for university anthropology museums that predated the
material turn has been recognised at many other institutions. The Haffenreffer
Museum at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island has undergone a re-
naissance in use and application; collection items have been increasingly used in
non-anthropology curriculum settings (Lubar & Stokes-Rees 2012). This is a
private university, one of the oldest in the United States and one of the first to
publically recognise a past that benefited from the profits of slavery (Cellini 2019).
The impact that the Mellon Foundation12 had on making university art collections
of value to non-art history curricula in the 1990s (Jandl 2012) had been noticed
at Brown University. It was decided to adopt the same strategy with the
Haffenreffer’s anthropology collection. A couple of interesting initiatives came
about, one of these was a rethinking of how space was used within the museum.
CultureLab was a new space introduced specifically for the in depth use of objects
in teaching; in other words, a space that would enable close sensory contact with a
number of objects. It was conceived as a cross between museum storage space and
the public museum space itself. While CultureLab was a specific university im-
primatur in terms of museum space use, it is probably closest in concept with
discovery centres in civic museums.
The museum also undertook a reform process whereby collaborations between
staff and students were actively sought and projects and pathways developed to
align the actions of the museum and the mission of the university with a focus on
encouraging students to think about how objects mediate human relationships.13
Student curated exhibitions and the collection of contemporary artefacts were
some of the changes introduced. As a result, the museums influence extended
beyond the humanities and social sciences. Computer science students, for ex-
ample, designed aspects of display interactives (Lubar & Stokes-Rees 2012).
Museum staff routinely sought copies of course syllabus and respond with sug-
gestions of objects from the collection that might suit faculty staff delivering the
course. Because the process is based on dialogue and communication, faculty staff
may assign course work based on exhibition components and students may
 Crossing discipline boundaries 59

undertake exhibition work themselves for assessment. Using Chatterjee et al.’s

(2015) definition of a mode of education which involves the active integration of
objects into the learning environment, the Haffenreffer appears to have embedded
it just about everywhere.
The cross-disciplinary benefits of object-based learning aren’t limited to an-
thropology collections. The material turn has enabled any form of collection to be
of value to many different types of higher education instruction. For example, the
Lois Jett Historic Costume Collection14 at Illinois State University, while pri-
marily employed in a world dress course (Banning & Gam 2020), such collections
have other educational applications in cultural studies and history (Marcketti et al.
2011, Marcketti & Gordon 2019). This particular collection has items of dress
from countries such as Switzerland, Sweden, Uzbekistan, China, Japan, Korea,
India, Philippines, Burma (Myanmar), Mexico and Nigeria. Given the interests in
cross-cultural experience and exposure in many humanities courses in higher
education, this sort of collection has broad rather than narrow relevance for
teaching. Gam & Banning (2012) have shown that exposure to these types of
design collections can improve creativity in students. Using object-based learning
enhanced student learning and improved the classroom experience for participants
because of the multisensory opportunities (Banning & Gam 2020). As with
clothing collections, other design material in higher education can serve a mul-
titude of purposes. Guo (2021) discussed the collection of traditional Sichuan
furniture at the Chengdu Polus Furniture Museum of Polus International College,
Chengdu. Its relevance in disseminating cultural heritage, retaining traditional
skills and values and cultivating a national spirit of learning, all through the uni-
versity museum has been outlined (Guo 2021). There are similar recent devel-
opments in Japan with new interest in object-based learning at Keio University
(Watanabe 2019) and even examples of the use of traditional Japanese art in
programmes at the Nature and Science Museum, Tokyo University of Agriculture
and Technology (Tanabashi 2021).
So if objects can be seen as knowledge carriers (Schmeider 2019), regardless of
what sort of epistemic framework is deployed, their ability to cross disciplinary
boundaries in teaching and learning programmes through object-based learning can
also be matched by discipline boundary crossing in research. There are plenty of
examples of where university collection items undergo different forms of analysis of
relevance to different disciplines for which the object was originally collected. One
recent example of testing to cover a variety of scientific disciplines will suffice; it is a
range of scientific tests applied to a couple of Egyptian child mummies from the
University of Tartu Art Museum (Oras et al. 2020). The mummies underwent
osteological and archaeothanatological study, radiological investigation, AMS
radiocarbon dating, chemical and textile analyses, 3D modelling, entomological as
well as DNA investigation.15 Another example of collections crossing disciplinary
boundaries in research is where collections of scientific equipment are used for
research into the history of science (Ludwig & Weber 2013). In this case such
collections can be seen as research infrastructure.
60 Crossing discipline boundaries

At the University College London, there is a department called UCL Culture. It

is responsible for the university’s museums and collections and for many years have
been embedding objects from their collections in the teaching curriculum. They
have also been undertaking research in the efficacy of object-based learning as a
teaching strategy in higher education (Sharp et al. 2015). Their aim is not just to use
objects in areas of study that have traditionally incorporated objects in teaching
practice, but to embed them across the entire academic spectrum (Kador et al. 2017).
They argue there is no academic discipline for which material culture can’t be de-
ployed. The university has three public museums and a gallery,16 plus additional
collections, giving in total around 800,000 objects available for this purpose.
There is a second year module in the University College London’s Bachelor of
Arts and Sciences called “Object lessons, communicating knowledge through
collections,” it consists entirely of object-based learning delivery (Kador et al.
2017). Objects are specifically selected to provide inter-disciplinary encounters,
time is spent for students to look deeply at the objects and reflect on the tactile
experience of handling the objects (Willcocks 2015). As with many of the other
projects designed to spread object engagements across the teaching curriculum of
the entire institution, the key is having a museum service that will proactively
pursue the goal of enabling objects into all sorts of different pedagogic scenarios.
The basis of this is a thorough understanding of the collections and their educa-
tional potential. At Macquarie University in Sydney, there was for a short time a
curriculum mapping project that established linkages between different museum
objects, in this case specifically from two different history collections,17 and a
range of course offerings. After one year of the project, links were established
in teaching components from all of the five university faculties namely, science
and engineering, medicine and health, arts, human sciences and business and
economics (Thogersen et al. 2018).
One way to establish cross-disciplinary linkages is to venture back in the history
of knowledge to a time before the disciplinary fragmentation wrought by the
Enlightenment. At Harvard University in a now demolished building called
Harvard Hall, the largest room in the Hall was called the Philosophy Chamber. It
was a central feature of college life at the time, serving as a main laboratory, lecture
room and meeting space. Collections of objects ranging from works of art, sci-
entific instruments (Wheatland 1968), natural history specimens were kept there
for many years, ostensibly for teaching purposes. Many of these artefacts were
donated by wealthy supporters of the university and many were the result of
material collected on journeys of discovery, many were also essentially curiosities
of little pedagogical or research value. It was the university’s natural philosophy
“cabinet of curiosities.” It was eventually dispersed throughout Harvard’s
departments and museums in 1820. It was an idiosyncratic historical collection
representing the state of knowledge at the time, one that cut across art and
science disciplines. The collections of the Philosophy Chamber filled one of the
most unusual rooms in the history of early America. Between 1766 and 1820 it
stood adjacent to the College Library on Harvard’s Campus containing over a
 Crossing discipline boundaries 61

thousand objects. It was named after the discipline of Natural Philosophy and
was a central feature of the college’s Enlightenment-era curriculum covering
mathematics, physics and astronomy. The space was frequented by leading in-
tellectuals of the time, artists, scientists, travellers and revolutionaries seeking
independence from Britain. The Philosophy Chamber was the focus of scholarly
life at Harvard University and the New England region for over 50 years. An
exhibition on the Philosophy Chamber was developed by Harvard University
Art Museums (Lasser 2017).18
Prior to the reconstruction of the Philosophy Chamber as a travelling exhibition,
Harvard University Museums put together a multi-venue series of exhibitions in
2011 called “Tangible Things” to show the links between objects and knowledge
(Ulrich et al. 2015) emulating the materiality of the earlier age. There was a similar
undertaking at Macquarie University Art Gallery in 2014 with the exhibition
“Affinities.” On display were objects from seven different museums and collections
on campus. This rhetorical question was asked - what do a 3D printed copy of an
ancient artefact, a Dhoeri Headdress from Torres Strait, an iconic image of Christine
Keeler, the lower jaw section of a sperm whale and a John Brack portrait of Sir
Garfield Barwick and Professor A. G. Mitchell have in common? The point of the
question is they represent collected materiality at one institution as a link to
knowledge. This exhibition was undertaken as part of the university’s 50th anni-
versary. The items that made up the exhibition formed part of the academic en-
terprise; each one was a window into the questions that have occupied the minds of
staff and students throughout the institution’s history. They are material manifes-
tations of an organisation’s cultural and intellectual identity. The exhibition was an
exploration of the modern relationship between materiality, knowledge and higher
education (Simpson 2014a). The process of developing it involved bringing together
science and humanities collection managers and researchers to explore the question
of what unites us apart from the obvious institutional setting. Discussions revealed
that there are lots of linkages and associations between the processes of the pro-
duction and dissemination of knowledge regardless of what academic discipline is
represented by a collection. It was possibly the first time an Australian university
attempted a multi-disciplinary exhibition focused on the entire institution.
The Science Gallery originated as an exhibition space at University College
Dublin. It has now spun out into an international network of university franchises
attracting significant philanthropic support. It was conceptualised as an experiment
in public engagement with science and technology that brought science into dia-
logue with the arts through exhibitions, events and festivals allowing interactions and
encounters between the public and scientists (Gorman 2009). It opened officially in
2008 and since then, this particular model of university museum that enables cross-
disciplinary collaboration for cultural production, has grown to be a global franchise,
the most recent one being established at the University of Melbourne, in Australia.
The mission is to ignite creativity and discovery where science and art collide
(Horn 2010). The Science Gallery regularly plans and facilitates inter-disciplinary
encounters, or collaborations that are in part structured and yet relatively
62 Crossing discipline boundaries

unconstrained in that the outcome is not pre-determined and the process is ex-
perimental. There is an internal group of thought leaders that are part of Science
Gallery’s management structure. They are drawn from science, arts, technology,
business and the media. Their role is to develop programme ideas for the Gallery. It
is considered essential that the collection of individuals in this role should be inter-
disciplinary in nature, represent a diversity of knowledge, skills and experience,
therefore effecting a broad co-mingling of the sciences and the arts (Tangney et al.
2014). This is considered important for creative interaction (Rhoten et al. 2009).
Because it is a franchised higher education model, it brings value not just to a single
original institution, but to the wider higher education sector itself. In this way, the
Science Gallery also brings two additional value propositions to each individual
university that hosts the franchise. These are the broad engagement of millennial and
younger audiences drawing them into participation through inter-disciplinary col-
laborations; and institutional narrative through presenting a specific, curious and
engaged public platform for the institution’s public intellectuals.
The examples of cross-disciplinary programming in teaching, exhibitions and
events documented herein illustrate the fact that the value proposition of multi-
disciplinarity in higher education is strongly delivered by university museums and
material collections. Despite the traditional disciplinary structure of teaching and re-
search in higher education, university museum collections are increasingly seen as
tools for facilitating cross-disciplinary engagements. In teaching, object-based learning
is a key driver. The case studies above analyse how and why this is of particular value
to teaching, research and engagement. Museums and collections can introduce many
new audiences (internal and external) to knowledge and be entry points to a range of
issues from beyond the discipline-specific nature of their original pedagogic applica-
tion. In some universities this has become an institutional narrative in itself. In some, it
has prompted convergence (administrative and physical) and is the basis of new in-
frastructure development (as related in the previous chapter). The drive for coales-
cence of governance structures into a centralised museum service is at least, in part,
related to the new cross-disciplinary opportunities such structures enable.
The multi-disciplinary value proposition has been further aided by the recent
growth of museum studies and related higher education teaching programmes that
provide new cross-disciplinary pedagogic possibilities for university museums and
collections. Furthermore, as noted above, recent scholars have indicated that the
efficacy of the museum construct as a learning design in itself with the obvious
consequence of taking what were originally discipline-specific elements into new
inter-disciplinary epistemic spaces. Others go further and argue for the recognition
of museum literacy as productive higher education pedagogy in itself (e.g.
Marstine 2007, Jacobs et al. 2009).

Notes
1 Connell (2019, 23) identified five types of labour in knowledge work: using the ar-
chive, encountering materials, patterning, critique and broadcasting.
 Crossing discipline boundaries 63

2 Hooper-Greenhill (1992, 15) noted (after Foucault 1970, 74) that the classificatory table
emerged as the basic structure of knowledge at this time.
3 Isaac Newton was the second Lucasian Professor at Cambridge University holding the
position from 1669 to 1702.
4 For a further discussion of the object in museum theory see Desvallées & Mairesse
(2010, 61–64).
5 Because the rock was from the site of the 1979 Air New Zealand plane crash there was a
sense of connection or confluence with everyone in the room.
6 This anecdote has been published previously (Simpson 2021b).
7 The order of the key museological concepts of thing, object, subject, document and
museum object is the process of musealisation. This nomenclatural diversity led to the
following observation: “for an uninformed outsider it must be rather puzzling to learn
that an object in a museum is not always a museum object and might not even be an
object but a thing” (van Mensch 1994, 195).
8 They were victims of Diocletianic persecution and were eventually beheaded after
unsuccessful attempts at drowning, stoning, burning at the stake and assassination by
archers (LaWall 1934). It would seem Christians were not welcome as health practi-
tioners at the time.
9 Pierre Daura (1896–1976) was a Catalan artist who was seriously wounded in the
Spanish Civil War. He moved to Virginia in the US in 1939. He was chairman of the
Art Department at Lynchburg College (the predecessor of the University) in the
1945–1946 academic year.
10 The Ramsey-Freer Herbarium is housed in the A. Boyd Claytor III Education and
Research Center at University of Lynchburg’s Claytor Nature Center.
11 American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer who argued that en-
gagements with museum objects were transactional.
12 The Mellon Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation based in New York that supports
a wide range of initiatives to strengthen the arts and humanities.
13 A strategy evoking Moles (1974).
14 It is a teaching collection with more than 2,000 items from the United States and
around the world dating from 1840 to the present.
15 Here we stray into the topic of the next chapter where the ability of the university
museum to stretch the concept of the object is considered.
16 These are the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, the Grant Museum of
Zoology, the UCL Art Museum and the UCL Octagon Gallery.
17 The Museum of Ancient Cultures and the Australian History Museum.
18 The exhibition was also shown in the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow
in 2018.
4
GETTING MORE FROM OBJECTS AND
COLLECTIONS

Over recent decades, advances in technology have dramatically changed how society
and social structures operate. The impact can be seen everywhere, in particular the
ability to manipulate larger and larger data sets in digital formats. Just about every
aspect of society and even day-to-day life can be converted into machine-readable
data. We have become a “datafied” society (van Es & Schäfer 2017) even to the
extent that our decision-making capabilities have become algorithmically inflected
and personalised (Cameron 2021). This has a profound impact on all human orga-
nisational structures; it has certainly been profound on both universities and museums.
Interwoven with technological advances, and perhaps causally associated with them,
has seen the growing global participation in higher education and a global increase in
museum numbers. There have been many challenges to what is conceptualised as the
core purposes of both higher education and the museum. Contestation both around
and within these organisations has become a normative theme.
For museums, some scholars have noted that this has been accompanied by
theoretical developments in areas related to museum operations such as the nature
of museum space, the social role of the institution, the process of museum learning
and much more. Questions and contestation has been both epistemological and
ontological in nature (Parry 2005). For universities, there has been the emergence
of new intellectual endeavours such as digital heritage, digital humanities and new
areas in media and communication studies. The emergence of more sociological
and theorised interpretations of the museum and the university, plus contestation
around ideas of technological determinism, has been a feature of discourse. So, it is
easy to imagine that what has been happening in the space where these two types
of organisation overlap, the university museum, is quite profound and enables
insights into broader questions of higher education and museology.
As seen in the last chapter, the study and design of objects has application, and
provides linkages or bridges, across a range of discipline areas. This has been one
DOI: 10.4324/9781003186533-4
 Getting more from objects and collections 65

part of reimagining the object in the university museum as an important ingredient

of new active learning pedagogies. Technology, as a fundamental extension of the
material turn, enables us to consider the set of relationships between the material
and the digital. An important consideration here is how the material and the digital
constructively and creatively bring additional value to the tripartite mission of
higher education through the modalities of learning, research and engagement.1
This chapter covers the work of university museum collections in re-
conceptualising understanding of the object and allowing the development of
new programs through digital extension. Many universities are exploring the
pedagogy of object-based engagement in a digital environment. While the
value of object-based learning is well understood, online delivery of programs
and new digital platforms allow universities to experiment with 3D scanning
and printing technologies that enable new learning experiences untethered
from the fixed geography of the museum space or laboratory. Some have ar-
gued that digital extension using both collection objects and virtual reality will
enable a new future for many university museums (Jones 2012, Simpson et al.
2013, Nelson 2014) by developing new applications that serve the three
missions of higher education.
Before investigating some specific examples documented as case studies, a
visit to a seminar at the University of Melbourne in late 2016 captured much of
the excitement and promise of these new developments in higher education.
The University of Melbourne is a large, multidisciplinary higher education
institution, the second oldest in Australia. The university has over 30 material
collections across campus.2 Apart from the well-known Ian Potter Museum of
Art and the Percy Grainger Museum, there is the Harry Brookes Allen Museum
of Anatomy and Pathology, the Henry Forman Atkinson Dental Museum, a
Medical History Museum, a School of Physics Museum and Tiegs Museum
(Zoology). The university’s most recent cultural facility is Science Gallery Melbourne.
The symposium, “The Future of the Object,” consisted of two and a half days of
inter-disciplinary panel discussions featuring a diversity of scholars, practitioners and
theorists (Simpson 2017a).3 It explored how the changing material-digital dynamics
is facilitating a growing re-engagement with objects and their stories in higher
education and is coincident with the growth of digital humanities. Presentations
covered new opportunities to connect with, recall, imagine and represent the world,
redefining our relationship with culture and heritage.
The symposium took place in the University of Melbourne’s Arts West Building,
specifically designed object-based learning laboratories, interesting hybrids between
museum space and tutorial laboratory. They were reminiscent of the European
anatomy theatre with its focus on an object in a centralised position. Object-based
learning was designed into the building in recognition of its capacity to foster
creative thinking, enable kinaesthetic learning, provide experiential engagement
with primary research methods and materials, and improve learning outcomes
through enabling direct engagements with objects (Simpson & Hammond 2012).
The context of the object itself was integrated into the Arts West architecture of the
66 Getting more from objects and collections

new building. Images of objects from the university’s cultural collections were in-
corporated as part of its embossed exterior façade (Simpson 2017a). The thinking
behind this is the same as seen at the University of Sydney with the walls of senior
administrators adorned by material from the collections.4 The architecture is clearly
influenced by the cultural collections narrative. Objects are in context as both muse
and inspiration, the building is both context and object in itself (Simpson 2017a).
This is designed to support innovative thinking around the nature and possibilities of
the object.
The seminar covered how digital technologies are transforming our experience
of the material. Material and digital natures seem able to speak to different registers
of meaning and perception, and through new configurations, produce new kinds
of meaning (Simpson 2017a). While the boundaries between traditional disciplines
appear to be dissolving, as enabled by the inter-disciplinary qualities of the object;
there is also a sense that analogue and digital, fixed and mobile, authentic and
surrogate and even cultural production and consumption are best conceptualised as
a sliding scale of experience rather than as polar opposites. The concept of strict
duality between object and subject that underpins western epistemology is now
challenged and questioned in an entirely new dimension. There are significant
effects and theoretical challenges situating the presumed binary concepts of the
virtual and real, the tangible and the intangible, the digital and analogue, and online
and offline as outmoded and irrelevant practices in knowledge production and
dissemination. The same trends in higher education are observable globally; brief
case studies on how different university museums are enhancing university business
by getting more value out of their objects and collections are noted below.
Before looking at some of the many recent projects that have been enabled by
the technological advances in replication, it is worth remembering that in higher
education an earlier technology performed a similar function for many years. This
was the material replication of material objects with plaster. It has been argued that
the enthusiasm for plaster copies of classical sculptures has non-academic origins
extending back to the 16th century (Haskell & Penny 1981). Because they were
relatively cheap to produce, cast collections became useful in many institutions,
particularly for teaching the classics, but also with applications in other teaching
disciplines as physical models. Colleges and universities in the United States built
collections from the beginning of the 19th century. Some of the oldest Ivy League
institutions such as Brown, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton and Cornell (Born
2002) developed cast collections. The history of Yale’s cast collection has been
published (Fahlman 1991). In the early 20th century, the College Art Association
in the United States had a “Cast Committee” that advised educational institutions
on sourcing casts from Europe. Apart from the fundamental role in teaching, it’s
important to note that plaster also played a role in research. It was often used to
capture an impression of objects during pioneering fieldwork. Many early ex-
peditions to Mesoamerican sites returned with casts of large monuments. Casts
intricately preserve carved detail from the surfaces of monuments. Many ended up
being the only record of the item if the originals were damaged, looted or lost.
 Getting more from objects and collections 67

The rarity of this form of research artefact inspired the exhibition at Harvard
University’s Peabody Museum entitled “Distinguished Casts, Curating Lost
Monuments at the Peabody Museum” on show from 2001 to 2007 (Fash 2011).
Returning to the immaterial replicability in the digital world, one such project
is the Cabinet project at Oxford University driven by the Oxford Internet Institute.
Digital technology captures objects in three dimensions through photogrammetry
enabling digital copies of museum objects to be cycled into a whole range of
applications in teaching and learning, research and even community engagement
through life-long learning. In teaching applications, objects can be integrated into
interactive study and revision material along with text-based data and a range of
additional digital media selected by those delivering the study (Eccles 2019). From
a museological perspective, this can be viewed as a simple process of increasing
online accessibility and enhancing the object with additional linked contextual
information. This augments, rather than replaces, engagement with objects in
museums within the context of the curriculum.
The Cabinet project claims to bring digital content into a single intuitive and
interactive resource. An example of its use in teaching is given on the project
website.5 It not only integrates collection objects from university museums but
also includes campus landscapes. One example of use in teaching is in the course
“Democratising the Classics: popular literature, consumer taste, and material ob-
jects in the 18th century.” Objects from the Ashmolean Museum are incorporated
into the teaching resource along with materials from the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York. The system has the capability to incorporate public domain
material when constructing a teaching resource.
The Cabinet platform is also used for public engagement with the development
of exhibition legacies. In 2019 on the fiftieth anniversary of the first landing of
humans on the moon, the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford held an exhibition entitled
We look to the moon celebrating the long fascination humanity has had with the
Moon. The Exhibition brought together a range of lunar items from the middle
ages onwards in the Bodleian collections. The Cabinet platform provided both a
digital extension and legacy for the exhibition long after it closed. The extension
incorporated additional publically available material from outside the university
into the exhibition.
A similar system for capturing 3D images of collection objects called Pedestal has
been developed on the other side of the world at Macquarie University in Sydney
(Rampe 2018). Pedestal enables the user to change the lighting on objects to focus
on different object characteristics, do cross sections and make measurements; tasks
traditionally undertaken in the laboratory. In terms of linking other data sets with
museum objects, the Pedestal system incorporates the sites where archaeological
objects were originally found capturing additional object context for teaching
(Rampe 2019). Interestingly, these two university-specific, purpose-built digital
platforms, Cabinet and Pedestal, use nomenclature referential to analogue exhibi-
tion techniques. The exhibition furniture names perhaps reflect a desire for
homology between digital platform and museum space.
68 Getting more from objects and collections

Other universities are representing their objects as 3D digital reproductions for a

range of uses on generic software, rather than on university-developed platforms.
The growth of collections being transformed to digital media has been rapidly in-
creasing. During the COVID-19 pandemic6 the technology found a critical role in
remote delivery of courses. The Garstang Museum of Archaeology at the University
of Liverpool was established in 1904, based on the collections of pioneering British
archaeologist, John Garstang. He was an early adaptor through extensively using
photography and detailed site notebooks in excavation documentation in the early
20th century. In 1899, Garstang worked with Sir Flinders Petrie at Abydos in Egypt
and followed up with many more field seasons. Like Petrie, Garstang was able to
secure wealthy donors to support his fieldwork. The museum has a collection of
Near East Mediterranean and European ancient artefacts plus a collection of
Garstang’s letters and photographs. Before the COVID-19 Pandemic, the museum
worked with the Department of Archaeology, Classics & Egyptology at the
University of Liverpool to produce virtual 3D models of artefacts (Sargent &
Hulme-Beaman 2021). This became important with the pandemic closing down
face to face teaching at the university in 2020 as it did with many higher
education institutions around the world (Cioppi et al. 2020). The Garstang
Museum shared the use of many of its digital objects with other museums
during the pandemic and secured funding to establish a collaborative training
network to assist other museums in bringing 3D material online (Sargent &
Hulme-Beaman 2021).
The osteo-archaeological archive at the University of New England, Australia,
is another interesting collection of digital objects. This collection was specifically
developed for the teaching of a remotely delivered third-year subject of
Zooarchaeology looking at major methods and techniques used in archaeological
faunal analysis. Students acquire basic skills in the identification and analysis of
human and animal bones from archaeological sites. The “virtual bone” project
drew on existing osteological collections and made models of human and animal
bones that could be measured and experienced online by students (Filios 2019).
The academic running the program compared the abilities of the students to
identify material accurately for both the cohort trained with the original material
and the cohort trained with the digital copies (Fillios 2019).7
There have been many theoretical analyses of the digital in museums, especially
in the areas of anthropology and archaeology. These two have a long history of
object-based epistemologies. For example, the Virtual Curation Laboratory at
Virginia Commonwealth University partners with external collecting agencies to
make 3D models of archaeological material from around the world. The ability to
produce printed replicas from these digital visualisations enables a much broader
public interaction with the material and engagement with archaeological ideas.
The opportunity of direct interaction with physical models extends archaeological
knowledge well beyond researchers and students enroled in the study of archae-
ology, giving the discipline much more traction with, and therefore support from,
the public. It has been argued to be a form of co-curation (Means 2017).
 Getting more from objects and collections 69

The ability to manipulate spaces in digital form has also been part of the higher
education curriculum in architecture (Picon 2010). On occasions, this pedagogy will
intersect with the cultural infrastructure, in the form of a gallery or museum based in
the same institution delivering the architecture program. One example is the Ian
Potter Museum of Art; established at the University of Melbourne in 1972. The
Potter is the custodian of the university’s art collection holding Indigenous art and
the collections of classics and archaeology (Burrit & Jamieson 2010). During 2018,
architecture students, at the Melbourne School of Design, developed approaches to
the design of virtual spaces as a way of digitally communicating and representing the
Ian Potter Museum of Art’s classics and archaeology collection (Waters 2019).
Aligning 3D scans of objects with virtual reality technology allowed the museum
collection to be represented within designed spatial environments so students could
explore the possibilities of engagement and interaction. The project was entitled
“The Museum Made Digital.” It is just one example of how the digital extensions of
objects and spaces can serve discipline-specific curriculum purposes.
Another example from the same university involves optometry students and
one of the most distinctive and idiosyncratic biographical university museum in
Australia, the Percy Grainger Museum. The museum documents the life of Percy
Grainger (Dreyfus 1983), one of Australia’s most outstanding composers, musi-
cologist and educator with an archive and material culture collection developed by
Grainger of over 100,000 items including art, photographs, costumes, music scores
and instruments acquired by Percy Grainger and bequeathed to the university in a
circular building designed by himself. It includes a wide range of musical re-
cordings including Grainger’s own “Free Music” experiments (Grainger 1996).
Optometry students took part in object-based activities as a way of developing
digital literacy skills and exploring ethical questions about professional practice in
health (Cham & Gaunt 2019). The Grainger Museum was also a source of in-
spiration for an exhibition at the Potter Museum where a range of Fine Arts,
Engineering and Music students responded to the collections with an exhibition as
new cultural production (Woodward 2017).
While there has been great uptake of digital tools in areas such as architecture and
engineering to support pedagogy, there is at least one instance where digital tools
have helped resolve a research question at the intersection of architecture, osteology
and archaeology. The only building structures that are derived from animal parts are
the whalebone winter houses of the Thule Inuit culture (1000 to 1600 AD) in arctic
Canada. These are unusual and rare building materials, much of the material was
recycled into new dwellings after older ones were abandoned. The early archae-
ological study only recorded the structural elements that make up these houses in
two dimensions. A combination of 3D scanning of a complete baleen whale skeleton
and the use of an experimental virtual space by two archaeologists from the
University of Calgary allowed the first advanced understanding of how these unusual
and irregular-shaped, geometrically complex elements could be used together to
build a dwelling (Dawson & Levy 2005). Scanned structures were used with
computer-aided software to identify the architectural role of each element. A
70 Getting more from objects and collections

complete baleen whale skeleton was digitised after this to allow the researchers to
reverse engineer the structures.
These immaterial uses of materiality in higher education arise from the new
infrastructure enabled by the digital. As has been argued by some researchers, the
digital and analogue interface allows new iterations and possibilities not because
they are polar opposites, but because of the way the two intersect. We should not
focus on the differences between the two, but rather on how they influence each
other. Or, more broadly speaking, we can think of objects as an intersection of
tangible, intangible and e-tangible characteristics (Parry 2007). Digital media bring
intensification and complexity to cultural production (Geismar 2013). We also
need to be mindful that all digital collections that find a purpose in higher edu-
cation don’t always have an analogue counterpart, some collections are either
born-digital, or have only been functionally preserved in digital form. Sound
archives and other digital media repositories are growing in higher education. In
many national jurisdictions, research archives only require digital content, an issue
that can be potentially problematic in some natural science disciplines (Planavsky
et al. 2020). Geismar (2013) and others (Hess et al. 2016) have argued that because
of the ability to edit, incorporate and share, the digital, it now structures our
expectations of access, flexibility and circulation.
While the possibilities of structuring museum and archive data have been mul-
tiplied by digital systems, using these systems to simply improve access also opens up
new pedagogic and research opportunities. Creating research experiences for un-
dergraduate students is seen as providing a high-value learning environment. At the
California State University Channel Islands, in the John Spoor Broome Library,
named after a well-known Ventura County rancher and philanthropist, the special
collections are put to that use. The Library acquired an archival collection of papers
from the former Congressman, Robert J. Lagomarsino. The Congressman served
under presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush and Reagan. The collection includes
original furniture as displayed in the library exhibit room, artifacts, photographs and
a special compilation of original correspondence and memorabilia from government
officials and celebrities.8 It also documents the Congressman’s early family
history in Ventura. The collection includes letters written in opposition to the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. Students analysed the letters as an exercise in un-
derstanding the relationship between primary sources and political science, then
applied data visualisation techniques to their analysis (Cook 2015). The library
also received on loan a collection of ephemera from the Ventura County
Commission on Women. An agreement allowed them to digitise this material
and make it available for student research projects. The special collection re-
pository was more focussed on researcher use than collection ownership. This
illustrates that the analogue presence of a collection in higher education may be
transitory, but the digital intersection allows extensive asynchronous application
(Geismar 2013). The focus for the library is engendering digital literacy skills in
students and promoting the special collections as part of the academic enterprise
(Cook 2015).
 Getting more from objects and collections 71

An alternative to utilising external collections is to develop your own. Lin and

Hinegardener (2012) outlined how the Health Sciences and Human Services
Library at the Baltimore campus of the University of Maryland worked with their
Schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Social Work and Graduate
School to build a digital archival repository using commercially available software.
Research reports, newsletters, theses, course catalogues, yearbooks have been in-
corporated as well as a range of historic material extending back to the earliest days of
the university in the early 19th century. A lot of the work involved digitising historic
campus documentation and making it available. This focus on institutional history
gives a medical humanities resource that strengthens an institutional narrative when
the archive is used in teaching and research programs.
Another university museum that has used its collections for the development of
inter-disciplinary teaching opportunities is the Museum of English Rural Life at
the University of Reading. Established in 1951, the museum is actually a com-
bination of museum, library and archive dedicated to recording the changing face
of farming and the English countryside (Higgs 1953, Smith 2012). The museum
developed a number of optional modules that could be taught into existing un-
dergraduate programs including “Analysing Museum Displays,” “Object analysis
and Museum Interpretation” providing an opportunity to develop object-based
dissertation projects and “Museum Theory, History and Ethics” (Smith 2008).
While these modules used museums across campus, others were developed such as
“Public Understanding of Countryside Issues” that were specific to the remit of
the Museum of English Rural Life.
Just as original objects may leave the campus for whatever reason, sometimes
possibly with a digital copy remaining, whole museums can also disappear. This is
unsurprising as universities are organic human organisations continuously going
through processes of change and evolution. Even when a museum disappears from
the campus landscape, it can still provide teaching and research opportunities in
absentia. Lubar (2017) opens his book dramatically by noting the death of Brown
University Professor John Whipple Potter Jenks in 1894 on the steps of the
university museum he established. At its apex, the Jenks Museum of Natural
History and Anthropology had around 50,000 objects and specimens including
plants, animals, fossils, minerals, ethnographic objects and historic curiosities from
around the world. It was founded in 1871, thrived for two decades, then a period
of decline led to its final demise in 1945. After Jenks died, two Professors, one
with the magnificent and academically theatrical name of Hermon Carey Bumpus,
worked towards establishing a biological laboratory at Brown. Pedagogies in the
natural sciences were changing and the value and utility of Jenks’s work and
educational legacy diminished. It’s a story common to many 19th-century uni-
versity natural history museums sometimes described as a new depersonalised
approach to specimen-based museum education (Duffy 2017). Ninety-two
truckloads of specimens from the Jenks Museum with many hand-written labels
by Jenks ended up in the Brown University dump on the banks of the Seekonk
River (Lubar et al. 2017). The teaching and research opportunity came from
72 Getting more from objects and collections

Brown’s 250th anniversary when the “lost” museum was revived with an ex-
hibition and teaching project by Lubar with input from faculty and students and
artist Mark Dion. This “resurrection” was undertaken by the “Jenks Society for
Lost Museums” in 2014.
Despite the view that university museums may well be unchanging and slow to
adapt to the changing needs of their parent university, there are plenty of examples
of early adaptation of new technology, even when experimental and unproven.
Queen’s University in Belfast has a Sonic Arts Research Centre within their
School of Arts, English and Languages. The Research Centre includes a Sonic
Lab, described as the auditory equivalent of an Imax theatre. The research from
the Centre is described as a synergy between music, computer science and elec-
trical and electronic engineering (Alcorn & Corrigan 2003). The Naughton
Gallery at the University collaborated with the Sonic Arts Research Centre in
2007 to produce the “Sound of Silver,” an exhibition that combined artistic audio
responses to items in the University’s historic collection of silver artefacts (Brown
2008), an early example of a collaborative, creative science-arts exhibition.
There are countless examples of university’s making collections accessible
through an online portal. Sometimes it can be highly significant and contested
collections aligned with institutional identity e.g. Mapungubwe Collection and
Mapungubwe Archive9 at the University of Pretoria (Tiley-Nel 2022), or they can
be a consortium of universities providing access to research collections e.g. the
Paradisec Project10 (Kell & Gagau 2020). Other university collectives have used a
portal to provide a virtual experience of higher education heritage such as the
Atalaya3D11 project covering the heritage of ten Andalusian public universities
(Melero et al. 2019).
The Petrie Museum at University College London (UCL) is named after the
famous archaeologist Flinders Petrie who pioneered a number of field techni-
ques. UCL was the first to offer Egyptology as a discipline. The museum, more
recently, was one of the first to make its entire collection accessible through a
visual online catalogue (Nelson & MacDonald 2012). More specifically, the
Petrie Museum was involved in three experimental digital projects in colla-
boration with the university’s academic staff. Academic staff and research stu-
dents from architecture and the built environment installed radio frequency
identification technology (RFID) in the museum to collect and measure visitor
experiences in the museum (Behrens 2011). The Petrie Museum also worked
with its Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering and
commercial partners on innovative laser scanning technology. This was because
the objects in the museum posed specific challenges to the technology and
helped improve methods of data capture (Nelson & MacDonald 2012). UCL in
association with a number of other university researchers and research groups
also worked on early examples of mobile tagging systems for developing digital
memories. An example was the “Tales of Things” project using items in the
Petrie Museum. The system was further developed using the Grant Museum of
Zoology (Bailey-Ross et al. 2014).
 Getting more from objects and collections 73

There has been increasing pressure to digitise university collections to make

them more accessible to a whole range of communities and for a range of different
purposes. In the institutional setting there is, as expected, a specific emphasis on
higher education (Shephard & Pookulangara 2019). There are a few studies on
usage by different communities of interest, but not many on the multiple com-
munities of interest in higher education (Hopes 2014). Physical and digital col-
lections may serve some different but perhaps intersecting purposes. Marcketti
et al. (2011) investigated this through interviews with curators of historic clothing
collections in US universities. Shephard and Pookulangara (2019) surveyed users
of US university digital collections mainly from the sciences, but also technology
and business. They came up with some interesting conclusions including the non-
controversial insight that students will use digital collection materials if they be-
lieve it will help with study success. They also identified that utility in teaching
programs wasn’t always designed into digitisation programs.
There have been efforts at collating or aggregating information about university
collections in some national jurisdictions. Germany is a notable example of early
developments of this nature much of it inspired by the opportunities offered by
“new media” (Weber 2003b). None of these developments were undertaken to be
mindful of future teaching opportunities, but the data did offer new perspectives
on research questions. The aggregated German information on university mu-
seums and collections allowed research into the representation of data (Weber
2009). The system also provides insights into the history of academic disciplines
and changes in the use of collections over time (Weber 2010), and the analysis of a
subset of collection types, such as models (Weber 2011). This cumulative national
focus resulted in the German Council of Humanities and Science declaring the
university museums and collections database in Germany as research infrastructure
(Weber 2012). The national web portal for university museums and collections has
developed the capacity to use data visualisations for some key indicators, for ex-
ample, the number of universities that centrally coordinate their museums and
collections (Weber & Stricker 2017). The success of the German model inspired
other national efforts (e.g. Italy: Corradini 2011, Corradini & Campanella 2014).
Some earlier national efforts had limited success (e.g. Australia: Mack & Llewellyn
1998). The Italian network has recently been revitalised with a second project on
the diffusion of scientific culture via the national web portal (Corradini 2021).
Additional granularity in data allows for adaptive educational uses.
Educational uses are more likely to be built into institutional-level databases
(e.g. University of Bologna: Ferri et al. 2021). For almost two decades the
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens has used a system named Pergamos.
It is a digital library system used as a repository for a whole range of university
material including museum collections (Pyrounakis et al. 2004). Collections ori-
ginally included in Pergamos were cultural heritage items, museum objects and
archival content. However, a recent revamp of the system has allowed con-
siderable expansion (Antoniou et al. 2018). Rare items, books and journals from
the library, grey literature, research data and even educational material for disabled
74 Getting more from objects and collections

students have now been included. This university-specific solution for digital data
accessibility, like many other similar systems, has metadata designs to enable
material in the repository to be harvested by large aggregating sites such as
Europeana.
One of the oldest Italian universities, the University of Padua,12 developed a
project to harvest selected information from the databases of the University’s
various museums and import them into a single repository called Phaidra (Andreoli
et al. 2018). This project involved the university library, botanic gardens, Museum
of Geology and Palaeontology, the Museum of Archeological Sciences and Art
and the History of Physics Museum. This project makes these 18th-century
collections accessible and searchable providing a service for both scholars and the
curious citizenry. Museums of the University had been using an Artin XML-web
system, developed by the Conference of Italian Universities Rectors. This was
originally created to set up a centralised database for all Italian university museums,
thus providing a platform to develop shared projects. National sector-wide am-
bitions such as this, as noted above, are as yet still relatively rare.
A final database that deserves a mention in this brief survey is currently the only
global database of university museums and collections. It was developed by the
International Committee for University Museums and Collections (UMAC) of
ICOM, the International Council of Museums an international committee that
was formed in 2001. The database was established early in the history of the group
as a way of aggregating information about university museums and collections on a
global scale and working towards making a global directory available (Weber &
Lourenҫo 2005). The development was inspired by the success of a number of
national efforts at surveying the sector. To be listed on the database is an “opt in”
process so the total number of 3892 university museums and collections (at the
time of writing) represents a significant under-estimate.13 The data has been made
available through a mobile phone app as a result of work by staff and students at
the Electronic Science and Technology Museum at the University of Electronic
Science and Technology in Chengdu, China. This is an institution that also
generates research on the impact of digital technologies on museums (Zhao 2018).
While the digital turn has prompted a wave of research dedicated to under-
standing the visitor experience, another area that attracts less attention but is
equally important is studying the ways museums, as organisations, are changing
collection management practices due to the extra complexity that comes with the
ease of digital reproduction. The digital has allowed a steep increase in access and
reuse of collections with implications for, and even threats to, the control, au-
thority and intellectual property of organisations. Some researchers identify a
number of different emerging models of access and use (Bertacchini & Morando
2013), but the situation is fluid with continuous change. This research is often
underpinned by economic modelling and usually uses large civic collections as its
subject matter, rather than those in higher education.
As with all museums, there has been pressure to present digital exhibitions. This
was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, some museologically
 Getting more from objects and collections 75

thoughtful examples from higher education in pre-pandemic times can be iden-

tified. In the town of Graz, the capital of the Austrian state of Styria in 1895, the
jurist, Hans Gross, often considered to be the father of criminology (Grassberger
1956), opened a museum in the Regional Court of Criminal Matters. This became
the Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum at the University of Graz (Bachhiesl 2008)
where Gross taught for a period near the end of his career. There is a fairly grisly
collection of artefacts in the museum including a collection of skulls with various
mortal injuries inflicted, a wooden column used to hide the body parts of a murder
victim who was relieved of her ostentatious jewellery. There is a collection of
murder weapons, forgeries, poisons, a rigged roulette wheel and marked playing
cards. There is a preserved finger removed by a soldier in an attempt to avoid
World War I, a poor choice in self-infliction that led him straight before a firing
squad (Bachhiesl 2008).
This unusual university museum with obvious links to the history of crimin-
ology and forensics has been reconceptualised for the internet. Biederman (2017)
makes the point that the term “virtual museum” can be defined differently in
museology and the digital humanities. While virtually presented exhibition work
cannot replace the experience of direct relational engagement in physical spaces
with exhibition objects, it can provide an alternative medium with pedagogic
value. This is because digital methods can, like their analogue museological
counterparts, still order object data in relational ways that can generate curiosity,
insights and knowledge. Virtual environments link visitors with digital re-
productions of museum objects and the engagement processes are similarly
structured even though the engagement experience may not be based on the exact
same senses as the analogue equivalent. There is a growing literature on this new
area of speculative research (Dalgarno & Lee 2010, Fowler 2015, Călin 2018,
Cook & Lischer-Katz 2019).
The Hans Gross Museum looked at basic metadata schemes and then considered
more complex ways of linking data about people, objects, historic events and
criminal records to be presented in a virtual space. This was done through the focus
of a project on the criminal act of “poaching” and considering the objects as wit-
nesses to specific events. This reconfiguration of metadata enabled the building of
additional layers of contextual information (Biederman 2017). This aligns with the
reconceptualization of objects as polysemic entities (Cameron 2005) carrying
multiple meanings. The result is a web interface that uses objects from the museum’s
collections interrelated with other textual and visual data to give insights into the
history of poaching in Austria. The virtual realm allows the development of a whole
new set of relationships between objects and information therefore generating new
knowledge. Significantly, being a university museum, the poaching project involved
the work of master’s degree students in 2016. They undertook pilot studies on the
information technology areas of the collection and worked on information mod-
elling, metadata standards, authority data and web development.
The University of St Andrews is one of the oldest in Scotland with a formidable
collection representing its own history and heritage. With the Gateway Project,
76 Getting more from objects and collections

the university was on the verge of opening the first higher education heritage
museum in the United Kingdom until one of the commercial partners went
“broke” (Kozak 2006). The university’s museums service undertook a study of
people’s experience of objects through a collection of Cypriot material, mostly
ceramics, from a family donation to the university (Sweetman & Hadfield 2018).
The study compared the reactions of different groups of visitors to objects pre-
sented in different ways. This included reactions to objects behind a glass case, by
artefact handling with and without visual input, and as digital reproductions. The
experiment was undertaken with a range of demographic groups and a focus on
seeking responses regarding the aesthetic or functional aspects of the objects. The
lack of visual data favoured functional interpretations; younger age groups were
more comfortable with the digital representations.
The University of Bucharest was established in 1864. A museum at the university
was established in 1967 with documents, manuscripts, rare books, university courses,
lithographs, photographs, plans, medals, plaques, badges, flags, paintings, sculptures,
coins and pieces of furniture that capture the university’s patrimony. The museum
recognises that finding new ways to communicate through technology is a part of
their essential remit, giving access to the museum’s collection mainly through the
online catalogue and portal. They are also exploring other interactive elements such
as QR codes, and by virtual or augmented reality as a way of both growing audiences
and making their data “multisensorial” (Nitu 2020).
While there is plenty of research on learning (Invitto et al. 2014) and the visitor
experience with virtual reality (Poce et al. 2020), an increasing number are directly
exploring augmented and virtual reality in their own university museums. The
University of Pavia in the Lombardy region of Italy is one of the oldest European
universities with evidence of teaching as early as 1361 (Verger 1996). The university
has had a number of specialised museums and collections typical of those found in
academic institutions with a medieval ancestry, such as chemistry through the
preservation of artefacts or recreation of laboratories (Lourenҫo & Carneiro 2009).14
Since 1932 it also has a museum that is focused on the history and heritage of the
university. It is located next to the historical Anatomy Theatre named after Antonio
Scarpa, founder of Pavia’s Anatomy School, in the former Medical Faculty. Housing
historic items mainly connected to the fields of medicine and physics, the museum
has developed an Augmented Reality application and has made it available to
visitors. It offers historical-scientific multimedia material with stories, 3D anima-
tions, images and user-generated video storytelling. Mainly developed by students at
the university (Bernaduzzi et al. 2021), the digital collection has made a significant
difference in engaging with this demographic. They report a more vibrant and active
museum service as a result of this development.
At the site of the legendary encounter between Thomas Huxley and Bishop
Wilberforce in 1860 about Charles Darwin’s recently published theory (Gould
1986), Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History, there has been recent
work on the impact of 3D printed objects as part of the museum experience. In
recognition of the prevailing “ocularcentrism” in the museum experience and
 Getting more from objects and collections 77

efforts advocating against marginalising haptics (Chatterjee 2008) in favour of

multisensory experiences, a Phascolotherium lower jawbone from the museum’s
collection underwent X-ray computed tomography. Plaster and printed copies
were made for use by museum visitors (Wilson et al. 2017). This research helps
build towards understanding the pedagogy of haptics (Witcomb 2015) something
that will undoubtedly benefit the practice of all museums in the future. One
advantage of using computer tomography is the ability to build a picture of the
internal nature of objects. This is invaluable with objects such as cuneiform tablets
that have been wrapped and sealed beneath a layer of clay. The technology,
through 3D printing, allows the tablet to be “unwrapped” and interpreted without
destructive analysis. This has been done with some of the earliest forms of written
communication, clay tablets dating from the late third millennium BCE. These
were part of the collection of the Macquarie University Museum of Ancient
Cultures, with images processed by the advanced technology at the nearby
Macquarie University Hospital (McKenzie-Clark & Magnussen 2016). This re-
sulted from a serendipitous juxtaposition of object and technology, the sort of
consilience favoured by a university environment. There is a specialised applica-
tion of computer tomography in the area of bioarchaeology. Digitised human
remains, as datasets that avert the need for physical interaction with remains can be
readily shared and are a specialised resource for a wide range of research en-
deavours. Uldin (2017) reviewed the history and literature of the techniques.
Hassett (2018) discussed human remains as specific digital objects; how they are
created, stored and shared.
Returning to exhibition work, many university museums were challenged to
develop new digital exhibitions, and other programs, as all museums were during
the COVID-19 pandemic. But there were plenty of good examples before the
pandemic. Virtual Museum of the University of Barcelona15 is described as a
“living” project on the museum’s website. By “living” it can be interpreted as
encompassing a whole range of activities any museum or other learning institution
would embrace including online exhibition work. As a way of celebrating the
International Year of Light 2015, they established a virtual exhibition using light-
themed cultural heritage items from the university’s collections (Cirlot et al. 2018).
The exhibition also reflected an institutional narrative as the coat of arms of the
University of Barcelona includes Minerva and the slogan “Libertas perfundet
omnia luce” or “freedom and knowledge illuminate everything with their light”
(Cirlot et al. 2018). The exhibition used artworks that captured the concept of the
radiant energy of the sun, physical instrumentation that enabled an understanding
of the nature of light, an orrery or planetarium model from the late 18th century
demonstrating night, day and the seasons, and zoological collection specimens that
show different types of adaptation to light and darkness (Cirlot et al. 2018).
It was not just exhibition work, but the whole gamut of programing that had to
be re-envisaged as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Harvard University
Art Museums (Cuno et al. 1996) is one of the largest and most significant art
collections in the United States. There are three museums; the Fogg Museum,
78 Getting more from objects and collections

western art from the Middle Ages to the present; the Busch-Reisinger Museum,
all modes and periods of art from central and northern Europe, with an emphasis
on German-speaking countries; and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum,16 Asian art,
Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern art, and Islamic and later Indian art.
Together they serve both an academic and a civic remit. When the pandemic
closed their art spaces they, like many others, needed to turn to digital resources to
keep delivering programs. Having images for much of the material in the col-
lections meant they were well placed to think through how best to use this ma-
terial in a range of teaching, research and engagement programs. This meant
devising new ways to support teaching staff, who were also seeking ways to en-
liven remote-only delivery of teaching, by connecting the curriculum with the art
collection. One strategy, done early on, was the collation of 100 collection items
that were in some way conceptually related to COVIDand/or pandemics. In this
way, they had material that could be offered for the delivery of classes such as
“Disease, Illness and Health through Literature” and “Stories from the End of the
World.” The museums gave agency to students in the new digital programing
development. They also realised, as did many others (Cioppi et al. 2020), that the
new forms of technologically based audience engagement will form part of a
hybrid program of engagement post-pandemic. Ruiz Torres (2018) notes that
university art museums have a more complicated engagement remit than civic
museums, noting they have a (cyber) public of polyhedral nature, but there is, as
yet, little correlative analysis of resources and audiences.
Many other university museums have also reported on the impact of the
pandemic on their operations. Museums from the University of Porto, Portugal
have developed new collections of relevance to the university’s experience of the
pandemic as a rapid response collecting practice (Medina & Gaspar 2021). Their
Natural History and Science Museum undertook new collection-based podcasts
during periods of closure (Gaspar et al. 2021). The University of Brasília’s
Niemeyer House used social media extensively to promote art exhibitions when
the physical campus was inaccessible (Avelar 2021). Students from Muthesius
University of Fine Arts and Design are rethinking haptics in the design of display
spaces as a response to the pandemic (Weber & Gerbaulet 2021). The University
Museum and Art Gallery at The University of Hong Kong restructured all on-
campus visits as small group visits during the pandemic to comply with govern-
ment health regulations (Knothe 2021). The Nature and Science Museum at
Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology flipped museum processes to
digital, and developed a new online community of practice (Saito 2021). Tiley-
Nel (2021) saw the impact of the pandemic on the University of Pretoria mu-
seums, in particular, but also South African university museums more generally, as
being potentially transformative in terms of defining purpose.
Beyond extending individual objects, collections or museums; there is one
university attempting an institution-wide digital program with its collections. Keio
University is a private institution in Tokyo founded in 1858. The university has
developed an innovative cyber-physical environment that puts all the universities
 Getting more from objects and collections 79

various collected objects into one place, the Keio Museum Commons.17 This is a
radical departure from mainstream Japanese higher education (Watanabe 2019)
and aims to put objects at the centre of student’s learning experience while de-
veloping a constructivist pedagogy that anchors the inter-disciplinarity between
objects as a key characteristic of teaching and research at the university. The
Museum Commons is intended as a place that will allow the interaction of stu-
dents, staff, alumni and all the various internal and external communities of in-
terest. It will be something like the digital equivalent of Harvard University’s
Philosophy Chamber (Watanabe et al. 2019).
There is another fundamental way in which the extended object can be utilised
in higher education, it is the same as analogue objects have provided inspiration for
creativity through the centuries. The ubiquity and easy accessibility of digital
objects means that when either university museums or other museums throw their
collections open, and make their immaterial collections accessible and modifiable
to all, many creative possibilities can emerge. It has been argued that digital 3D
models open up new forms of museum experience and new ways of understanding
museum collections. Younan (2015) documented two projects on the creative use
of digital 3D models of museum artefacts, the (Im)material Artefacts18 project in
collaboration with the National Museum Cardiff, and Lincoln 3D Scans, an artistic
project by Oliver Laric in association with galleries and collections.19 These
networked projects across institutional boundaries will undoubtedly become
more common as researchers continue to extend digital horizons with each
technological innovation.
Educational technologists will undoubtedly find new uses for objects in the
design of hybrid education programs, including virtual learning environments.
Professionals, with developed digital skills, will be needed in the future for cultural
industries, including museums, libraries, galleries and archives. There are already
multiple examples of researchers working with students in the digital space using
museum constructs and frameworks to elaborate new pedagogies (e.g. Nanyang
Institute of Education; Ho et al. 2011). It has been argued for some time that a
whole range of professions, particularly those associated with cultural heritage,
would benefit from ensuring there are new digitally adept generations with skills
in digitisation, digital archiving and preservation, and digital curation (Ray 2009).
Others claim that there is much more theoretical work to do in understanding the
concept of digital curation, arguing that modalities of digital curation are rooted in
concepts of preservation, not fully capturing the potential, ubiquity and capabilities
of the concept (Dallas 2016).
The museum, in an academic setting, will continue to draw more closely on
educational technology, support for teaching being a primary function. Both
augmented and virtual reality are introducing new pedagogies to educational
experiences. Augmented reality provides a sensory overlay for the world being
experienced, whereas virtual reality constructs a world in virtual space. Both of
these can, and will, increasingly involve the university museum and university
collection. There are great opportunities for the development of learning and
80 Getting more from objects and collections

teaching networks that breach institutional boundaries. Woolley et al. (2021) have
documented a number of examples of the use of scanned museum objects in app
development. Meegan et al. (2021) noted that these augmented and virtual worlds
can simulate complex behaviour, in concert with gamification and artificial in-
telligence; the pedagogic possibilities would appear boundless. There are many
digital platforms available for curating digital exhibitions and cultural content (e.g.
the “Narration Project”: Thomopoulos et al. 2021). In higher education learning
and research programs of all types, it is likely that their deployment will become
standard practice.
As with the critiques of digital curation mentioned above, others have critiqued
how museological systems have forced digital data into unrealistic bounded ob-
jects, where “object-hood” is an outmoded ontology of fixity (Cameron 2021).
We are urged to reconsider digital heritage “objects” as fluid ecosystems of in-
teraction and contingency. In particular, large complex datasets, such as those
generated by collaborative research ventures on a massive scale; while it does
represent masses of binary code, the ecological inter-relationships, especially when
residing on the internet make them unlike objects because of their fluidity, re-
cursively evolving nature and our dialogic relationships with it. This has big
implications for understanding digital cultural heritage and its theorised nature
(Cameron 2021). This will continue to be an area of contention and emerging
discourse that can be informed by both higher education materiality and born-
digital data that accumulates as collections in the academy.
Far from the image of university museums and collections being staid and static
enterprises, many of them are actually experimental testbeds for new forms of
engagement and knowledge transmission and sometimes knowledge generation. It
is, in some measure a reverberation of their ancient Alexandrian past, a group of
scholars with a diverse range of interests, skills and knowledge using the tech-
nology and structure of the museum and collection to push epistemic boundaries,
one that includes experimentation, not just with available technologies but also the
invention and application of new ones.

Notes
1 The first two of these (learning and research) can be considered specialised versions of
the last (engagement).
2 The UMAC database lists 36 museums and collections at the time of writing
(May 2022).
3 The University of Melbourne saw the collections as fostering inter-disciplinary op-
portunities, which their marketers at the time described as “collisions” that open new
ways of thinking, while also providing a unique set of engagements for students, staff
and the community.
4 See note on Michael Spence Building in Chapter 2.
5 https://www.cabinet.ox.ac.uk/ accessed May 2022.
6 Declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020 by the World Health Organisation and having
a profound effect on higher education (Simpson & Lourenço 2020) and many other
areas of human enterprise.
 Getting more from objects and collections 81

7 At the time of writing (May 2022) the results have not yet been published. In fact,
much of the pedagogy that has emerged in the museum as a result of the digital turn has
not, as yet, attracted significant study and remains under-theorised.
8 The merging of politics and celebrity is seen by some as a postmodern outcome,
sometimes labelled “politainment” (Schultz 2001).
9 See https://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/589
10 See https://www.paradisec.org.au/
11 See https://atalaya3d.ugr.es/
12 The University of Padua is 800 years old being established in 1222, from the university’s
website. https://www.unipd.it/en/history (accessed May 2022).
13 As noted in Chapter 1.
14 Pavia has museums of anatomy, archaeology, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, natural
history and a botanic garden. The UMAC database currently lists 13 museums and
collections (May 2022).
15 Described as the first of its kind in Spain, see: https://www.ub.edu/web/portal/en/
mvub (accessed May 2022).
16 At the time of writing (May 2022) many institutions are cutting ties with the Sackler
name because members of the family owned the company Purdue Pharma that profited
from the sale of addictive opioids.
17 Keio Museum Commons (KeMCo) was officially launched on April 1, 2019. It was based
on the concept of the University’s “Banraisha” common room. From the KeMCo
website: https://kemco.keio.ac.jp/en/about-en/ (accessed May 2022).
18 Part of a PhD project by Sarah Younan at Cardiff Metropolitan University.
19 This project was based on civic collections in Lincolnshire, UK.
5
INVOLVING PEOPLE AND
COMMUNITIES

Late on a Sunday night on September 2, 2018, the streets of Rio De Janeiro were
filled with the wailing of many sirens. Fire crews descended on one of the oldest
buildings1 in the capital. It had erupted into flames. The Museu Nacional in Rio
De Janeiro, tragically destroyed by that fire (Stargardter 2018), apart from being
the nation’s oldest scientific organisation, was a university museum. The associated
scientific journal, the oldest in Brazil, Archivos do Museu Nacional, has been con-
tinuously published since 1876 (de Barcelos Agostinho 2013). The museum was
incorporated as part of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1946. Before
the fire, there were over 20 million objects (Escobar 2018). The losses have been
described as a “lobotomy of the Brazilian memory”2 (Phillips 2018a). They were
enormous, estimated by some as over 90% of all holdings and including thousands
of name-bearing, biological type specimens (Pape et al. 2018). Losses included part
of a fresco from a villa at Pompeii that survived the eruption of Mount Vesuvius
but failed to survive the Rio De Janeiro fire of 2018.
In an interesting example of participation by the university and community,
museum studies students appealed for images and videos of destroyed collection
items. Their call elicited over 14,000 responses in a few hours (Phillips 2018b). In
subsequent action, there has been technology adaptation that redefines the mu-
seum objects. Some lost objects were “recreated” from 3D printing based on
images and the incorporation of some of the ashes from the burnt-out museum
(dos Santos et al. 2020). The geometry of the lost artefact comprised of the
museum ashes is an interesting and emotive material rendition. The stories asso-
ciated with the tragic events of the fire are used as an example of the far-reaching,
in fact global impact that the tragic event had on people.
Many people, however, were probably unaware that this historic structure in
Rio de Janeiro housed a university museum. In all respects, the functionality of the
museum was that of a national museum, while it’s unusual for this to be a
DOI: 10.4324/9781003186533-5
 Involving people and communities 83

university museum, it is not an isolated example. The National Museum of

Natural History and Science in Lisbon is essentially the national natural history
museum of Portugal, it is part of the University of Lisbon. It is a “Portuguese”
model to keep layers of the academy affixed to national collections; a universal
university museum for the world.
Who are the people that use university museums? Who were they designed for
in the first place? The answers to these questions are something of a shifting
landscape throughout the history of universities. A lot depends on the original
purpose of the museum or collection. If for example, the primary role of the
museum or collection was as an aid to education, as a pedagogic tool, then it is
likely that the audience would rarely be anyone other than those enroled to study
subjects related to the content of the museum. If we consider the Mouseion at
Alexandria as the first academic museum, by virtue of the fact that here we had a
range of material collections in service of a community of scholars maintained by
the state, there is little evidence that it was used by anyone other than that
community of scholars. In contrast, there are university museums today that are
essential for everyone by broad civic dissemination of cultural services, the
Portuguese examples being an extreme model.
While the Ashmolean is noted as the first university museum open to the
public, and therefore a model of civic cultural provision, there are plenty of
museums whose university connections are not overtly obvious. There are plenty
of examples of contemporary university museums that provide the same levels of
community engagement as many civic museums. The Manchester Museum is a
good example of a university museum that, in terms of community cultural
provision, essentially functions as a regional museum. There are plenty of others
where, in the mind of the public at least, the affiliation or incorporation within a
university may be largely unrecognised.
This chapter provides an analysis of how university museums and collections
can enhance participation in the business of the university. It is a phenomenon
aligning with current inclusive trends in non-university museums prompted by a
new participatory museology (Kreps 2008). An increasingly common practice at
some university museums is to prioritise teaching through the collaborative de-
velopment of a considered, and museologically purposeful, exhibition by under-
graduate student curators. This involves turning the university museum over to
students where they take some responsibility for their own learning. Students can
be given latitude to exercise their own initiative and define their own personal
and collective learning goals. This leads to a mutual reinforcement of pedagogy
and content requiring effective interplay of the intellectual, the embodied, and
the social that creates a rich and authentic learning experience for students and
staff. This is not possible where teaching and learning take place in the more
conventional setting. Central to the practice are collection objects.
Mobilising museum practice around participation is essential for addressing past
practices of exclusivity by both the museum and the host university. It is a response
to calls for decolonising curriculum and institution. Some university museums are
84 Involving people and communities

building relationships with source communities through repatriation of human re-

mains and cultural objects as part of coming to terms with difficult histories.3 Here I
will present evidence that the university museum is not just a classroom but an
extension of the university experience itself. This will be demonstrated by con-
sidering many examples of this participatory museum work happening at universities
completely outside the prescribed curriculum.
One way to consider the question of participation is through discovering the
variety of university museum audiences. Earlier writings see it as a pedagogical
tool. Forbes (1853) considered the most useful museums are those made as ac-
cessory for professorial instruction. He referred to the Museum of Practical
Geology, Metropolitan School of Science, Applied Mining and the Arts,
Department of the Board and Trade in London, where specimens were set out to
allow students to compare and contrast; a museum as an open textbook or en-
cyclopaedia of reference. The importance of observation in a rounded higher
education as a counter-balance to the cultivation of taste through purely literary
studies and of reasoning and logic is notice of Aristotelian epistemology as a
contrast to Socratic traditions. Forbes (1853) saw them as mutually supportive
rather than contradictory in an educational philosophy. His article identified three
audience categories of classification for the ignorant, namely; useful, useless or
curious. A museum assists the third category develop a thirst for knowledge; even
if his intellectual capacity is limited he can become a better citizen and a happier
man.4 He proposed that museums similar to this, displaying natural history, should
spin off from these types of museums and appear in the regions affording the
betterment of the local citizenry.
In discussing the uses of museums more broadly, Winchell (1891) noted that
there was no muse of geology or biology in the temple for the Muses. Three basic
functions were identified: entertainment, instruction and research. Entertainment
was equated with the Barnum Museum; instruction is about inspiring a thirst for
knowledge, this is the modern university museum, particularly when dealing with
scientific information. The third function of research was considered to be the
“true” museum and closest to the original Grecian concept (Winchell 1891). It
involved the profound contemplation and conference with the writings of others.
This is compared with the ancient ideal of the museum. In this third stage, the
instructed visitor becomes an investigator.5 The museum, as it takes on this highest
function, retires from public gaze, it is the highest form of truth-seeking.
Subject areas like geology and archaeology have traditionally used pedagogy
involving observation, so relevant collections have historically been part of the
university. In considering the first audience of the academic museum to be the
student, there are some more unusual teaching applications for university museums.
There is plenty of literature on the value a university museum brings to the teaching
enterprise (e.g. Altai State University Museums – Stepanskaya 2016, the University
Museums of National and Kapodistrian University of Athens – Xheraj-Subashi et al.
2019). While sticking with the first pedagogical audience, the instructed, a quick
insight into the contemporary variety follows.
 Involving people and communities 85

At the Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in Ithaca, New York,
students can undertake a Masters of Professional Studies with a focus on Public
Gardens Leadership. This programme uses the Cornell Botanic Gardens as a
teaching laboratory. It is argued these gardens must engage in both understanding
and communicating the impacts of environmental change to biological and cul-
tural diversity; this is part of the professional responsibilities of public gardens
leaders (Dunn 2017). Moreover, the Cornell Botanic Gardens see their role within
society as combatting what has broadly been called plant blindness (Allen 2003), a
cognitive inability to understand plants. They have developed a number of public
engagement studies, strategies and processes to enact this (Krishnan et al. 2019) all
of which is part of the armoury of a public gardens leader.
Museum collections in universities are a good basis for offering education and
training in conservation practice. To be able to do it comprehensively requires in-
vestment of resources. Individual conservation treatments are often labour-intensive
and costly. In-house conservation requires purpose-built laboratories and the main-
tenance of a broad range of specialist skills to meet the requirements of diverse material
collections. Some universities with diverse and extensive material collections have
developed specialist institutes to foster conservation research and teaching. These often
develop connections well beyond the campus with services to non-university mu-
seums and collections. The Straus Centre for Conservation and Technical Studies has
worked on the study and preservation of the collections of Harvard University’s
museums (Bewer 2010) since 1928. The recently opened (2015) Institute for
Preservation of Cultural Heritage Conservation Laboratory in the Yale Collection
Studies Center at Yale (Snow 2016) and the Hamilton Kerr Institute focussed on the
collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University are also examples. A
similar role is undertaken by the Grimwade Centre on behalf of the museums and
material collections at the University of Melbourne. The Centre aligns academic and
professional responsibilities of conservation at the University and provides expertise
through a public-facing enterprise (Melzer & Sloggett 2022). Even where professional
conservation training does not cover the full variety of materiality, university museums
can provide a source to broaden learning experiences. The National Museum of
Natural History and Science, University of Lisbon, identified a range of scientific
heritage, including diverse instrumentation that had not previously been a focus for
conservation work. In fact, this heritage is not just found in university museums, it is
spread diversely through Portuguese society.6
The teaching of museum studies or museology in its multiple iterations in
higher education covering galleries, museums, archives, arts administration, sci-
ence communication, public history, heritage and the all-embracing information
studies also finds uses, both practical and theoretical, for the university museum or
collection in their curricula. When a museum or collection with an original
singular disciplinary purpose becomes the focus of a museum studies programme,
this can give it a new lease of life (Simpson 2006). University museums and
collections of art and anthropology lend themselves to this form of repurposing,
often because a museology programme is in the same, or closely aligned, faculty.
86 Involving people and communities

The University Museum and Art Gallery at The University of Hong Kong is
the oldest continuously operated Museum in the city. For many years they used
their collections for the teaching of a unit in museum studies. The museum
subsequently raised money to enable the development of a conservation laboratory
and hence the teaching of conservation. Sometimes more unusual museums or
collections are used. A long-term partnership between the Museum of Medical
History, Uppsala University, and the university’s Museum and Heritage Studies
programme is an example. What commenced as collaboration on object-based
learning, expanded into programme content including exhibition development
and collection management. In the mid-19 century, Uppsala University had some
specialised medical collections, one of these, the Museum Obstetricum, was a
collection of practical materials and specimens for medical education on childbirth
(Franzén 2020).
In 2003 the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil took ownership of an
unusual collection. A telecommunications museum collection, also known as
the “Telephone Museum,” from the city of Pelotas, representing the history of the
Companhia Telephonica Melhoramento e Resistencia (CTMR) was given to the
Institute of Human Sciences of the Federal University of Pelotas (Ferreira et al.
2005). This largely historical, engineering-based collection joined three others at
the university that were used in museology programmes, the telecommunications
collection was also used for conservation education (Bachettini & Heiden 2011).
The Telecommunications Museum collection included furniture, printed mate-
rial, photography, media, telephone devices from different historic periods and the
recorded testimonials of former employees. Working with this material provided
opportunities for students studying Visual Arts, History, Geography, Tourism and
Museology. This additional collection was added to the university’s network of
museums which included the Museu do Doce (Candy Museum) (Leoti & Del
Puerto 2021), Museu de Arte Leopoldo Gotuzzo (Leopoldo Gotuzzo Art Museum)
(Fonseca & Magalhães 2020) and Museu de Ciências Naturais Carlos Ritter (Carlos
Ritter Museum of Natural Sciences) (Leschko et al. 2020).7
The nature of university museums and collections can provide specific experi-
ences for students. In recognition that postgraduate training in museology is
dominated by students with an arts or humanities first degree, the University of
Coimbra in Portugal aims to place these students with scientific collections on
campus enacting the cross-disciplinary potential through collections. At the
University of Coimbra, there is a history of pharmacy museum, a collection of
mathematical models, a science museum, astronomical observatory collections and a
Museum of the Institute of Pathological Anatomy (Gil 2010 & UMAC Database). In
non-scientific areas, the university has a Museu Académico (Museum of Student
Life) (Felismino 2014), where a student undertaking an internship could, in theory at
least, actually become part of the museum.
The nature of university museum collections means some interesting con-
temporary uses in teaching programmes. Once more in Brazil, the Museum of
Archaeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo holds material from a
 Involving people and communities 87

number of Indigenous peoples in the region. The museum recently commenced

collaboration with Indigenous communities to allow dialogic reflection where the
outcomes can be used in the training of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous
museum practitioners (Cury 2020a). This involved linking Indigenous people
with objects belonging to their ancestors collected by previous generations, and
using this starting point to generate new musealisations. It is an excellent example
of a university-based development of global south museology (Porto 2016).
Engagement with communities of origin is an important part of museum practice
that expands participation, this can sometimes lead to collection items being re-
turned or repatriated. There are plenty of university museum examples of this.8
For the time being the discussion is restricted to the pedagogic audience as
participants.
In Australia at the University of Canberra, there are no institutional museums, but
there are a number of collections including an Indigenous Art and Artefact
Collection within the Faculty of Arts and Design. The collection was made in the
1980s and was originally intended for teaching purposes in Cultural Heritage. Many
collection items were thought to be originally destined for the souvenir trade. Given
the importance of changing perspectives on Indigenous cultural heritage, the faculty
introduced a number of new study units in 2019. This included a unit of study
entitled “Decolonising the museum,” all about methods and tools for supporting
Indigenous control of Indigenous narratives in museums including the topics of
cultural knowledge, community co-production and repatriation.
Where subjects such as forensics and Indigenous studies can have collections
with specific pedagogic applications, other collection types also have teaching
utility. Collections of historic clothing and textiles are found in many universities,
some are directly used in teaching programmes (Blanco 2010). Textile collections
can be associated with, or a part of, a broader art collection. The brocade textiles of
the Bharat Kala Bhavan Museum at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar
Pradesh in India (Giri 1978) are a good example. Historical clothing and textiles
are also found in special collections of the University History Collection of the
University of Amsterdam (Scholten 2010). They may have their own specialised
centre such as the Clothing and Textile Centre at the University of Otago in New
Zealand (Lowe & Smith 2012), or even a university museum such as the historical
embroidery collection of the Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum at
Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea (Chung 1976). Marcketti
et al. (2011) undertook a survey of these higher education collections revealing
significant diversity in terms of available facilities, support, uses and a range of
establishment dates from the 1920s to the 1990s (Marcketti et al. 2011, Table 3).9
Diversity also describes the audiences engaging with these collections.
The Hans Gross Museum of Criminology (Bachhiesl 2008)10 has an obvious
purpose of providing learning experiences in criminal forensics, but legal peda-
gogies can emerge in other ways at university museums. Law students use the
University of Wyoming Art Museum to enhance their legal training (Crawford &
Jackson 2021). It’s argued the museum enhances analytical, critical, divergent and
88 Involving people and communities

inter-disciplinary thinking, including the ability to slow down and thoroughly

examine something, and to think like a lawyer (Preston et al. 2014). Apart from
the design of deep observational practical exercises, there is training in seeking out
specific biases and concerns from different viewpoints. The programme uses the
museum’s administrative policies and standards as a point of access to critically
engage civil and criminal acts and statutes directed at museums, collectors and
galleries. A part of this new and developing programme has involved students
travelling to the British Museum followed by a short stint studying civil and
criminal international law at Cambridge University. This programme prepared
students to analyse labels, definitions and outcomes in the university museum
using critical race theory (Crawford et al. 2020).
Like the University of Wyoming case, other teaching uses unrelated to content
or topic can stem from university museums. The Ōtani University Museum in the
Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, hosted an exhibition entitled “The Higashi Honganji
Temple and The Tokugawa Shogunate.” On exhibition were historic works of
fine art such as the hanging scroll depicting the image of the first shogun of the
Tokugawa period from 1615, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Students undertook a digital
marketing study using this exhibition (Ueda & Ban 2018) focussed on time and
communication management skills, programme design, data visualisation and the
use of digital tools such as Google Adwords. The project was focussed on increasing
visitor numbers during the exhibition.
As with the case above, getting active student involvement through engagement
with the university museum is constructivist pedagogy practiced in many parts of the
world. The development of the new premises for Helsinki University Museum in
2003 involved bringing together a number of small specialist collections related to
the history of the university as a history of Finnish scholarship. This change, in
concert with the university’s undergraduate programme in museum studies meant
students participated directly in the development of the museum (Heinämies 2003)
through salaried government-supported internship work. Heinämies (2008b) noted
that both the permanent new exhibition and a number of the first temporary ex-
hibitions in the newly converged University of Helsinki Museum were produced via
the collaborative efforts of students, professors and retired professors. The latter
group was particularly important for sourcing items pertinent to the university’s
history. Perm University History Museum in Russia has archaeology, decorative
arts, Egyptology, history of education and university history collections. Similar to
Helsinki, they undertook a project using their collections and programing to en-
courage people to become “citizens” of Perm University.11
For nearly two decades, Leon Satterthwaite had a dual appointment as an
academic at the University of Queensland and director of the University’s
Anthropology Museum. During this time he developed and taught a museum-
based subject in Museum Anthropology. The subject was about doing anthro-
pology in a museum context (where the students made a major contribution to
the Museum’s work) through the effective integration of theory and practice
and giving students maximum latitude to exercise their own initiative, take
 Involving people and communities 89

responsibility for their own learning and define and pursue their own personal
and collective learning goals. The main outcome was an exhibition open to viewing
by the public and the university community. This was a serious undertaking and
real-life experience for the students. He (Satterthwaite pers. com. 2016) considered
pedagogy and content were mutually reinforcing, requiring effective interplay of the
intellectual, the embodied and the social. This created a truly rich and authentic
learning experience for the students, especially as transcultural interactions formed
significant subject content. Of central importance was the role played by collection
objects. The impetus for devising this programme was the lack of financial support
for exhibition development in the museum’s budget. This aligns well with similar
experiences described as “experiential learning” at the University of Denver’s
Museum of Anthropology (Kreps 2015).
Exploration of the literature on undergraduate involvement in exhibition de-
velopment soon reveals the practice extends well beyond the discipline of anthro-
pology. Utah State University hosted student exhibition work through the Nora
Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, the Special Collections and Archives of the
University Library and an online exhibition involving the library’s Digital Initiatives
and Special Collections unit. This was the result of collaboration between Art
History and English teaching faculty (Sand et al. 2017) consisting of classroom-based
research projects for exhibition design. There is an art history and studio art
programme tradition of the university museum as a “laboratory for thinking”
(Hammond et al. 2006). The use of the term laboratory or the paradigm of the
laboratory denotes a place to experiment, ask questions and take risks as exemplified
by the philosophy of a number of museums such as the Williams College Museum of
Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts. The idea of the gallery as a question mark is
championed by the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto (Hammond et al.
2006). The conceptualisation of the laboratory in relation to teaching museum
studies (Latham 2017) captures the same constructivist experimentation. This sort
of teaching has a transdisciplinary ambit and the space at Kent State University is
articulated as something different from a museum space (Latham 2017).
Many university museums have used this experimental pedagogy. Programmes of
the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, the Tang Teaching Museum and
Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center, the Davison Art
Center at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, the Art Gallery at
Carleton University in Ottawa and the Fleming Museum at the University of
Vermont have been identified (Marstine 2007). Marstine (2007)12 stated there are
dozens of university museums and galleries that prioritise teaching that is participatory
and collaborative. The results are described as rawer, unrehearsed and a cacophony of
ideas that can be translated into effective learning experiences. What makes these
exhibitions so compelling is the infectious curiosity, they turn the museum space from
temples to forums, they are experimental and exciting and, most interestingly, might
contradict the institution’s other scripts (Marstine 2007). The same approach using
university museums as experimental laboratories is seen outside the US (e.g. Museum
of the History of Education, University of Athens, Geladaki & Papadimitriou 2014).
90 Involving people and communities

Two other final examples of using the university museum and collection in
teaching help to illustrate the diversity of different programmes through co-
creation with students. RMIT13 University’s Design Archives (RDA) collects
material relating to Melbourne design from the 20th century onwards. Masters
students commonly use the archives for practice-based learning programmes.
“Curating and Exhibiting Communication Design” is a study unit where students
work collaboratively to create new display objects and develop exhibitions, usually
from reinterpreting material in the archive. They hone their project management
skills and devise interpretative schemes and social media strategies (Carew 2020).
Physical exhibitions often design in digital features such as QR codes linked to an
online collection database. This work is a creative partnership between students,
academic staff, designers and donors. Most recent iterations have resulted in the
entire transferal of the creative process, including exhibition outcomes onto the
university’s online platforms (Carew 2020).
In Pamplona, Spain, the Museo Universidad de Navarra is a museum of art,
ethnography, ethnology, graphic art, history and photography (UMAC Database).
It sees its role as providing a multi-disciplinary approach to art. It is a cultural
reference centre for the university and a space that connects students from different
academic disciplines to develop new knowledge (Bello Urbina 2020). In 2017
they dedicated a space within the museum to a project entitled Campus Creativo
(Creative Campus). This was a museum initiative rather than a curricular one.
Museum staff work with students offering inter-disciplinary training in performing
arts (orchestra, choir and theatre) and creativity programmes introducing creativity
methodologies and teamwork through art with workshops where students have
contact with artists and the collection. The programme originally commenced as
an extension of museum programing, but has developed into its own institution-
wide identity through the involvement of students from many faculties. Similar
examples of inclusive practice for internal university communities exist in many
other countries.
Before moving on to consider external audience participation, it’s worth re-
calling, as noted above, that even though the Ashmolean is often cited as the origin
of the public museum model (Abt 2006, Ritter 2015, Poole 2017), the primary
audience responsibilities for university museums has been the university com-
munity for many years. This is particularly the case when the university was an
elite institution and only a small percentage of the population could study well into
the late 20th century, but inevitably, for a number of reasons, university museums
needed to seek broader audiences.
In the second half of the 20th century, the university Art Museum in the US
was seen as having three concentric spheres of influence (Wittkower 1967). The
outer one was regional provision of cultural services, including high schools be-
cause “teens are immensely receptive and we can’t start early enough to activate
their dormant sensibility” (Wittkower 1967, 177). The next sphere was services to
the university including the museum as a “sanctuary where students can abandon
themselves to aesthetic pleasures after the rigours of the classroom” (Wittkower
 Involving people and communities 91

1967, 177). While it’s all well and good to have your venue inundated with starry-
eyed pleasure seekers, the most important audience and service, however, was
academic services to the Art History Department, the inner-most sphere.
Towards the end of the 20th century the higher education sector in many
countries was experiencing significant change. The roles that should be played by
the university museum were questioned and there was a developing sense of crisis
over defining a purpose (Arnold-Forster 2000). Cordell (2000), using the
University of Colorado Museum as an example, argued that university natural
history museums needed to connect programmes with the public. They should
not only be involved in public education but also take a leadership role in informal
teaching about the natural world. Willumson (2000) argued that in the US un-
certainty over funding compelled university museums to develop public audi-
ences, but reliance on external funding in itself formed an existential threat to the
future viability of university museums.
In the UK the Petrie Museum at University College London developed new
ways of presenting its collections to a broader public audience (MacDonald 2002).
This included external tours of collection objects to public galleries as a way of
reaching out with exhibition work to a lay audience. Meanwhile, at the same time
in France, using examples including the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris,
it was argued that there were now two distinct audience responsibilities for uni-
versity museums; an academic audience and a public audience. This established the
need to develop material for cultural transmission in different ways (Ferriot 2002).
In the United States it was argued that mission revision was urgently needed
for university museums and collections (Tirrell 2000), apart from new building
programmes, this involved a reconsideration of primarily external audiences.
The year 2000 saw the opening of a new university museum in the middle of
the country. The Sam Noble Museum of Natural History at the University of
Oklahoma was a large new building project with support from the state, the
university and private enterprise. It was viewed as a “front door” to the uni-
versity (Mares 2002) and greatly raised awareness of the collections with the
public. These were remarkable collections of primarily vertebrate palaeontology
and archaeology that were specific to the state of Oklahoma. The new building
was the end of a 17-year-long campaign to house the collections securely and
end the history of temporary and vulnerable storage of what was essentially the
state’s scientific and cultural heritage (Mares 1988). The process included successfully
advocating for legislative changes to enact state support as part of a long campaign on
raising public awareness of the heritage of the state with Oklahoma’s citizenry. The
museum operates on a scale that befits broad cultural services provision for the state
of Oklahoma and beyond (Mares 2016).
In the early 21st century many university museums were seeking new platforms
for broad engagement with external audiences and carefully considering the make-
up of those audiences. Yale Peabody Museum found they were attracting sig-
nificant numbers of external attendees for museum programmes, but discovered
that few of them (at the time) actually came from their culturally diverse and
92 Involving people and communities

relatively low-income local New Haven area (Pickering 2009). A research project
ensued where the museum sought integration into the local community by
welcoming local resident participation in museum programing. This resulted in
targeted programmes, diversity training for front of house staff and a range of other
initiatives (Pickering 2009).
It was not just the US, this expansive outlook towards the public was also oc-
curring in the older European universities. The Museo della Fabbrica del Monastero
dei Benedettini (Museum of the Benedictine Monastery Building) was part of the
Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Catania. The University was
established in 1434, the Benedictine Monastery dates from the 16th century and the
museum holds objects that tell the story of the Monastery (Santagati 2008). It is also
adjacent to a socially and economically deprived urban area, Antico Corso. The
Faculty of the university chose to use cultural heritage via the museum within the
Monastery that now housed the Faculty, as a way of building relationships with the
local population. For many years relations between the local inhabitants and the
university was one of mutual distrust, the locals viewed the inhabitants of the Faculty
in the Monastery as a “fortress of an alien culture,” there was a neighbourhood
association that opposed the university presence (Santagati 2008, 48). A change in
Faculty leadership in 2004 brought a new approach. The university considered part
of the community, should be shared with the community. The neighbourhood
association was invited to dialogue with the Faculty to improve relations. This
change occurred when the university was revitalising many of its old museums with
European funding (Santagati 2008). The University of Catania has some other well-
known museums and collections such as a botanical garden developed by
Benedictine monks, Orto botanico-Università di Catania (Bartolo et al. 2010); and a
Museum of Minerology, Paleontology and Volcanology, Museo di Mineralogia,
Paleontologia e Vulcanologia-Università di Catania.14
In other European university towns, it was recognised that university museums
can bring academic potential to community development with broad impact in
culture, education and tourism. The University of Tartu, founded in 1632 in the
university town of Tartu has always had close relationships with its surrounding
community (Mägi 2009). The university has a Natural History Museum founded
in 1802 and an Art Museum founded in 1803.15 There is a tradition of community
outreach spanning over two centuries, at times in the past, the level of community
visitation had been higher than it was in the early 21st century (Mägi 2009). This
means the university had become an important part of regional identity. While
many other universities were attempting to broaden community engagement,
university towns with existing traditions and history, like Tartu, already had well-
established community links. However, the more recent University of Tartu
History Museum compiled a history of the university’s museums and collections to
present an institutionally coherent picture about the university to the surrounding
community (Lust & Leppik 2007). In Tartu, as in other university towns, uni-
versity museums are a part of the town’s cultural landscape forming a network
with other cultural organisations.
 Involving people and communities 93

Outside of Europe, in places not considered university towns, there was a

recognition universities were participants in the cultural life of the city. In some
places, this was a new and welcome development led by the university’s museums
(Ellis 2009). The University of Sydney established a centralised museum service
and lifted its engagement with the city in terms of visitor numbers to its Nicholson
Museum (antiquities), MacLeay Museum (natural history, housing the oldest
Australian natural history collection) and its art museum. Over a decade, visitor
numbers grew by a factor of ten. This was about finding a place in the broader
cultural landscape of Sydney using the university’s museums. It strengthened the
strategic position and profile of the museums and collections within the university
and provided a new emerging and evolving cultural precinct on campus (Ellis
2009). It paved the way for the co-location of the museums into a new centralised
Chau Chak Wing Museum in 2020, built during the pandemic as new infra-
structure for community engagement (Simpson 2021a). As noted by some, it
was important to align audience development initiatives with wider university
priorities (MacDonald 2009).
The Golden Horn is the estuary of the Alibey and Kağıthane Rivers in
Turkey. It was a strategically positioned ancient trading centre dating back to
the 7th century BC (Rainsford 2007). In recent times the development of
university museums in this historic industrial setting has added new layers to the
cultural landscape, another example of universities directly impacting their local
community (Özdemir & Gökmen 2017); pre-industrial landscapes that develop
into industrial landscapes and then post-industrial landscapes often become the
focal point of cities. These transitions each dramatically change the socio-
cultural mix of activities. Symbols, technologies and objects are evidence of
underlying norms and values in cultural landscapes; universities bring cultural
and educational values into this mix. The transformation of industrial heritage
into sources of social and economic development for the district has involved
universities and the establishment of museums (Gunay 2014). The Cibali
Tobacco Factory was re-functioned as Kadir Has University at the initiative of
the Kadir Has Foundation. The ruins of a Turkish bath in the tobacco factory
building basement were converted into a history museum (Özdemir & Gökmen
2017). In 2004, İstanbul Bilgi University commenced conserving the former
Silahtarağa Power Plant facility as an educational, cultural area and museum.
The university set out to create a socio-cultural transformation by connecting
with the local community (Özdemir & Gökmen 2017).
Another relationship between university museum and surrounding community
is seen in South America with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Bogotá part of
the Universidad Minuto de Dios. In response to the vandalised walls in the
neighbourhood, the university museum forged new relationships with urban artists
through the development of new art interventions (Serrano 2019). While these
examples where universities have developed cultural infrastructure as a bridge to
community are positive, there is an alternative argument that the impact of uni-
versities on local communities can be negative (Baldwin 2021).16
94 Involving people and communities

The University Museum of Kyoto has a large collection of cultural history,

natural history and technological history. Collections have grown since the es-
tablishment in 1897 of Kyoto Imperial University, but the museum was not
opened until 100 years later. Like all university museums, it compliments and
supports educational and research activity across campus catering to the needs of
graduate schools, faculties, centres and institutes in conjunction with Kyoto
University. It was a meeting place (2019) for the development of a new network
of Asian natural history museums and collections (Kitazato 2019). The network
recognised from the outset the need for university museums to be open to the
public who, as tax-payers, should have access to lifelong learning through a
publically funded institution (Ohno 2008). Another Japanese university museum,
Kokugakuin University Museum is focussed specifically on the study of Japanese
culture. It formed from the merger of two pre-existing museums. The university’s
Museum of Archaeology founded in 1928 and the Shinto Museum founded in
1963 were merged into a single entity in 2013. Kokugakuin University at Shibuya
Tokyo was founded in 1882 for the study of “Kokugaku,” meaning the Japanese
nation. The new museum, in seeking a higher public profile, undertook a four-
year programme wherein its visitor numbers tripled (Sasaki 2020). Much of this
was achieved without a public relations budget, but by extensive use of research as
a basis of programme content and the use of social media tools for dissemination.
While this enthusiasm for engaging with the broader public beyond the campus
walls can be seen in many national sectors, it is instructive to consider just how
diverse the potential audiences of university museums can be. Visitors can be
multi-faceted and different groups engage for different reasons. A study (Connor
et al. 2014) conducted on the University of Alaska’s Museum of the North
(Jonaitis 2003), a large university museum with natural history (Huettmann &
Ickert-Bond 2018), ethnographic and art collections (Jonaitis & McInnis 1998)
related to the region. The museum has a strong commitment to broad, regional,
cultural and scientific public provision (Anderson et al. 2017). In the analysis by
Conner et al. (2014), a range of internal and external interest groups were iden-
tified. These were Alaska Native; Art Community; Business Community; Friends
of the Museum, Donors, and Museum Members (these roles often overlap);
Military Leaders; Science Community; Teachers at K–12 Schools; University
Leaders; and Parents of School-Aged Children. These interest groups give an idea
of the scale and diverse nature of the museum’s impact and community role.
Naturally, different values were ascribed to the museum by different groups. It is
an excellent example of how the work of university museums is shaped not just by
the host university but also the surrounding community.
Elsewhere in the US other campus museums were also looking at reaching out
beyond the campus boundaries. Museums at the University of Colorado recognised
both the nature of millennial audiences as “omnivorous cultural consumers”
(Peterson & Rossman 2008) and the unique position of campus museums to in-
fluence that specific demographic by turning them into lifelong museum aficionados
(Shapiro et al. 2012). The University has a Museum of Natural History and an Art
 Involving people and communities 95

museum. Early art exhibitions at the university were originally housed in an ex-
hibition hall of the Natural History Museum. There were programing collaborations
on the university’s research strengths between museum staff to attract a young au-
dience (Brunecky 2016). Another group of university museums that focusses their
programming on this demographic is the Science Gallery group. Originally starting
as an experimental interface of university and young creatives at University College
Dublin (Gorman 2009), it has spun out to be a global franchise through transdis-
ciplinarity programming featuring emerging research and ideas from the worlds of
art, science, design and technology that are presented in connective, participative
and surprising ways (Roche & Murphy 2020). Beyond the Science Gallery franchise,
in a study of university gallery spaces in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, there is
recognition that these spaces can play an active, experimental role in both formal
and informal education engaging young people within, and outside, the academy
(Gartnerová 2021).
In the UK, the University Museums Group has advocated for many years for
university museums to be involved in lifelong learning with programming for
family groups and a focus on inter-generational learning (Moran 2009). At
Macquarie University there has been a programming focus on two distinctively
different demographics. The Biological Sciences Museum, originally developed
from a teaching collection (Pearce & Simpson 2010), has been used with the
extended campus (Estrada-Arevalo et al. 2011) for programmes to interest youth in
natural history (Simpson 2005). In contrast, the university’s Art Gallery has, for
many years run extension programmes to nursing homes and supported residential
care facilities (Simpson et al. 2004). This was recently extended to hosting Art
Gallery visits from dementia patients to engage with artworks and handle objects
from the collection of the Australian History Museum. This provides elderly
people the opportunity to engage with historic objects that may provoke personal
memories and reminiscence from earlier in their lives (Thogersen & Hammond
2019, Thogersen et al. 2022). In a similar service to the same demographic, the
University of Dundee Museums has put together a “sensory backpack” containing
items from their collections for use in community outreach.17
Some university museums, while still striving for broad community connections,
by their very nature are focussed on specific audiences. The National Deaf Life
Museum at Gallaudet University in Washington DC is focused on the history,
culture and language of the deaf and hard of hearing community, particularly within
the US. The University, originally Gallaudet College specifically for this group,
developed the museum as a cultural focal point. It builds on the work of Gannon
(1981) the first to document the history and culture of the group. The Museum
promotes and interprets the rich and complex deaf experience through exhibits
and programming on campus and online (Bergey & Gannon 2016). Research into
developing museum experiences for people with this disability continues to be a
university-based research preoccupation (Barbosa et al. 2021). Complutense
University of Madrid, one of the oldest operating universities in the world,18
conducted a research programme entitled “Art, Accessibility, Museography, Social
96 Involving people and communities

integration, Disability, Culture for all” using eight of its 14 museums in a major study
on the accessibility of culture for vulnerable people (Bueno Doral et al. 2020).
There are many examples of university museums devising specific programmes as
a way of seeking the engagement of specific groups of people often from a museum
programming decision. In the case of Cambridge University’s Fitzwilliam Museum,
however, it resulted from a partnership between the Cambridge Resource Centre
and the Museum. It was in response to a 2004 British Government report on
“Mental Health and Social Exclusion” (Social Exclusion Unit 2004). The pro-
gramme, “Ways of Seeing” was designed for people either with, or recovering from,
mental health issues. An unusual aspect of the programme was it wasn’t just for this
clientele; other members of the community who made up the majority of partici-
pants were welcome to attend. The idea was to create an environment, or com-
munity of interest, that allowed people to take part in events without the stigma of
“suffering from mental health issues” (Hart 2009). It initially ran for a five-week
period encouraging people to view, reflect on and discuss artworks, with a focus on
making people feel safe and provide encouragement for them to speak up about
issues the artworks raised.
Many university museums strive to broaden their reach into the community,
not only through programming but also through reconsideration of collection
development. The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon
collaborated with the Oregon Writing Project to provide professional develop-
ment for teachers. The programme improved knowledge and skill in teaching
argument writing using visual teaching strategies with the museum’s collection
(Abia-Smith et al. 2020). A new museum director prompted a reconsideration of
what was collected. The growing presence of Latin American and Asian/American
constituents in the region impacted the collections policy (Livingstone & Hartz
2010). An Asian collection of artworks was given to the university some 75 years
earlier with the specific donor’s intent of growing cross-cultural understanding,
providing a foundation for collection expansion, a strategy aligning with the
university’s diversity goals. At the same time, Macquarie University was seeking
similar outcomes in recognition of the large number of Asian students on campus,
initially through programming in the art gallery (Simpson 2012c). It was subse-
quently argued that cross-cultural programmes are a form of soft power that can be
readily facilitated by university museums (Hammond & Simpson 2016).
Other university museums focus on marginalised groups through programming
to build inclusive practice. The Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, deploys
its remarkable art collection in creative ways to support university business. The
museum established the “Hoodie Project” in 2019 working with a Professor of
Sculpture. It included interviews with young African Americans covering their
experiences of racial profiling and encounters with police and the legal system.
This was done during the Presidency of Donald Trump when staff identified an
increasingly volatile situation with race relations within American society; un-
dertaking such a project at this time was a deliberate attempt to focus community
attention on issues of social injustice requiring resolution (Deupi & Lynn 2019).
 Involving people and communities 97

The Glucksman, as it is known, is the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University

College Cork in Ireland. It promotes visual arts creation, exploration and research
and articulates itself as a link between university research and civic and social
justice issues. Its political activism frequently sparks debate, collaboration and social
interaction, which at another level, is the art (Glucksman website).19 “Creative
Agency” is a Glucksman programme that empowers young asylum seekers, re-
fugees and migrants to participate in imaginative projects enabling them to present
their voices and views in the public realm. The Museum worked with “Direct
Provision” a system of asylum seeker accommodation used in the Republic of
Ireland offering a marginalised group the opportunity for creative expression
through collaborative work with artists and curators. The museum is also involved
in sending works to rural schools and aged-care homes (Kearney 2021).
Another great example of using university collections for transformative
work mediated by university students comes from the University of Richmond’s
(Virginia, US) Department of Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies and
the University of Richmond Museums. They collaborate through a programme
called “Museo Ambulante” (travelling museum) (Vázquez & Wright 2019). This
programme for Spanish as inclusive practice has students taking objects from the
university’s collections off campus to be used in object-based learning pro-
grammes designed by staff and students to engage with Hispanic communities in
the local region of the campus. It is a specific form of community-based learning
enabled by museum objects. They are the centre-piece for designing Spanish
language-based cultural engagements between the university and the commu-
nity. This form of learning naturally favours bilingual students, but those for
whom Spanish is not a first language also develop strong language skills from pro-
gramme participation (Vázquez & Wright 2019). Because it involves museum ob-
jects, it encourages discovering alternative and sensorial ways of accessing and
sharing information and developing dialogic narratives. It is a co-created pedagogy;
while curators compile thematic groupings of objects, students develop the content.
The programme has involved geological specimens, cultural ephemera and works
on paper that range from landscapes and portraits to political satire and abstract
expressionism (Vázquez & Wright 2019).
University museums can also mobilise community participation in curatorial
business, as is done by many non-university museums. The University of
Pennsylvania’s Arthur Ross Gallery undertook a project called “Citizen Salon” in
2018 and 2019 (Moqtaderi 2019). It involved a programme of digital crowd-
sourcing curatorial input as a tool for bridging the divide between academic
and public audiences. An interactive application allowed the public to review
125 artworks represented in the collection to make digital selections for the ex-
hibition. The audience became agents of authorship within the museum and is a
way of getting to know the museum audience through collaborative project work;
in this case, it was notably diverse (Moqtaderi 2019).
The Museum of National Taipei University of Education used outreach
programmes to foster an interest in its collections. They have a collection of
98 Involving people and communities

over 100 plaster casts from the Metropolitan Museum in New York. They were
originally used for art education but were consigned to storage having outlived
their usefulness then eventually given away; one of the recipients was the
National Taipei University of Education (Huang 2018). In 2015 they launched
the “One Piece Museum” project. Citizens (non-museum people) assisted
professional conservators preserving and restoring the plaster cast collection,
student volunteers were engaged in the process. Newly cleaned and restored
casts were then “adopted” by various elementary and high schools for educa-
tional programmes.20
Another project that calls on community contributions is from the Universidad
Austral de Chile. With the coordination of a central museum service (La Dirección
Museológica de la Universidad Austral de Chile) established in 1964 (Weil 2015).
They systematically aim to preserve the tangible and intangible heritage of their
region’s multicultural history covering pre-Hispanic, colonial and contemporary
communities in the southern-most regions of Chile (Weil et al. 2019). Here, uni-
versity museums are seen as responsible for the development of the educational and
socio-cultural axes of society. They incorporate a number of projects to ensure
multiple perspectives are represented in the museum’s work. The Mauricio Van de
Maele Historical and Anthropological Museum, Universidad Austral de Chile is
housed in Casa Anwandter built in 1860 and declared a National Historical
Monument in 1981. The museum has 6,000 objects and documents and over 35,000
archaeological samples. It has an early institutional history of contributions from
German families living in the region and international cooperative projects.21 This
included importing educational material such as plates, models, bibliographic re-
sources from Germany that are now part of institutional heritage. Documenting the
many aspects of the university’s collections requires interaction with diverse com-
munities (Weil et al. 2019).
The National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México) is a highly ranked university and the largest in Latin
America (Hollander 2008). There are a large number of university museums and
collections including many scientific ones such as a National Paleontology
Collection (Buitrón Sánchez et al. 2020), four different arboreta or botanical
gardens (UMAC database), the National Herbarium of Mexico with over
1,300,000 specimens (Rico Mansard 2019), a University Museum of Sciences and
Art (Nepote & Reynoso-Haynes 2017), a Museum of Anatomy (Flores 2011), a
Mexican Medicine Museum and the Alfonso L. Herrera Museum of Zoology
(Márquez Luna & Asiain Alvarez 2000). Of the 25 museums at UNAM 11 are
scientific (Rico Mansard 2019). There was a Museum of Anthropology oper-
ating in the late 20th century enacting advanced critical museological concepts
and practices for a brief time (Cárdenas Carrión 2020). There has been a close
connection between the development of museums and universities in Mexico
(Rico Mansard 2018, Garcia Lirio 2020).
The study of natural history in the European tradition is very old, dating from
when Europeans arrived in Tenochtitlan and were astounded by the organisation
 Involving people and communities 99

of Moctezuma’s gardens. The cultural and religious domination of the colonial era
that followed meant that much Indigenous knowledge was suppressed in favour of
the Western worldview that marvelled at new botanical discoveries made within
the confines of Linnaean scientific traditions. The university has recently under-
taken a programme to reconnect with Indigenous knowledge, in particular pre-
colonial herbal medicine. The university museums are building this knowledge
into museographic processes (Rico Mansard 2019). This is seen as part of a de-
colonisation strategy (Brulon Soares & Leshchenko 2018, Brulon Soares 2021)
across the natural sciences at UNAM. It is also evidence that such strategies are
essentially built on broadening participation and co-creation with groups who may
have previously had little interaction with the museums or the university. Some
researchers link the process of decolonisation with critical museology, an area with
strong theoretical foundations in Latin America aimed at bridging the epistemo-
logical dichotomies of science and art in the 19th-century Western worldview
(Cárdenas Carrión 2019). Repatriation and restitution are also aspects of museo-
logically driven decolonisation programmes.22
Perhaps one of the best indicators of enabling participation in university mu-
seums and collections can be seen when activity emerges entirely by student in-
itiatives outside of any curriculum structure. During the 2014 Macquarie
University 50th anniversary students conceptualised and carried out an exhibition
project on the importance of student groups in building a sense of campus
community. The exhibition “A Living Campus: 50 Years of Students at
Macquarie University”23 consisted of objects from many student groups from
throughout the history of the institution (Chinneck et al. 2015). It provided in-
sights into student life at different times and was therefore also an impromptu
construction of institutional identity. In this case, the students involved in ex-
hibition development about student groups were a student group themselves. The
Museum Appreciation Society, initiated by museum studies students at the uni-
versity to support on-campus museums, grew to be one of the largest student
groups on campus. Student initiatives such as this are an indication of strong
motivation and close institutional alignment (Chinneck et al. 2015). Exhibition
content included sporting trophies and numerous student publications and a di-
verse array24 of other unusual objects such as light sabres, a dinosaur – Minmi
Paravertebra,25 the mascot for the group (Simpson et al. 2003), posters from
theatrical and film clubs and a vast array of political ephemera indicative of a
previous era of much more vigorous and engaged student activism. “A Living
Campus” was the third exhibition for the anniversary year and the only one that
was originated by students.26
This brief review of multiple participating groups in university museums would
seem pretty familiar to a similar review of the participatory activities of non-
university museums. The only difference you might infer therefore is their re-
spective institutional settings. Once we place this setting within the history of
knowledge generation; however, we can see enhanced possibilities and an engaged
future for all museums, this is covered in the following chapter.
100 Involving people and communities

Notes
1 Between 1808 and 1821 the main building had been the residence of the Portuguese
Royal Family after fleeing the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal. Between 1822 and 1889
it housed the Brazilian Imperial Family. Briefly from 1889 to 1891 after the monarchy was
deposed, the buildings were used as the Republican Constituent Assembly. After this, it
was decided that the buildings should house a museum, its final use in 1892. It was the
nation’s oldest scientific organisation. The building was listed as Brazilian National
Heritage in 1938 but was largely destroyed by fire on that night in 2018.
2 An expression attributed to Marina Silva.
3 Guidance on repatriation and restitution was released by UMAC in 2022, see: http://
umac.icom.museum/release-umac-guidance-on-restitution/ (accessed May 2022).
4 Forbes considered museum visits a gendered activity at the time.
5 This is resonant with the modern concept of the participatory museum through co-
creation.
6 Lourenҫo & Wilson (2013) reported a high school seeking conservation advice re-
garding a 16th-century Flemish quadrant, among other rare scientific instruments in
one of the school’s laboratories.
7 While the totality of the national sector is difficult to ascertain, a paper by Abalada &
Granato (in review) identifies 461 (physical and digital) university museums in Brazil
from an internet survey just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
8 See next chapter.
9 A more recent study with the same cohort (Marcketti & Gordon 2019) indicated some
lack of clarity regarding staff positions, the collection’s role within the university and a
feeling that the resource was not fully utilised.
10 Discussed in the previous chapter.
11 This project won the 2018 UMAC Award.
12 This paper covers North American programmes.
13 Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) is an Australian public university.
14 The geographic location of the university at the foot of Mount Etna and historic eruptions
helped shape significant academic interests in volcanology at the university (Cristofolini 2016).
15 These are the oldest museums in Estonia.
16 Baldwin (2021) argues that through exemptions from property tax, large corporate
universities in the US have a negative and exploitative impact on local communities.
17 See https://learningspaces.dundee.ac.uk/dundeeuniculture/2022/04/25/uod-museums-
sensory-backpack/ (accessed May 2022).
18 The university was founded in Alcalá in 1293, it relocated to Madrid in 1836.
19 https://www.glucksman.org/ (accessed May 2022).
20 Huang (2018) states that part of the motivation for this experimental project was a lack
of finance.
21 The University of Göttingen has been a historic partner.
22 The significance of this contemporary issue for university museums is considered in the
next chapter.
23 There has only been one official history of the university written (Mansfield &
Hutchison 1992), it says little about the activity of student groups.
24 One unusual item on display was a “sign-on” sheet for the former “Nudists Society.” In
a private viewing of the exhibition, the University’s Chancellor at the time commented
that there were some very prominent Australians he recognised on the list (Chinneck
et al. 2015).
25 A fibreglass dinosaur originally made for a previous exhibition that was adopted by the
student group as a mascot.
26 The two other exhibitions were “Affinities: 7 Museums 50 Objects” that explored the
role of material collections in the life of the university (Simpson 2014a), and “Creative
Revisions Retracing 50 years of Artistic Responses to the University Campus” that
documented institutional cultural heritage (Simpson 2014b).
6
LESSONS FROM UNIVERSITY
MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS

The previous four chapters covered the value museums and collections bring to
higher education by examining functions, roles and operations with brief case
studies. In this final chapter, a synthesis of this area of specialised academic col-
lecting is attempted to see what can be learned from museology within this in-
stitutional context. It is written with reference to the current challenges the
broader field of museology faces. These are manifold; the need for truth-telling,
inclusion, reconciliation, and justice and a greater understanding of, and action in
response to, many urgent contemporary challenges.1
Museums and museology are a mechanism, or technology, using materiality to
integrate the past, present and future within human imagination; one museum
attribute has been described as “accumulating time” (Bremer & Bernadet 2017).
Museums keep things, if not in perpetuity, then certainly some form of relevant
human-scaled longevity. It involves isolating things from change, removing them
from the effects of the passing of time.2 There is a tension here, however, because
it can relate to both physical objects and metaphysical concepts.
Higher education is an area where considerable turmoil and contemporary
challenges prevail. There is rapidly changing technology, increased competition,
and the development of new types of knowledge-based organisations, declining
government funding in many national jurisdictions and questioning the social
contract. The relationship between higher education and society has been analysed
and critiqued with widely varying conclusions; from being in the service of social
good (Bok 1982) to being a systemic entrenchment of global northern power
(Connell 2019). Regardless of where the current reality lies, there possibly has
never been a more important time for humanity to have a good working re-
lationship with knowledge.
Before eliciting some lessons from museology in higher education from the
academic museum, it is worth revisiting a few questions about organisational
DOI: 10.4324/9781003186533-6
102 Lessons

nomenclature, the nature of the organisations themselves, and the history of

museology. Our original model was the Mouseion at Alexandria, as indicated by a
number of scholars, what we know about this institution is contingent on sur-
viving, and in some cases probably flawed, sources (Potts 2002).
We do know that the meaning of the Greek word “Mouseion” changed with
the establishment in Alexandria. Originally it meant a sacred temple dedicated to
the Muses, the personifications of memory (di Pasquale 2005). It was established
to honour the divine creativity of the human spirit (Lord 2000). The word
“Mouseion” is the etymological source of the word museum. It became asso-
ciated with an organisation dedicated to scholarship. An extensive library and
collections existed together in the one institution. However, there is little clarity
about whether the library and the museum were separate identifiable parts of the
whole institution. Authors will refer to the whole as either a library or a mu-
seum, but there is little apart from the writings of Strabo3 that provides any
physical description of the institution.4 Interestingly, in his descriptions of the
institution, Strabo doesn’t separate the Library from the Mouseion. As an in-
tegrated totality, they acted as a centre for knowledge (di Pasquale 2005). More
important, therefore, is what transpired at the institution rather than the nature
of any internal structure.
It is worth considering the Mouseion of Alexandria within its cultural context.
Alexander the Great’s Hellenistic Empire fragmented after his death. Many of his
former and successor generals assumed the leadership of these smaller regional
empires. In many cases, Alexandria in particular, the societies forged were com-
plex and multi-cultural.5 The new Greco-Macedonian elite imposed Greek cul-
ture on Near Eastern cultures creating a blend described as Hellenism. There was
intense competition between different Hellenistic kingdoms; rulers sought mili-
tary, economic and cultural dominance. New major cities were the central focus
of each empire and also an opportunity for the rulers to demonstrate their cultural
might, wealth and power, to their own subjects and rival kingdoms. Greek culture
in these new post-Alexander cities was expressed through classical Greek building
forms such as the agora, gymnasium and theatre and through the creation of in-
stitutions of research and learning.
“Euergetes” means benefactor in Greek; Hellenistic rulers were euergetes for
their cities, part of the ancient Greek tradition of the very wealthy supporting civic
society. With the wealth of the new empires, lavish public structures and amenities
were built usually as a salve to the ego of their creators. The Ptolemies of
Alexandria outspent all other Hellentistic royal families in terms of academic
development and monument building (Cunningham 2010). There was also de-
ference in the form of benefaction back to Athens where Aristotle’s Lyceum was
still operating and the city was considered an important centre for rhetoric and
philosophy (Lieu 2000).
Competition among Hellenistic states is reflected by the existence of other
Mouseions throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Di Pasquale (2005) refers to
Mouseions at Ephesus and Smirne. But the Mouseion at Alexandria was the most
 Lessons 103

pre-eminent over a lengthy period of five centuries from early Ptolemaic times
through to Imperial Roman times (Marlowe 1971). The library held both sci-
entific and literary works; it was an attempt to corral the entirety of knowledge of
the known world in one place. Di Pasquale (2005) noted many of the scholars
associated with the Mouseion at Alexandria showing the diversity of intellectual
endeavour embraced at the institution. It included an observatory equipped with
instruments, places where physicians could dissect cadavers and a garden with
exotic flora and fauna (di Pasquale 2005). There were staff skilled at reproducing
biological illustrations and sculptural models (di Pasquale 2005). Special rooms
were available to those studying mechanics, this included Hero of Alexandria, the
founder of pneumatics who required specialised instrumentation. These were es-
sentially laboratories established to undertake analytical work and test hypotheses.
Guest scholars were given their own study spaces.
As concluded by others (di Pasquale 2005, McLeod 2002) and surmised in the
first chapter, for all intents and purposes, the Mouseion at Alexandria was essentially
an institution of higher education or university. The notion of academic disciplines is
apparent from the activity of academicians of the time. Mathematics, for example,
always thrived during both the Classical Greek period and Hellenistic times. This
was due in part to the mobility of scholars at the time (Fowler 1990). Academic
disciplines in Alexandria can’t be equated with contemporary disciplines. The study
of the stars and planets was intimately linked to other fields of knowledge such as
religion, geography, meteorology, mythology and even medicine (Martins 2021).
Mathematics in Alexandria embraced the recovery and development of earlier
research traditions and practical applications from mathematical research (Gamas
2012). These practical applications represent the modern equivalent of knowledge
transfer to society, sometimes described as the “third mission” of universities.
These are outcomes of the academy’s social contract and a rationale for societal
sponsorship of academic practice. In the case of Alexandria, the support for the
social contract between the academy and society was carried exclusively by the
Hellenistic ruling family as part of their benefaction responsibilities.6
The preservation, generation and transmission of knowledge are the con-
temporary raison d’etre of the modern university. The Mouseion at Alexandria,
however, was not a publically accessible civic institution. It was only for the elite
of Hellenistic society; scholarly matters were not the preserve of the common
citizen. Some have contended the daughter institution, the Serapeum, served a
more public purpose (Sousa 2012).7 The lack of a public dimension suggests the
analogy with the university breaks down; however, it is only recently that in-
stitutions of higher education became accessible and available to the many. In the
extensive history of higher learning, the democratisation of access to knowledge is
a very recent phenomenon.
While relatively little is known about the Mouseion and the scholars that used
it, the institutional combination of text and objects was for the generation of new
knowledge; it is likely to have also been a centre for the transmission of knowl-
edge. Di Pasquale (2005) quoted earlier works that describe physicians’ teaching. It
104 Lessons

is certainly the case that the Alexandrian institution attracted the best scholars from
around the known world and developed a broad intellectual geography extending
beyond the boundaries of Ptolemy’s empire. Here is an institution in classical times
considered to be the first museum, but conceptually and probably functionally as
well, it is more akin to the modern university. Here was a group of state-supported
scholars, over a five-century period, with access to resources such as different
collections plus an extensive reference library, in this particular fragment of the
post-Alexander Hellenistic world.
Di Pasquale (2005) noted the nomenclatural term “museum” was passed on to
Imperial Roman times via the Mouseion. The Latin word musaeum appears at the
end of the Republican era,8 where it refers specifically to a sheltered place of study
and contemplation. Di Pasquale (2005, 6) quoted Pliny’s extensive Natural
History that during the first Imperial age the term musaeum referred to artificial
caves lined with pumice that were often full of collectable items. The early use of
this “museum” nomenclature ceased after the Roman Empire. The term had no
further application and only resurfaces centuries later during the Renaissance.
Holding true to the origins and meanings of words, a museum is a research
academy. The first museum was a university, and so, all modern organisations of
higher education called universities should actually be called museums. But the term
museum, after a considerable temporal absence, became associated with a much
narrower meaning namely, the housing and exhibition of collections and their use in
the transmission of knowledge. Whereas, the institutes of research and higher learning
are called universities. So how did these etymological transformations come about?
University comes from the Latin “universitas magistrorum et scholarium,” it
translates as a community of teachers and scholars. Originally, the term university
applied to a whole range of self-regulated guilds or professional groups, but even-
tually it narrowed to mean only the scholastic group. While there were ancient
higher learning institutions, the word university began to be used at the time of the
development of urban town life and medieval guilds. They were self-regulating and
their members had guaranteed legal rights granted by princess or authorities in their
towns (Colish 1997). This scholarly medieval enterprise endorsed by the ruler of the
region is an almost identical organisational structure to that of the museum of the
Hellenistic empires. The only discernible difference, despite the complete change in
terminology, is the awarding of degrees.9
The odd etymological origin for the word university that ignores the ancient
Hellenistic institutions of higher learning has been pointed out previously
(Odegaard 1963). If all universities were renamed as museums, a new term for the
type of institution that collects objects for a range of specific reasons would
be required. A closer look at the respective purposes of both types of organisation
will help understand the unique territory and potential of the university museum.
The two types of organisations do contextually overlap through the characteristics
and consequences of universality. Both the intellectual mission of universities and
the collections of objects by other organisations was premised by a quest for
universal knowledge.
 Lessons 105

While the modern university is characterised by the generation and transmis-

sion of knowledge; the modern museum, unlike its ancient counterpart that es-
sentially was a university, is typically associated with the act of transmitting
knowledge through the process of building collections. This statement is quite
clearly a very broad generalisation and significant over-simplification. This is not
to say that no research is done in non-university museums, obviously there are
plenty of civic museums that retain some form of research functionality, even if it
is a secondary purpose behind the main rationale of communicating information
through collections. Similarly, it is true to say that not all universities or even
university museums are driven by research imperatives. As noted earlier, some
university museums can be established with the singular purpose of communication
with broad publics.
An important component of the ancient museum was the extensive library; it was
a comprehensive attempt to assemble all the written knowledge of the known world
in the one place. The Ptolemies hired scribes to translate the important documents of
other cultures into Greek. This ancient museum had a component of seeking, or
aspiring towards, universalism with its collections of text. The term museum did not
reappear until the 15th century along with connotations of comprehensive or en-
cyclopaedic knowledge. Hooper-Greenhill (1992) wrote about early encyclopaedic
collections of Europe noting that the term museum wasn’t used. Instead, different
attempts at representing universal knowledge through comprehensive collections of
objects were referred to variously as “theatrum mundi” (Van Holst 1967), “studiolo”
(Scheicher 1985) or “cabinets of the world” (Impey & MacGregor 2001). Many of
these cabinets ended up in academic institutions (Schupbach 2001). Much of this
influx of private collections into academia, such as Elias Ashmole’s donation to
Oxford, occurred at a time of, or within a context of, epistemic disruption (sensu
Foucault 1970).
Hooper-Greenhill (1992, 108) quoted Seelig (1985) outlining Quiccheberg’s
guidelines for establishing the layout of an encyclopaedic collection. It involved a
central courtyard with cloister-like ambulatories surrounded by four wings with
several floors surrounding the courtyard. While reminiscent of Strabo’s description
of the ancient museum at Alexandria, it also sounds like the template for many
subsequent European universities. Hooper-Greenhill (1992) looked at the process
of knowledge creation and construction through the development of collections
using a number of historically important case studies. Knowledge is based on a
pervasive rationality, but the process is prone to periods of disruption and re-
invention. Foucault’s (1970) episteme concept was adopted, however, none of
these case studies involved an academic collection, and the closest analogy to this
institutional setting was Hooper-Greenhill’s (1992) analysis of the Royal Society
Repository (also see Hunter 1985).
Foucault (1970) characterised an episteme as a set of unstated, broadly accepted,
subconscious guiding principles that underpin knowledge. They provide a fra-
mework for rationality and shape discourse. They are historically framed and
undergo intervals of disruption where the basis of rationality in knowledge systems
106 Lessons

can be completely reshaped. With Foucault’s (1970) classification, there is a focus

on western thought from the Renaissance to the present with a period of disruption
in the early 17th century. Thinking was prescribed through understanding the si-
milarities between things with endless loops of epistemic analogy and metaphor; this
changed to a period of classification where all objects are considered apart, with small
or singular subsets of characteristics defining relationships. This episteme, referred to
as the Classical episteme,10 involved a classificatory or taxonomic approach and the
Linnaean revolution of understanding through a singular scientific language. It was
definable, limited and not endlessly reproducible. Another period of disruption at
the end of the 18th century saw the Classical episteme replaced by a Modern
episteme where a process of analogy and underlying structures and principles guide
the knowledge enterprise.
Comparatively little has been articulated about epistemic conditions in earlier
times or non-Western societies. Knowledge systems of these times could either
have been underpinned by religious beliefs constrained by endemic socio-cultural
factors, stable or even absent all together. Yet we know that prior to the Renaissance
episteme of resemblance and similitude there were learning institutions, collections
and libraries; and in some cases such as Alexandria, these were state-supported with a
form of social contract. In many early, pre-university learning institutions lecture
and disputation were the main pedagogical tools, often using the “sic et non”
method of disputation from Islamic scholarship based on consensus rather than
central authority (Livesey 2016). Other scholastic activity was based on the central
authority of texts. But the presence of collections, gardens, laboratories, ob-
servatories all played a role in changing the nature of the knowledge enterprise from
being essentially discursive and text-based, to being visual and sensorially experi-
ential. A lot of this change, at least in Europe, occurred during the Renaissance.
Foucault (1980) indicated more than one episteme could exist at the same time,
possibly during disruptive phases. But if we look at antiquity, it seems realistic to
assume that many different epistemes could have co-existed, not only around the
world but even within a society such as the post-Alexander, Hellenistic empires
that promoted multiculturalism and polyphonic belief systems. Large collections of
text, in other words an encyclopaedic library, can clearly play a role in the pre-
servation and transmission of knowledge. Di Pasquale (2005, 5) noted that the
Library and Museum at Alexandria became “a point of reference for research,
transmission and preservation of knowledge, where the fundamental and original
data of each discipline could be observed, catalogued, preserved and passed on to
future generations.”
There were Alexandrian scholars concerned with the history of ideas; where
new knowledge is created largely from textual sources. As we’ve seen
throughout previous chapters, objects are an embodiment of knowledge and
therefore also sources for the preservation and transmission of knowledge. But
text and objects in conjunction are perhaps more likely to lead to the generation
of new knowledge. This is because together there is a conjunction of the first
philosophy of Plato, discerning broad principles of truth through rational
 Lessons 107

discourse, with Aristotle’s insistence on close examination and observation.

Laboratories extend this Aristotelian premise into mathematical measurement.
The two in combination are recursive and can push the boundaries of
knowledge in new and interesting ways through the combination of object or
artefact with text or discourse. Some authors note that the two in concert are
essential, object-centred knowledge in the early days of empiricism was dependant
on text-based ways of knowing and dissemination (Nelson 2015). But we know
that at certain periods through history there is little evidence of institutions of
learning building collections of objects as part of their remit, other than collections
of text. Where knowledge was essentially text-based the primary institutional
function privileges the preservation and transmission of knowledge over the
generation of new knowledge. The Mouseion at Alexandria (and elsewhere) was
an aberration, object and text combined in the same institution. This was a means
to test the parameters of knowledge, generate new knowledge and even possibly
induce epistemic disruption.
Much collecting associated with the development of knowledge during the
Renaissance episteme of Foucault (1970) did not use the term museum, but if part
of their functionality was the generation of new knowledge, perhaps they should
have done so to keep faith with the ancient terminology of Muses and creativity.
As outlined by Hooper-Greenhill (1992) many of the collecting practices in early
and pre-renaissance times were designed to proclaim social status, or the collector’s
proximity to the divine as a form of social and cultural knowledge transmission.
Without generating new knowledge, they very appropriately were not called
museums; they did not have a research generation function.
Has the modern museum had much of its research functionality stripped
away? Certainly, modern museums engage in some form of research, but in
general, with many modern museums considered a sphere of informal education
(Falk & Dierking 2011), the emphasis for many is the transmission of knowledge
rather than the generation of new knowledge. The reduced research capacity of
the modern civic museum is well understood in the sector. Anderson (2005), as
part of a conference on the disconnection between museums and research, sug-
gested this was simply a matter of a lack of time and the need for other curatorial
priorities. Other commentators (Conn 2016) suggested the small community and/
or civic museum, whose primary focus is transmission of knowledge, should make
partnerships with universities to develop research capacity.
Similarly, in the modern university, the need to collect materials is suppressed
when disciplinary areas of intellectual activity develop or privilege linguistic or
text-based methodologies and research practices. Many areas of study use object-
based pedagogies, many other areas do not; some change the balance between text
and object over time. But, objects can be used for study in any academic discipline.
The fact that a university department might chose to teach history purely from
textual sources, is the same as a community museum telling a story of its com-
munity through objects. There is a methodological divergence, but an ontological
verisimilitude. There is no capacity, expectation or desire for either to rewrite
108 Lessons

these stories, the focus is purely on transmission. But once textual and object
sources are available; there is at least the potential to generate new knowledge and
rewrite the story.
For knowledge to be preserved, data sources, text and object must be available.
The transmission of knowledge through teaching and learning, either formal or
informal, can take place with either, but arguably is more effective with both. The
generation of new knowledge can also occur with one or the other type of source
in isolation, through the discovery of new sources or reinterpretation of existing
ones (either text or object). There is a much higher likelihood of new knowledge
when both source types are used together. It is no accident that at times of
epistemic change there is an increase in the development of collections (both
within and outside of higher education). An influx of classical texts in the
12th century established preconditions for the development of modern science in
Europe, but it took centuries of collecting and experimentation before real
changes took place (Ball 2008). The Aristotelian challenge of close observation had
to be enacted before any systemic changes in thinking. There was a need for
curiosity to drive experimentation, something that resonated through Islamic
science before finding agency in Europe during the Renaissance, leading to
bourgeoning collections as proof of the new world order. The proximity of re-
search to the practice of collecting brought intellectual breakthroughs.
Early university teaching collections were an amalgam of wonderment, proto-
classification and symbolism (Lourenço 2005). These primarily functioned for the
transmission of knowledge. Many universities had cabinets of natural philosophy.
Those that survived became part of a new generation of university museum in the
20th century, one focussed on institutional identity. Many, for example at Harvard and
Oxford (Bennett 2013), did not survive. But between the 16th and 18th centuries,
many of the collections of noblemen, merchants, learned societies and individual
academics came into the academy. Systematic study replaced the symbolism of
the “wunderkammer.”
The expression “the formaldehyde of museums” captures a sense of objects sus-
pended in an epistemic stasis, unable to struggle free of their “museumized” frame-
work that locates them within unchanging and inviolate knowledge parameters. It is
associated with the prescriptions of Western Civilisation and Global North knowledge
systems (Castro Torres & Alburez-Gutierrez 2022). Formaldehyde is meant to pre-
serve things in perpetuity. The vitrine of exhibition work in modern museums is also
considered a tight epistemic confinement, the museum cabinet glass equated with an
epistemic skin. This view prioritises the museum exhibition functions (transmission)
and downplays the research potential (generation). While some see a role for museums
as being a warehouse for knowledge (Widrich 2018), this doesn’t mean that ware-
house items don’t need further investigation to question the assumptions making up
our knowledge systems.
In the history of university museums and collections (those that survive), the
value and rationale for keeping them as part of university business is constant re-
evaluation and repurposing when necessary. Even objects in “formaldehyde” don’t
 Lessons 109

last forever as the story of Damien Hirst’s artwork “The Physical Impossibility of
Death in the Mind of Someone Living” has shown, a slow process of murky
disintegration (Kennedy 2004) ensued. The same thing can happen to the great
ideas of our society if the data that informs them isn’t re-examined. Data can
be either text or object, but preferably both. While re-examination readily re-
inforces accepted ideas, there is still a chance of ideas being overturned. As a
generalisation therefore, disruption is more likely with objects than text. This is
because of the nature of museum and collection technologies (Thomas 2016)
entailing unconstrained possibilities. The concept of serendipity is inherent in the
museum collection technology via countless possible reiterations of relationships
between decontextualised then re-contextualised collection items. There can al-
ways be scepticism about the word, written or spoken, as data and source for
knowledge production, but people are less likely to argue with objects (Alexander
1979, 160–161).
Research to generate new knowledge is always contextually framed. Alexander
(1979, 159) identified three types of museum research. These are programmatic or
applied research, general or basic research and audience research. The first is based
on the collections and is about authentication and identification. The second is
scholastic in nature and the third related to how people interact with the museum.
The questions asked in programmatic research will differ depending on the col-
lecting discipline. When staff time is stressed, the first and the third types must still
continue, but the second, the one most likely to generate new knowledge, be-
comes depleted. The loss of basic research capacity in non-university museums has
been noted over many years (Carroll Lindsay 1962).
Therefore, research as a museum function has traditionally been mostly of the
first type, an extension of the collection. Involving thorough examination and
cataloguing within existing or recently developed knowledge frameworks and
taxonomies. This is sometimes dismissively referred to as stamp collecting because
it doesn’t reframe or recast any cognitive structures or underlying concepts. Yet, it
is essential for developing the potential to be able to do so. For example, without
the historic biodiversity data present in biological collections, it would be im-
possible to find supporting evidence of ecological stress and decline. As noted by
some authors, in-house programmatic research leads to collection building, often
as a result of fieldwork (Alexander 1979, 10). Growing collections expand the
potential for epistemic disruption. However, once the museum admitted the
public, the predominant function became the exhibition. The transmission of
knowledge displaces, in varying proportions depending on local circumstances, the
generation of new knowledge. Is a museum fundamentally a research institution or
a place of exhibition? While some may answer that they are principally the latter,
perhaps they need to be both a generator and transmitter.
There has been plenty of commentary on the fracturing of the museum and the
academy along the same lines, i.e. a preference for transmission in the former and
generation in the latter. In anthropology, the difference between the two in-
stitutional practices of generating and transmitting knowledge remains sharp
110 Lessons

(Bouquet 2000). Even those who work at the institutional intersection of museum
and university sense the same disconnect. Mayer (2005) on the University of
British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology, noted research is exhibition-driven,
but exhibits were not (at that time) seen as research outputs. It is a situation that
still persists in many places. Mayer (2005) however, also noted the advantages of
working in a place where organisational boundaries between museum and academy
can be regularly crossed and the professional benefits this brings, particularly the
opportunity to teach, a specific, structured form of transmission.
Gaskell (2016, 235) in discussing the future of university museums identified
the same disconnect by generalising that museum scholars mostly refine existing
paradigms rather than propose new ones, whereas faculty scholars “are often
poorly equipped to cope with the bewilderment that tangible things of all kinds
provoke.” The most bewildering being that objects can be physically and cog-
nitively unstable. Gaskell (2016) argued that change is needed. Reid and Naylor
(2005, 362) expressed it as “exhibitors and research staff rarely work closely en-
ough together.” While this was, in part, due to financial constraints, there is a clear
perception of counterproductive professional silos in the cultural industries be-
tween knowledge generation and knowledge transmission.
This issue prompted large non-university museums in the global north to
convene a meeting in 2018. The Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin hosted a
number of large museums with encyclopaedic collections, to meet and discuss the
transformative potential of research in museums. One completely unsurprising
outcome was that the potential for collections-based research is a unique strength
of museums. The need for a meeting to explore this subject is obviously indicative
of a sense that much research potential is unfulfilled. The relevance of modern
research questions asked with a contemporary sense of urgency can also be answered
by museums with these extraordinary datasets at their disposal. This includes
questions about colonial heritage, global injustice and the challenges of the
Anthropocene (Weißpflug 2018).
The defining characteristic of university museums is their historical proximity to
research. No other type of institutional setting provides such diversity of knowledge
and skills across scientific and humanistic disciplines. This means that, in theory at
least, university museums have the potential to engage directly with a diverse
ecosystem of researchers in ways that non-university museums can’t. As an example,
a university is the one place where advanced medical equipment can be in close
proximity to a collection of ancient artefacts; science and technology allows new
research questions on cultural collections (MacKenzie-Clark & Magnussen 2016).
As with the transmission of knowledge, the generation of knowledge is also fa-
cilitated by the multi-disciplinary contexts of objects. To achieve something
equivalent, a non-university museum would need to thoughtfully construct a re-
search team who can make good use of collections, possibly looking beyond their
staff collection specialists. This certainly is done on a regular basis by such museums
but is usually contingent on the right institutional settings and the right funding
opportunities. Alternatively, the same can be, and is, constructed through university
 Lessons 111

research and civic museum partnerships. But in a university museum, this can
happen through serendipity, something in alignment with the nature of the museum
as a knowledge technology (Thomas 2016). The technology matches the institu-
tional environment of the university better than the environment of most civic
museums where research staffs are collection-discipline specific.
The idea that a university museum has a diverse mix of multi-disciplinary in-
tellectual talent as potential cohort for collective museological practice suggests the
university museum is the appropriate setting for experimental museology practice. In
this conception, the museum is perhaps articulated more as a laboratory than a
traditional museum (see Chapter 5). The outcomes of museological programmes are
unknown; there is no definitive and representative presentation of knowledge as in
museums where the focus is essentially the transmission of knowledge rather than the
production of knowledge. When understood and used as a laboratory, however, the
museum becomes a site of coproduction of knowledge where no defined outcomes
are prescribed through investigative museum work. The task of museum work, such
as in the production of a museum exhibition, in this case is best considered a research
process in itself.
Nelson and MacDonald (2012) reported on the success of early experiments using
different social media technologies for audience feedback from interactions at the
Petrie Museum at University College London (see Chapter 4). Ashby (2018) used
Grant Museum of Zoology (UCL) projects to argue that innovative ideas and prac-
tices should not only be part of the everyday work of a museum, but museums should
establish a publicly visible experimental philosophy. This involved working with
university academic staff in the physical space of the museum to experiment with
modes of digital and physical engagement, communication, pedagogy and museology.
These practices were embedded into the everyday running of the museum
(MacDonald & Ashby 2011).11 A similar terminology has been used at Kent State
University for a similar organisational structure, but here the focus is on experi-
mentation within the pedagogic scope of a museum studies programme. MuseLab is a
“space for experimentation, practice, and breaking rules in the interest of learning,
innovating, and discovery” (Latham 2017, 219). John Hopkins University designed
programmes in museum literacy where interactions of participants (staff and students)
shaped unexpected outcomes (Kingsley 2016). Here, the museum has moved beyond
a site of representation to one of dialogic engagement.
This invokes co-curation, as often with digital heritage collaborations sometimes
labelled as “design anthropology” (Smith & Iverson 2014), or otherwise in-
corporating a blend of cultural production and consumption between users (Owens
2013) in the co-construction of knowledge. The museum is being redefined as a
proactive space, as generator of knowledge, rather than inactive keeper (or trans-
mitter) of knowledge. They are more about people and how they relate to objects
and each other than the objects themselves (Weil 1999). This is seen in a number of
museological traditions such as new museology (Vergo 1989) and participatory
museology (Simon 2010), and where museums have a civil contract bound
by purposes such as advocacy on a range of social and environmental issues
112 Lessons

(Sandell 1998, Janes 2009, Janes & Sandell 2019). Others, drawing on anthro-
pological research heritage, have theorised this as a separate and relatively new strand
of discourse distinct from “new museology” (Shelton 2013 as critical museology). It
lacks an elaborate record in anglophone literature but has a strong presence
elsewhere (Hainard & Gonseth 2002, Porto 2009). Critical museology12 has
emerging examples of collaborative practice either based at a university (e.g.
Making Culture Lab, Simon Fraser University; Curating and Public Scholarship
Lab at Concordia University) or including a university partner (e.g. Centre for
Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage, Berlin). Embedding re-
search practices in museology would seem a key characteristic of Critical
Museology. Emergence here is understandable given the proximity of the ori-
ginal museum prototype and the modern academic museum to the intellectual
capability of the academies of higher learning.
The need to bolster research in the museum, in particular museological re-
search, has been the focus of a number of analyses. Eid (2021) argued experimental
innovation can build social value, and experimentation is a core organisational
quality for innovation; but noted that much research in civic museums was
short-term, contingent and didn’t always lead to organisational transformation.
The example of innovative ethos given (Eid 2021) was a university museum, the
Grant Museum of Zoology, University College London. Perhaps the fact that it
could embed an innovation ethos was in part due to its institutional setting?
Others have similarly identified that the museum, as a technology, predisposes
the organisation to research (Arnold 2016) where distinctive new roles in
shifting epistemological landscapes can be exploited, but many civic museums
far from the academy fail to do so.
Some exhibitions have linked the idea of the materiality of higher education as an
epistemic platform through university museums. Gaskell (2016) noted the Tangible
Things Exhibition at Harvard that drew on material from eight collections, noting
the important need for cross-disciplinary scholarship to underpin exhibition work
and the fundamental difficulties of bringing divergent disciplines together within the
institutional structure. Simpson (2014a) commented on a similar exhibition from
Macquarie University, Affinities that drew on seven campus collections. These are
two examples where the objects and their relationships define an intellectual
statement about higher education. Gaskell (2016, 231) noted that new developments
emerging from university museums involve removing the barriers between them
and that “some” administrators understand it is necessary to protect collections in
higher education because what is at stake is the ability to quickly mobilise vast and
diverse materials for scholarly inquiry in response to new questions. As argued
earlier, materiality is an easy access point to inter-disciplinarity.13 Georg-August
University, Göttingen, has taken a further step of drawing its numerous university
collections14 together to create a research-driven, publicly accessible Forum des
Wissens (Knowledge Forum) Materialität des Wissens (materiality of knowledge). It
is described as an interface between science and society where knowledge creation is
conveyed to a broad audience.15
 Lessons 113

There is increasing collaboration between different GLAM organisations (Galleries,

Libraries, Archives, Museums) and universities through exhibition development
processes as a research undertaking. Pierroux et al. (2021) looked at some of the
dynamics and negotiations that occur with these partnerships. They involved a history
of collaboration between university museums, collaboration within the one institution
or across institutions. Similarly, much experimentation concerning the future of
museum experience through the incorporation of new technology, the in-
tegration of virtual and augmented reality is being undertaken in universities
(Hanlee 2020, Kenderdine 2020, Palma et al. 2021) often in partnership with
civic museums and galleries, using them as experimental platforms. This ex-
perimentation has questioned the nature of the exhibition itself, especially
within anthropology, by testing basic ethnographic constructs, their bias and
incompleteness. The university museum can become the research forum. Porto
(2007) described exhibition experiments investigating these questions at the
University of Coimbra Anthropology Museum. These were a material manifestation
derived from questions posed earlier by theorists such as Bourdieu (1972), parti-
cularly questions around the co-presence of ethnographer and subject.
Another series of exhibition experiments was undertaken in Norwegian uni-
versity museums. These built on the proposition that the museum doesn’t mirror the
world but constructs new understandings of it (Bjerregaard 2020), again extending
beyond simple representation or transmission to generation of knowledge. This
was a Norwegian Research Council project that involved the Arctic University
Museum of Norway in Tromsø, the Science Museum at the Norwegian University
of Science and Technology in Trondheim, the University Museum in Bergen, the
Archaeological Museum at University of Stavanger, Natural History Museum at
University of Oslo and Museum of Cultural History at University of Oslo. This
research, referred to as the Colonization Project (Bjerregaard 2020, 2) was a concerted
effort in experimental museology designed to test questions in the museum spaces as
a specific form of research template, and appropriately, like much experimental
museology, it occurred within the academy.
Apart from collaborative projects, there are many examples that indicate uni-
versity museums can take on difficult issues through exhibition work, their place
within an academy possibly providing extra latitude and agency not available to
non-university museums. In the late 1980s, the Manchester Museum did a series
of exhibitions on “Lindow Man,” a sacrificial Late Iron Age murder victim. The
museum presented interpretations of the body from different perspectives at a time
when displaying human remains in museum spaces was becoming controversial.
The museum collected audience responses to the exhibitions providing salient
insights as a source of further research (Sitch 2009).
Livingstone et al. (2016) argue the higher education setting allows greater scope
in the presentation of controversial exhibition content as they are settings for
learning, reflection and public discourse. Examples from the Jordan Schnitzer
Museum of Art at the University of Oregon and the Daura Gallery at the
University of Lynchburg were used as illustrations. Exhibition work, including
114 Lessons

student-created content, covered many contemporary social issues and re-

interpretations of history. Hadley and Chamberlain (2019) give a detailed study of
exhibition development on historic aspects of racial violence in the US at the
DePauw University Museum designed as a learning experience for liberal arts
students. This theme was chosen because of its contemporary relevance. A broader
exploration of how confronting issues are presented through exhibition work
within higher education is also outlined (Hadley & Chamberlain 2019).
Confronting issues in a dialogic engagement between the university and the
public would seem an appropriate way for universities to demonstrate their con-
temporary social relevance. Ver Steeg (2022) covers how the university museum can
provide value to the university through this social contract linking university re-
search with public engagement. Included here under the term “university affiliated
museum” are examples from the US of varying specialities including the Wolfsonian
at Florida International University, the Peabody Museum at Yale University, the
Gilcrease Museum at the University of Tulsa among others (Ver Steeg 2022, ap-
pendix 2). The same study also has examples of linkages between museums and
universities facilitating the same dialogic exchange between the public and university
research. Cross-disciplinary discourse with general audiences via a research com-
munication continuum has profound implications for museum university partner-
ships (Alpert 2016). The social contract or third mission can be enacted through
experimental forms of museology (Achiam et al. 2021).
Research, the generation of knowledge, can be considered one of four museum
functions, the equivalent of collecting, preserving and display. Sigfúsdóttir (2020)
is another identifying the marginalisation of research, in particular collections-
based research, in favour of public programming transmission in non-university
museums and attributes it to neoliberal public policy regimes. It is facilitated by
counterproductive divisions between research and public programming in many
non-university museums. Others have identified neoliberal pressure as causing a
public entertainment response at the expense of using archive and primary research
material in collections (Fink 2006). Another outcome of favouring transmission
over generation creates the risk that curatorial research will be considered elitist
(Bounia 2014).
University museums, in comparison are not always subjected to the same neo-
liberal pressures as their civic counterparts, although the universities that house them
often are.16 University museums need to enlist and enliven as much cross-
disciplinary collaboration and incorporate other campus resources in their projects
wherever possible. Misumi (2019) outlined how the university library, museum and
archives at Tohoku University, Japan, were involved in the development of a special
exhibition of new works using extensive digital resources.17 The combination of a
diversity of research resources with a diversity of intellects in an institution should
spark collaborations more easily than in a segmented organisation under pressure
from reducing and increasingly contingent government funding.
Sigfúsdóttir (2020) identified the research museum as essentially a European
enlightenment phenomenon, i.e. one that was discipline enhancing. This time
 Lessons 115

period saw a rapid expansion in the number of university museums. This great
proliferation of museums and collections of all types meant many were outcomes
of research that originated elsewhere. With the expansion of discipline-based
collections, most museums would naturally privilege knowledge transmission over
knowledge generation. Many university museums that developed at this time were
primarily for teaching, a specific form of knowledge transmission. This was done
by scholar-curators as experts in their specific disciplines and considered an ex-
tension of academic work (Sigfúsdóttir 2020, 199). The “disciplinisation” of
knowledge was the equivalent of Foucault’s disruption between the Renaissance
and the Classical epistemes. It was a time of expanding empires, growing European
wealth and a developing middle class, the first time that knowledge was offered,
not to an elitist few but on a slightly more democratic basis. These were social and
cultural conditions requiring extensive transmission of knowledge. The actual
generation of knowledge remained an essentially elitist undertaking until very
recent times.18
The post-Renaissance period established the museum as a passive site for the
presentation of knowledge produced elsewhere, primarily at universities. As has
been noted, the modern conception of the museum and the university developed
side by side in increasing numbers, from this time (Conn 2016). But given the
Alexandrian model as the original university, as argued throughout this book, this
can be seen as an interval where the balance between generation and transmission
was tipped to one side, seemingly producing two distinctive types of organisations,
the museum and the university. But, the museum as method (Thomas 2016) is a
doorway to inter-disciplinarity. This ability to breach disciplinary boundaries via
materiality provides a means to practice research in the borderland between sci-
ence and culture. There are plenty of examples of university museums doing just
that (Maurstad 2010).
Inter-disciplinarity is a favoured buzzword in knowledge-based organisations.
Humanity needs a capacity to confront numerous diabolical challenges. The array
of compartmentalised knowledge disciplines derived from the flowering of curi-
osity during the Renaissance, by themselves as individual epistemic components
are not capable of offering future courses of action to alleviate the many problems
facing humanity. We are many occupying a small planet where plenty go hungry
and live in poverty, while others consume massive resources in clearly un-
sustainable ways; nations seek to destroy each other, social inequality abounds and
behind all of this is the multifaceted and multiply confronting existential threat of
climate change. Inter-disciplinarity, however, as a concept doesn’t imply a wa-
tering down of conceptual knowledge to occupy unexplored epistemic interstices.
Somewhat the opposite is required, bringing the strengths of multiple disciplines
to bear on diabolic problems. It is the intellectual power of knowledge-based
organisations that needs focus. Maxwell (2018) called this multipronged applied
research as “aim-oriented empiricism.” As has been argued (e.g. Simpson 2019)
and seen in Chapter 3, university museums are starting to occupy this space in
creative rather than passive modes.
116 Lessons

As with multiple disciplines, the museum method can also be a doorway to

multiple epistemologies. Without courting concepts of truth, belief and justification,
by delving into the relationships between epistemology and knowledge disciplines
(Renn 1995, Brister 2016), it’s proposed that herein lies potential for facing many of
these complex issues through aligning the research or knowledge generation
function, with the knowledge transmission function, or in many instances perhaps,
even rediscovering a capacity for knowledge generation in the first place. As noted
by Conn (2016, 322) even small community and civic museums need some sort of
collaboration with universities to rediscover an intellectual purpose. In summary,
there is much unrealised potential for collaboration between museums and higher
education.

“to all sector leaders in higher education and cultural collecting organisa-
tions: shiny epistemological and ontological treasures beyond your wildest
dreams are now within your grasp through collaboration. It is the perfect
antidote to the numbing reductive world of academic restructuring or
neoliberal management metrics that may enslave you”
(Simpson 2014c, 35).

Message and Witcomb (2015) also offered an alternative to museums as passive

sites for the transmission of knowledge. Where fundamental research data is de-
pendent on discipline structure, either at a museum or a university, a way of
forging connections across and between disciplines is needed. Materiality through
the museum as a technology provides open-ended opportunities for doing just
this. The museum as method challenges the disciplinary view of research because it
invokes openness and serendipity as modes of discovery or novel cognitive pivot
points. Given such potential, it is hard to imagine how any organisation with a
mandate to generate knowledge could adequately pursue this without a material
footing within a museum technology. The museum method provides unique
dialectic circuitry for disciplinary border crossing in seeking new insights.
Sigfúsdóttir (2020, 201) claims this gives museums an advantage over uni-
versities. However, a combination of organisational characteristics of both is the
most effective, and the original, model. Such museums are capable of bringing
together information, knowledge, and with good civic engagement, options
for action. The latter representing a contemporary manifestation of the social
contract. In this way, museums can avert the threatening circumstances of
irrelevance and collapse articulated by Janes (2009).
The exploration of multiple epistemologies is a new development in higher edu-
cation prompted by a search for alternative truths and realities to those of the dominant
paradigm of Capital Western knowledge systems. University museums are in-
corporating explorations of multiple knowledge systems in single university spaces.
An example is the museum scholar-practitioner in partnership with the Haida First
Nation from British Columbia, Canada (Krmpotich & Peers 2011) from the Pitt
Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. There is increasing activity of this type in
 Lessons 117

the university museums of the global south. Rico Mansard (2019) documented the
incorporation of Indigenous herbal medical knowledge into the Museo de la
Medicina Mexicana and the Museo de Fauna Silvestre of the National Autonomous
University of Mexico.19
This knowledge, previously suppressed by Spanish colonists for 500 years, is
now being actively incorporated into the collections.20 It is not just gathering
specimens and adding Indigenous labels, it is languages, uses of knowledge, values,
rites and traditions, learning styles, and organising knowledge and ways of trans-
mitting it. This is not just a Latin American phenomenon; there are also efforts to
incorporate Indigenous knowledge into museums in every part of the world that
has experienced colonial occupation. This work is ironically being led by the most
prominent European colonial institution, the university, and some knowledge is
being incorporated into non-university museum programmes (Hinkson 2017).
Rico Mansard (2019) noted that attempts at decolonisation have simultaneously
arisen in countries of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and America. For example, Australian
researchers are investigating the incorporation of Indigenous Australian world-
views into the museum space (Gurrumuruwuy & Deger 2020).
This movement is a clear disruption of modern knowledge paradigms. It is also a
revindication of history, knowledge and heritage suppressed by dominant colonisers
that is now producing (or rediscovering) “new” knowledge about different ways of
relating to the natural world. These multiple epistemologies are a search for deeper
truths. Responsibility for truthfulness in the exhibits and activities of knowledge-
based organisations also extends to truthfulness about how universities and museums
have constructed knowledge in the past. Acknowledgement of the historic role of
museums and universities in past acts of epistemicide and a willingness to invest
intellectual capacity in repatriation and restitution is needed (Scholten et al. 2021).
The Museo Universitario del Chopo at UNAM explores new cross-disciplinary
art and science tendencies through exhibition and programming initiatives. At the
same university, the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo explores ethnic,
political and environmental issues through its exhibition work (Cárdenas Carrión
2019). The enactment of critical museology in museum spaces to test epistemic
boundaries is a distinctive Latin American trend (Navarro 2012), particularly the
ability to impact students through the work of university museums (Mata 2012).
Elsewhere in Latin America, there are similar efforts by university museums to
engage in a two-way knowledge exchange.21 Universidad Austral de Chile seeks
to preserve the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of its territory, its in-
habitants and the development of the region. There is a central museum service
(Museological Direction) that oversees the German Colonial Museum of Frutillar,
the Museum of Exploration Rodolfo A. Philippi, the Mauricio van de Maele
Historical and Anthropological Museum, the Franciscan Mission Cristo
Crucificado de Niebla, the Santa Laura de San José de la Mariquina Park, and the
Millahuapi Island Park in Coñaripe (Weil et al. 2019). Community linkages and
extension work are essential components of their remit. Knowledge exchange
with Indigenous communities is a decolonial feature of Latin American museology
118 Lessons

(Cury 2020b) and an agenda to decolonise higher education in South Africa

(Quinn & Vorster 2017) and elsewhere.
In 2022, Science Gallery at the University of Melbourne produced an exhibition
entitled Emu Sky, Aboriginal Knowledge Past, Present and Future Conversations. It was
curated by Barkandji woman Zena Cumpston, and explores Indigenous perspectives
on science, innovation, plant use, land management and agricultural practice.22 This
exhibition not only presents Indigenous knowledge to both Indigenous and non-
Indigenous audiences, but it also critically challenges the historic absence of such in
contemporary scientific discourse. Using the museum technology in such a way also
provokes curiosity among audiences driving a need for a deeper understanding
of Indigenous epistemology. The exhibition is a sustained interrogation of the
western lens through which Indigenous scientific endeavour has been histori-
cally perceived.23 The project has a prehistory of Indigenous scientific colla-
boration that included an exhibition at John Curtin Gallery (Mann 2016) and
joint fieldwork in the Australian desert (Tingay 2018). In the US, Harvard
University’s Peabody Museum is including Indigenous pedagogies in their
public programming (Schultz 2022).
It is not intended that this aggregation of multiple epistemologies cohabit
within the institution in separate silos, rather it is intended each should both
inform and strengthen the other. It has been suggested that the need for uni-
versities to adapt to multiple epistemologies means renaming the institution. For
capturing knowledge broadly in the African context, the term “pluriversity” has
been suggested as an antidote, or alternative, to the singular authoritative
connotations of the term university (Paterson & Luescher 2022). Nomenclature
aside, it is worth considering that many contemporary challenges are of such
complexity that they cannot be solved within individual disciplines but need to
be approached through a variety of methods and analytics cross-disciplinary
and/or multi-epistemic frameworks.24 The complexity of the challenges facing
humanity may have set us on a course of continual epistemic disruption and
rejuvenation. The disrupted state becomes the “new normal” rather than the
disruption acting as a bridge between two stable epistemic states as argued by
Foucault (1970) and documented by Hooper-Greenhill (1992). If so, then the
museum technology is the appropriate template for facilitating an understanding
of this by broad publics.
Given the above, it is necessary to consider how fit for purpose the university
is, not only as a knowledge producer but also a knowledge transmitter. Generation
and transmission are well and good, but unless they translate into broad social
action and change, then the contract between the academy and society is defec-
tive, the academy would fail its “Third Mission” (Koryakina et al. 2015,
Watermeyer 2015) obligations. The academy, in this discussion, the university, is
no longer an elite organisation. In contemporary times large numbers of a nation’s
citizenry will experience some form of tertiary education. This means that many
universities are relatively young organisations in comparison with the long history
of the institution. What constitutes a university these days is highly variable, and as
 Lessons 119

noted in Chapter 1, it is an institution that is continuously changing in its attempts

to adapt to new socio-cultural situations.
While Sigfúsdóttir (2020, 201) argued that “museums have an advantage over
universities” because their role is usually understood to be neutral rather than
proactively positioned on an issue or within a debate,25 any publicly funded in-
stitution, either university or museum, is vulnerable to funding constraints at the
hands of ideologically driven governments seeking to strip the populace of demo-
cratised access to knowledge. This has been described as the three “Cs,” corpor-
atisation, competitiveness and commercialisation, in relation to the UK higher
education sector (Robertson 2010). These contingencies are seen as preventing
museums from realising their potential (Janes 2009) as proactive agents for social
change and problem-solving discourse (Pérez 2019). Indeed, Janes (2009, 14)
identified “unrealized potential of museums as essential social institutions” and talked
of purposeful museums that haven’t as yet reached a critical mass. Rediscovering
their intellectual purpose is a critical element in fulfilling that potential.
These pressures that immerse public institutions into the universal solvent of
market forces can hamper the ability to harness the power of research transmitted
broadly through university museums and museums in association with universities.
But as covered in Chapter 2, universities can harness these structures and networks
to activate the third mission. They can be spaces for the dialogic testing of ideas
across the interface of the academic and civic realms. Such places should be of
fundamental importance in a connected and networked world that is awash with
endless data. As documented throughout this book, there is an increased focus on
using the museums and collections of higher education as a creative two-way
exchange between academia and society with an increasing number of examples in
many national jurisdictions.26
To use museums and collections this way requires institutional-level strategy
and planning. The results can be spectacular new structures focussed on com-
municating the university and what it does and becoming active socio-cultural
agents on behalf of their institutions at local, regional and larger scales. Some
examples include the Chau Chak Wing Museum, a university museum that brings
together the University of Sydney’s major collections of art antiquity and natural
history into the one museum (Simpson 2021a, Withycombe 2021) and the Ghent
University Museum that brings together scientific collections at the University of
Ghent (Doom 2020). These convergences at university level to favour cross-
disciplinary engagement and discourse about what the university does are recent
forward-thinking museological developments (Simpson 2014d). For many years
discipline gatekeepers have sought large-scale public engagement with varying
degrees of success (e.g. art history Holzman 2019), but as noted in Chapter 3, what
is needed is cross-disciplinarity. It is about aligning the quest for knowledge with
the institutional narrative and providing civic access with the opportunity for
discourse and knowledge generation on an institutional level.
Of equal importance is the social contract between the university (and/or
museum) and society, what is done, or produced, should be interpreted as broadly
120 Lessons

beneficial to the whole of society. If not, there is no justification for the support of
the state. This brings in a whole range of challenging ethical issues that won’t be
canvassed in any detail here other than noting that museum practice has, ever since
the rapid growth in the number of museums (and universities) in the latter half of
the 20th century, been guided by a set of underpinning ethical principles (Murphy
2016). Although, the success of those guiding principles, as they relate to in-
dividual examples of practice, is a matter for open debate, the existence of the
framework does in general focus museum work towards socially positive and
beneficial outcomes (Simpson 2017b). Without the social contract universities lose
their relevance and therefore their value to society. The Mouseion at Alexandria
was only a temporary institution (around 500 years), but as noted earlier, the
university as an organisation has survived much and readapted and reshaped itself
when necessary.
A breakdown in the social contract can be seen in contemporary times where we
have many knowledge-generating agencies developing the human, social and pla-
netary responses to the challenge of anthropomorphic climate change and many of
our political systems either constraining or remaining resolutely immovable re-
garding the need for action. The social contract has become so dysfunctional in this
regard that it has resulted in some calling for an end to climate science until the
systemic blockages to action can be removed (Glavovic et al. 2022). There are also
calls in some quarters for universities to decouple from the state (Mycklebust 2021).
The manifold challenges facing humanity may require a thorough and possibly even
penultimate test of the resilience of these organisations. The challenges and cu-
mulative levels of disruption have led some to propose that we are moving through a
phase labelled as “postnormal” (Sardar 2010). This is cast as a time of complexity,
chaos and contradictions including epistemic disruption to our knowledge systems.
In some ways, it represents the disruptive phase between periods of epistemic stasis as
outlined by Foucault (1970). However, it is postulated to be an extended period
(Sardar 2015) that will eventually close after various under-used humanitarian at-
tributes, virtues such as humility, modesty and accountability, are harnessed for the
cause of seeking forms of stability in all our human systems. The alternative possi-
bility is that the continuing chaos, confusion and epistemic uncertainty are the “new
normal” and a break with an earlier era of long periods of stasis punctuated by
relatively short disruptive phases. It can be argued that understanding the
Anthropocene requires a clear break from existing epistemic frameworks (Carstens
2016). Regardless of whether or not we need to develop critical posthuman and new
materialist pedagogical perspectives, we do need a close and vital alignment between
knowledge generating and knowledge transmitting agencies and society.
Finally, the engagement must be both focussed on the big issues and challenges of
our time and involve active participation. As we’ve seen in Chapter 4, the extension
of the object as a concept through the application of digital technologies is, to a large
degree, being driven by the university sector. These technologies enable new forms
of engagement and new knowledge-generating possibilities in themselves. Some
have argued that the digital revolution has been a technologically-based knowledge
 Lessons 121

enabler of equal significance to the technology of the museum itself (Anderson

2020). There are added complications of data and archive meaning endless in-
formation, even in our connected and networked age it is still claimed we are in-
formation rich but knowledge poor, an expression to describe the contemporary
world that pre-dates the internet (Seidman 1991). Some have argued that the mu-
seological concept of the object is no longer theoretically viable in an age of evolving
technologies, massive datasets and co-creation (Cameron 2021). Regardless, it is
only through some form of collective intellectual engagement that we can extend
the use of the object into new pedagogic realms.27 There are some encouraging
examples of university-led investigations doing just that.
As covered in Chapter 5, participation across the interface between universities
and society must be truly collaborative; there must be opportunities for co-
curation and the co-creation of knowledge in hybrid spaces (Barnes & McPherson
2019). The individual projects documented as examples in Chapters 4 and 5 could
be considered as bright spots, or the green shoots of necessary change for our
knowledge-based institutions and the way knowledge is applied to critical issues
confronting humanity. Roussell et al. (2021) reported on critical Anthropocene
interventions in the University of Manchester’s Manchester Museum as a higher
education pedagogy. There is also plenty of evidence that the need for restitution
and repatriation of cultural objects and the pressure for decolonisation and ac-
knowledgement of past acts of epistemicide is being led by university museums
(Scholten et al. 2021, Assheton 2022).
In avoiding some of the pessimism in museum writing concerning the challenges
confronting humanity, it is worth remembering that the university sector produced
COVID diagnostics and vaccines in quick time (Gilbert & Green 2021), a story, at
the time of writing, to be told soon at Oxford University’s Museum of the History of
Science (Ackerman 2021). While grappling with this virus and the more difficult
social and political issues of the pandemic these concerns in the near future could be
put in the shade by climate change and a collapsing world order. It’s worth re-
membering that most of the investigation regarding the impacts on cultural heritage
is likely to be driven by university researchers (Sesana et al. 2021) as it will with other
impacts. It’s also worth remembering that one of the first museums dedicated to
climate change was in fact a university museum.28 The only place to look for answers
will be organisations devoted to research, reflection and the common good.
It seems pretty clear that in imagining and designing futures for humankind,
despite their shared point of origin, universities need museums and museums need
universities.

Notes
1 We face immense global-scale environmental challenges with associated cultural and
economic disruption, perhaps most significantly with human-induced climate change,
recognised as prompting both collective and individual action and denial (Stollberg &
Jonas 2021). The role of global knowledge-based organisations is crucial at this time.
122 Lessons

2 This concept has been referred to as the “formaldehyde of the museum” (Herwitz
2012) where the past is effectively “museumized.” Herwitz (2012) used the term in
relation to place, but it can be extended to objects and ideas.
3 Strabo of Amaseia (c. 62 BCE–24 CE) Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian
the author of the seventeen-book Geography (more properly Geographika), with de-
scriptions of people and places encountered during his travels.
4 Strabo wrote during the rule of Augustus at the beginning of the Imperial Roman era
but is considered a Hellenistic writer (Shipley 2000).
5 The prosperous and multi-cultural nature of the city of Alexandria was presaged by an
event at its founding where a large flock of numerous different-sized birds, undoubtedly
a mixture of different wetland species, descended on the land in the presence of
Alexander (quoted by Dde Fátima Silva 2012, 27–28). This was seen as portend of
future prosperity.
6 Barnes (2002) reports dinners and symposia often attended by the king at which a range
of philosophical and scientific issues were discussed. This sounds like the modern
equivalent of state-sponsored conferences. As with the Mouseion, a majority of state-
sponsored academics in the modern age are enthusiastic recipients of the largesse of their
funders.
7 The primary function here was the multicultural fusion of religious and cultural beliefs
(Davydova 2012), rather than the promulgation of knowledge.
8 Around 31 CE.
9 The ancient Greek academy didn’t award degrees as recognition of learning achieve-
ment unlike the medieval university. Lloyd (2004) articulates the differences between
these two institutions and indicates that the examination system associated with learning
achievement in modern universities was a feature of the ancient Chinese academy
(Lloyd 2004, 147).
10 Not to be confused with the Classical ages of antiquity.
11 The concept was the museum equals a laboratory as a central strategic plank for the
university (Ashby 2018).
12 The practice can be broadly and differently interpreted (Pedro Lorente 2022).
13 See Chapter 3.
14 The UMAC database currently (May 2022) lists 33 collections and museums at this
university.
15 From the website FORUM WISSEN das zukünftige Wissensmuseum Göttingen
https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/forum+wissen/521321.html (accessed May 2022).
16 There is ample literature on the corporatization of higher education (Sanderson &
Watters 2006, Australia; Cox 2013 USA).
17 Salse et al. (2021) studied the websites of 33 European universities looking at
the presentation of academic heritage. They concluded there is much scope
for increased collaboration between many of the GLAM subsections of these
institutions.
18 Foucault’s Modern episteme has seen the greatest democratisation of knowledge,
but many would argue knowledge production remains an elitist practice particularly
in terms of the global north-south divide (Castro Torres & Alburez-Gutierrez
2022).
19 Rico Mansard (2019) describes this as “two way knowledge.”
20 It is worth noting that the botanical and zoological gardens of ancient Mexico probably
predated those of the western European colonisers (Méndez 2018).
21 As noted in Chapter 5.
22 Emu Sky website https://melbourne.sciencegallery.com/events/emu-sky-exhibition
(accessed May 2022).
23 Ibid.
 Lessons 123

24 For example, Indigenous knowledge and climate change (Makondo & Thomas 2018).
25 Sigfúsdóttir (2020) suggests climate change and right-wing nationalist populism as
examples.
26 For example, the Kharazmi University Museum in Iran was established to create an
institutional identity (Kamran 2022)
27 An example is the pedagogy of feeling at the University of Copenhagen (Schou &
Løvlie 2021).
28 the Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change at the Chinese University Hong Kong
(Newell 2020).
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INDEX
Aarhus University 35
Airlangga University 21
Al-Azhar University 23n12
Al-Fihri, Fatima 10
Aldrovandi, Ulisse 13
Alexander, the Great 6, 102
Alexandria 6–9, 83, 102–7
Alfonso L. Herrera Museum of Zoology,
National Autonomous University of
Mexico 98
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin
College 53–4
Al-Qarawiyyin University 10
Alta Mira Caves 3
Altai State University Museums 84
Amerbach Cabinet 13
Anthropology Museum, University of
Coimbra 113
Anthropology Museum, University of
Queensland 88
Aquinas, Thomas 10
Archaeological Museum, University of
Stavanger 113
Arctic University Museum of Norway 113
Aristotle 5–8, 50
Armenian State Institute of Physical Culture
43n21
Art Gallery, Carleton University 89
Art Museum, University of Colorado 94–5
Art Museum, University of Sydney 93
Art Museum, University of Tartu 92
Art Museum, University of Wyoming 87–8
Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard
University 78
Arthur Ross Gallery, University of
Pennsylvania 97
Arts West Building, University of
Melbourne 65–66
Ashmole, Elias 3, 13, 105
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University
2–3, 7, 13, 23n1, 27, 32, 45, 67, 83, 90
Ashurbanipal 4
Ashurnasirpal II 4
Astronomical observatory collections,
University of Coimbra 86
Atalaya3D 72
Athletic Hall of Fame, Louisiana State
University 43n22
Athletic Hall of Fame, Louisiana Tech
University 43n22
Athletic Hall of Fame, United States Naval
Academy 43n22
Augustus 8, 122n4
Australian History Museum, Macquarie
University 43n10, 63n17, 95
Australian Materialism 25
Avicenna 9; see also Ibn Sina
bacteria collection, University of Auckland 34
Banaras Hindu University 87
Basel University Museum 13
Beloit College 55
Bharat Kala Bhavan Museum, Banaras
Hindu University 87
160 Index
Bilbao Guggenheim 33
Bilgi University 93
Bob Doran Museum of Computing,
University of Auckland 24n21
Bodleian Libraries, Oxford University 67
botanic garden, Salerno 9
botanic gardens, University of Padua 74
Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship 40
British Museum 88
Brown University 58, 66, 71–2
Bunsen burner 50
Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard
University 78
Business School, Sydney University 56
C. Y. Tung Maritime Museum, Shanghai
Jiao Tong University 39
cabinets of curiosity 2, 12, 21, 46;
see also wunderkammer and cabinets of
the world
cabinets of the world 105
California Institute of Technology 40
Cambridge University 21, 27–28, 46, 63n3,
85, 88, 96
Campus Creativo, Universidad de
Navarra 90
campus prison, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-
Universität Greifswald 20
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University 89
Carl and Liselott Diem Archive, German
Sport University 35
Carleton University 89
Cassini globe 50
Center for Biomedical Ethics and
Humanities, University of Virginia 51
Center for the History and Culture of
Central Virginia, University of
Lynchburg 54
Centre for Anthropological Research on
Museums and Heritage, Berlin 112
Centre for British Art, Yale University 51
Centre for World-Class Universities,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University 39
Charlemagne, Emperor 11
Charles Darwin University 29
Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of
Sydney 31–2, 56, 93, 119
Chen Dongshen 33
Chen Ji Art Museum, Shanghai Jiao Tong
University 39
Chengdu Polus Furniture Museum, Polus
International College 59
Chinese University of Hong Kong 123n28
Chinese Wushu Museum of Sport,
Shanghai University of Sport 36
Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum,
Sookmyung Women’s University 87
Clarke, Arthur C. 42
Claytor Nature Center, University of
Lynchburg 63n10
Clothing and Textile Centre, University of
Otago 87
coal utilising microbe collection, Flinders
University 34
Colecção de Modelos Matemáticos
[Collection of Mathematical Models],
University of Coimbra 34, 86
Colegio de Nuestra Seňora del Santisimo
Rosario 32
College Art Association, United States 66
Columbia University 66
Companhia Telephonica Melhoramento e
Resistencia (CTMR) 86
Complutense University of Madrid 95–6
Conference of Italian Universities Rectors 74
Concordia University 112
Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers 29, 91
Copernicus, Nicolas 28
Cornell Botanic Gardens 85
Cornell College of Agriculture and Life
Sciences 85
Cornell University 66, 78, 85
Cosmas and Damian, patron saints of
medicine and pharmacy 53, 63n8
Council of Australian University Museums
and Collections (CAUMAC) 19, 44n27
Culinary Archives and Museum, Johnson
and Wales University 20
Curating and Public Scholarship Lab,
Concordia University 112
Dalhousie University 34
Dartmouth College 44n26, 89
Darwin, Charles 28
Daura Gallery (pre 2020), University of
Lynchburg 113
Daura Museum of Art (2020 onwards),
University of Lynchburg 54
Daura, Pierre 54, 63n9
Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University
Connecticut 89
De Montfort University 35
Delaware Technical and Community
College 20
Denver University Museum of
Anthropology 57

DePauw University Museum 114
Design Archives, Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology (RMIT) 90
Dewey, John 47, 58
Dongfeng II Ballistic Missile 41
Dunhuang Caves 23n9
Eastern Illinois University 52
Edinburgh University 28
Edith Cowan University 21
Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History,
University of Texas 52
Egyptian Museum, Cairo 2
Einstein, Albert 27
Electronic Science and Technology
Museum, University of Electronic
Science and Technology 43n5, 74
England Boxing 35
Epic of Gilgamesh 5
Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald
[University of Greifswald] 20
Federal University of Pelotas 86
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro 82
Fink’s taxonomy of significant learning 53
Fisher Library, University of Sydney 32
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
University 85, 96
Fleming Museum, University of Vermont 89
Flinders University 34
Florida International University 114
Fogg Museum, Harvard University 77–8
formaldehyde of the museum 108, 122n2
Forum des Wissens, Georg-August
University 112
Foucault’s epistemes 46, 105–7
Foucault’s Pendulum 29
Fralin Museum of Art, University of
Virginia 51
Franciscan Mission Cristo Crucificado de
Niebla 117
French Revolution 29
Frick Museum, New York 51
Gallaudet University 95; previously
Gallaudet College 95
Garstang Museum of Archaeology,
University of Liverpool 68
Gehry, Frank 33
geology collection, Macquarie University 56
Georg-August University 112; also
University of Göttingen 100n21
Index 161
German Colonial Museum of Frutillar,
Universidad Austral de Chile 117
German Council of Humanities and
Science [Wissenschaftsrat
Deutschland] 73
German Sport University [Deutsche
Sporthochschule Köln] 35
Gilcrease Museum, University of Tulsa 114
Leibniz, Gottfried Willhelm 30
Grant Museum of Zoology, University
College London 63n16, 72, 111–2
Grimwade Centre, University of
Melbourne 85
Gustavianum, Uppsala University 30
Haffenreffer Museum, Brown
University 58
Hamburg University Collections 24n24
Hamilton Kerr Institute, Cambridge
University 85
Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum [Hans Gross
Museum of Criminology], University of
Graz 75, 87
Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy
and Pathology, University of
Melbourne 65
Harvard University 2, 15, 58, 60–1, 66, 77
Harvard University Art Museums 61, 77
He Jing-tang 40
Health Sciences and Human Services
Library, University of Maryland 71
Henry Forman Atkinson Dental Museum,
University of Melbourne 65
Henslow, John Stevens 28
Hero of Alexandria 103
Historical Collection of Physics
Instruments, University of Palermo 49
History Museum of the Armenian State
Institute of Physical Culture 36, 43n21
History Museum, Kadir Has University 93
History of Pharmacy Museum, University
of Coimbra 86
History of Physics Museum, University of
Padua 74
History of Science Museum, Oxford
University 121
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College
44n26, 89
Horn-D’Arturo, Guido 49
Hugon Kołłątaj University of
Agriculture 34
Humboldt University 30
162 Index
Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of
Melbourne 2, 65, 69
Ibn Sina 9; see also Avicenna
Illinois State University 59, 63n14
Imperial Astronomical Bureau, China 10
Indigenous Art and Artefact Collection,
University of Canberra 87
Industrial Museum of Scotland 28
Institute for Preservation of Cultural
Heritage Conservation Laboratory, Yale
University 85
Institute of Human Sciences, Federal
University of Pelotas 86
International Centre for Sports History and
Culture, de Montfort University 35
Jagiellonian University [Uniwersytet
Jagielloński] 28
Jagiellonian University Museum 28
Jardin des Sciences, University of
Strasbourg 31
Jenks Museum of Natural History and
Anthropology, Brown University 71
Jenks Society for Lost Museums, Brown
University 72
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California
Institute of Technology 40
Jiang Baili 40
Jiang Ying 40
Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change,
Chinese University of Hong Kong
123n28
John Curtin Gallery, Curtin University 118
John Hopkins University 111
John Spoor Broome Library, California
State University Channel Islands 70
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art,
University of Oregon 96, 113
Kadir Has University 93
Kazan Federal University 35–6
Keimyung University 34
Keimyung University Museum 34
Keio University 59, 79
Kent State University 89, 111
Kokugakuin University 94
Kokugakuin University Museum 94
Kolb, David 47
Korean Museum Association 34
Korean University Museum Association 34
Kyoto Imperial University 94
Kyoto University 94
Lagomarsino, Congressman, Robert J. 70
Lascaux Caves 3
legacy collections 15; see also orphan
collections
Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University
College Cork 97; also the Glucksman or
Glucksman (colloq.) 97
Library of Alexandria 102–6
Library special collections, University of
Canterbury 47
Linnaeus, Carl 15, 43n11, 99, 106
Logan Museum of Anthropology, Beloit
College 55
Lois Jett Historic Costume Collection,
Illinois State University 59, 63n14
Long March rocket 41
Louvre 2
Louisiana State University 43n22
Louisiana Tech University 43n22
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami 96
Lyceum 7, 102
MacLeay Museum, University of Sydney
31, 93
Macquarie University 30, 63n17, 67, 77, 99
Macquarie University Art Gallery 56,
61, 95–6
Macquarie University History Museum
43n10
Macquarie University Hospital 77
Macquarie University Library 56
Making Culture Lab, Simon Fraser
University 112
Manchester Museum, Manchester
University 2, 83, 113, 121
Manchester University 2, 83, 113, 121
Mao Zedong 41
Mapungubwe Collection and
Mapungubwe Archive, University of
Pretoria 72
Masaryk University 21
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 40
Mauricio van de Maele Historical and
Anthropological Museum, Universidad
Austral de Chile 98, 117
McCarthy, Senator Joseph 40
Medical History Museum, University of
Melbourne 65
Melbourne School of Design, University of
Melbourne 69
Mellon Foundation 58, 63n12
Mendel Museum, Masaryk University 21

Metropolitan Museum of Art 67, 98
Metropolitan School of Science 84
Mexican Medicine Museum [Museo de la
Medicina Mexicana], National
Autonomous University of Mexico
98, 117
Microcosm 8–9
microscope collections, University of
California 49
Millahuapi Island Park in Coñaripe 117
Mona Lisa 2
Monroe Moosnick Medical and Science
Museum, Transylvania University 20
Mouseion, Alexandria 6–8, 12–4, 102–4,
107, 120
Mouseion, Ephesus 102
Mouseion, Smirne 102
Musée des Arts et Métiers [Museum of Arts
and Crafts] 29
MuseLab, Kent State University 111
Museo Ambulante 97
Museo de Fauna Silvestre, National
Autonomous University of Mexico 117
Museo della Fabbrica del Monastero dei
Benedettini [Museum of the Benedictine
Monastery Building], University of
Catania 92
Museo Universidad de Navarra [University
of Navarra Museum] 90
Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo
[University Museum of Contemporary
Art], National Autonomous University
of Mexico 117
Museo Universitario del Chopo [Chopo
University Museum], National
Autonomous University of Mexico 117
Muses 6–7, 84, 102, 107
Museu Académico [Museum of Student
Life], University of Coimbra 86
Museu de Arte Leopoldo Gotuzzo
[Leopoldo Gotuzzo Art Museum],
Federal University of Pelotas 86
Museu de Ciências Naturais Carlos Ritter
[Carlos Ritter Museum of Natural
Sciences], Federal University of
Pelotas 86
Museu do Doce [Candy Museum], Federal
University of Pelotas 86
Museu Nacional, Rio De Janeiro [National
Museum of Brazil] 82
Museum Appreciation Society, Macquarie
University 99
Museum Commons, Keio University 79
Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin 110
Index 163
Museum Obstetricum, Uppsala
University 86
Museum of American Political Life,
University of Hartford 20
Museum of Anatomy, National
Autonomous University of Mexico 98
Museum of Ancient Cultures, Macquarie
University 30, 63n17, 77
Museum of Anthropology, National
Autonomous University of Mexico 98
Museum of Anthropology, University of
British Columbia 110
Museum of Anthropology, University of
Denver 88
Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology,
University of São Paulo 86–7
Museum of Archaeology, Kokugakuin
University 94
Museum of Archeological Sciences and Art,
University of Padua 74
Museum of Chemistry, University of
Palermo 49
Museum of Childhood, Edith Cowan
University 21
Museum of Classical Archaeology,
University of Adelaide 25
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard
University 15
Museum of Contemporary Art, Bogotá,
Universidad Minuto de Dios [Minute of
God University] 93
Museum of Cultural History, University of
Oslo 113
Museum of Death, Airlangga University 21
Museum of Early Philosophical Apparatus,
Transylvania University 20
Museum of English Rural Life, University
of Reading 71
Museum of Exploration Rodolfo A.
Philippi, Universidad Austral de
Chile 117
Museum of Geology and Palaeontology,
University of Padua 74
Museum of Medical History, Uppsala
University 86
Museum of Minerology, Paleontology and
Volcanology, University of Catania
[Museo di Mineralogia, Paleontologia e
Vulcanologia- Università di Catania] 92
Museum of Modern Art, New York 52
Museum of National Taipei University of
Education 97–8
Museum of Natural History, Harvard
University 2
164 Index
Museum of Natural History, Oxford
University 76
Museum of Practical Geology,
Metropolitan School of Science 84
Museum of Shanghai Jiao Tong University
History 39
Museum of the Federal University of
Alfenas 38
Museum of the History of Education,
University of Athens 89
Museum of the History of Science, Oxford
University 27, 121
Museum of the Institute of Pathological
Anatomy, University of Coimbra 86
Museum of the Moscow Architectural
Institute 24n22
Museum Stroganov’s School of Decorative
Arts 24n22
Museum Wormianum 12
Museums and Galleries Commission,
United Kingdom 19
Muthesius University of Fine Arts and
Design 78
Nālandā 10
Nanyang Institute of Education 79
National and Kapodistrian University of
Athens 73, 84
National Autonomous University of
Mexico [Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, UNAM] 23n14,
98–9, 117
National Deaf Life Museum, Gallaudet
University 95
National Herbarium of Mexico, National
Autonomous University of Mexico 98
National Museum Cardiff 79
National Museum of Natural History and
Science, University of Lisbon 2, 83, 85
National Paleontology Collection, National
Autonomous University of Mexico 98
National Taipei University of
Education 97–8
National University of San Marcos 23n14
Natural History and Science Museum,
University of Porto 78
Natural History Museum, Oxford
University 24n18
Natural History Museum, University of
Colorado 94
Natural History Museum, University of
Oslo 113
Natural History Museum, University of
Tartu 92
Nature and Science Museum, Tokyo
University of Agriculture and
Technology 59, 78
Naughton Gallery, Queen’s University
Belfast 72
Nebuchadnezzar II 4
Newton, Isaac 63n3
Nicholson Museum, University of Sydney
31, 93
Niemeyer House, University of Brasília 78
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah
State University 89
Norwegian University of Science and
Technology 113
Nursing Museum, Charles Darwin
University 29
Oberlin College 53–4
Ontario College of Art and Design 89
organisation theory 26
orphan collections 16–7
orphan museums 16
Orto botanico, Università di Catania
[botanical garden, University of Catania] 92
osteo-archaeological archive, University of
New England 68
Ōtani University 88
Ōtani University Museum 88
Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford
University 67
Oxford University 2–3, 13, 15, 21, 27, 67
Pan-Atlantic University 23n16
Paradisec Project 72
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and
Ethnology, Harvard University 58
Peabody Museum, Harvard University 67, 118
Peabody Museum, Yale University 114
People’s Liberation Army 41
Pepperdine University 43n16
Percy Grainger Museum, University of
Melbourne 21, 65, 69
Perm University History Museum 88
Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology,
University College London 21, 63n16,
72, 91, 111
Philosophy Chamber, Harvard University
60–1, 79
Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University
21, 116

Pliny’s Natural History 8
pluriversity 118
Polus International College 59
Princeton University 66
Ptolemy Soter 6
Qian Xuesen 39–42
Qian Xuesen Library and Museum,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University 40–2
Queen Hatshepsut 4
Queen’s University Belfast 72
Ramsey-Freer Herbarium, University of
Lynchburg 55, 63n10
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
(RMIT) 90
Royal Pontifical University of Mexico
23n14
rubbish theory 17, 49–50
Rudbeck, Professor Olaus 30
Rudbeck, Professor Olof 43n11
salt pan, University of Aveiro 35
Sam Noble Museum of Natural History,
University of Oklahoma 91
Santa Laura de San José de la Mariquina
Park 117
scala natura 7, 23n6
School of Physics Museum, University of
Melbourne 65
Science Gallery, international franchise 95
Science Gallery, University College Dublin
61–2, 95
Science Gallery, University of Melbourne
65, 118
Science Museum, Norwegian University of
Science and Technology 113
Science Museum, University of
Coimbra 86
Scoula Medica Salernitana 9
Sechenov University Museum of the
History of Medicine 29
Sechenov University [Sechenovskiy
Universitet] 29
Sedgewick Museum, Cambridge
University 21
Shanghai Jiao Tong University 39–42
Shanghai Jiao Tong University Museum 39
Shanghai University of Sport 36
Sheng Nung 4
Sheng Nung Peng Tsao 4
Shinto Museum, Kokugakuin University 94
Shuttruck Nahhunte 4
Simon Fraser University 112
Index 165
Ski Club of Great Britain 35
Skidmore College 89
Skou, Jens Christian 35
Soil Museum, Hugon Kołłątaj University of
Agriculture 34
Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen’s
University Belfast 72
Sookmyung Women’s University 87
Special Collections and Archives,
University Library, Utah State
University 89
Spencer Museum of Art, University of
Kansas 53
Sporting Hall of Fame, Macquarie
University 37–8
Sports Hall of Fame, United States Military
Academy 43n22
Steno Museum, Aarhus University 35
Straus Centre for Conservation and
Technical Studies, Harvard
University 85
Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery,
Skidmore College 89
Tarble Arts Centre, Eastern Illinois
University 52
Tate Museum, University of Adelaide 25
Telephone Museum, Federal University of
Pelotas 86
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the
Mind of Someone Living 109
Theophrastus 8
Thomas McCulloch Museum, Dalhousie
University 34
Tiegs Museum (Zoology), University of
Melbourne 65
Tohoku University 114
Tokyo University of Agriculture and
Technology 59, 78
Transylvania University 20
Treasures of the Sea exhibition, Delaware
Technical and Community College 20
Tsung Dao Lee Library, Shanghai Jiao
Tong University 39
Tutankhamen mask 2
type specimens 21, 34, 82
UCL Art Museum, University College
London 63n16
UCL Culture, University College
London 60
UCL Octagon Gallery, University College
London 63n16
Ullin T. Place 25, 43n2
166 Index
United States Military Academy 43n22
United States Naval Academy 43n22
universal knowledge 104–5
Universidad Austral de Chile [Austral
University of Chile] 98
Universidad de la República Uruguay
[University of the Republic
(Uruguay)] 21
Universidad de Navarra [University of
Navarra] 90
Università di Catania [University of
Catania] 92
Universidad Minuto de Dios [Minute of
God University] 93
University College Cork 97
University College Dublin 61, 95
University College London 21, 60, 63n16,
72, 91, 111
University Design Archives (RDA), Royal
Melbourne Institute of Technology
(RMIT) 90
University History Collection, University
of Amsterdam 87
University library, museum and archives,
Tohoku University 114
University Museum and Art Gallery,
University of Hong Kong 78, 86
University Museum of Kyoto 94
University Museum of Sciences and Art,
National Autonomous University of
Mexico 98
University Museum of Utrecht 29
University Museum, University of
Bergen 113
University Museums and Collections
(UMAC) International Committee of
the International Council of Museums
(ICOM) 20–1, 34, 74, 100n3, 100n11
University Museums Group (UMG),
England, Wales and Northern Ireland 95
University Museums of National and
Kapodistrian University of Athens 84
University of Adelaide 25, 35, 43n2
University of Alaska’s Museum of the
North 94
University of Auckland 24n21
University of Aveiro 35
University of Barcelona 77
University of Bologna 11, 13, 49, 73
University of Brasília 78
University of British Columbia 110
University of Bucharest Museum 76
University of Calgary 69
University of California 49
University of Canterbury 47
University of Catania 92
University of Coimbra 34, 86, 113
University of Colorado 32, 91, 94–5
University of Colorado Museum 32, 91
University of Copenhagen 23n15, 123n27
University of Denver 57, 88
University of Dundee Museums 95
University of Electronic Science and
Technology 43n5, 74
University of Hartford 20
University of Helsinki 30, 88
University of Helsinki Museum 88
University of Hong Kong 78, 86
University of Kansas 53
University of Lisbon [Universidade de
Lisboa] 2, 83, 85
University of Liverpool 68
University of Lynchburg 55, 63n10;
previously Lynchburg College 63n9
University of Maryland 71
University of Melbourne 21, 65–6, 69, 85
University of Miami 96
University of Minnesota 33
University of New England 68
University of Oklahoma 91
University of Oslo 113
University of Otago 87
University of Padua 74
University of Padua Library 74
University of Palermo 49
University of Paris 11
University of Pavia 76
University of Pennsylvania 97
University of Porto 78
University of Queensland 88
University of Reading 71
University of Rennes 34
University of Richmond 97
University of Santo Tomas 32
University of São Paulo 86–7
University of St Andrews 75–6
University of Stavanger 113
University of Strasbourg 31
University of Sydney 31–2, 56, 93, 119
University of Tartu 35, 59, 92
University of Tartu Art Museum 59
University of Tartu History Museum 92
University of Tartu Museum 35
University of Texas 52
University of the Republic (Uruguay) 21
University of Tulsa 114

University of Vermont 89
University of Virginia 51
University of Wyoming 87–8
Uppsala University 14, 23n17, 30
Ur 5
Utah State University 89
Ventura County Commission on Women 70
Vernon-Roberts Museum, University of
Adelaide 25
Vilamajó House Museum, Universidad de
la República Uruguay [University of the
Republic (Uruguay)] 21
Virginia Commonwealth University 68
Virtual Curation Laboratory, Virginia
Commonwealth University 68
virtual museum 75
Virtual Museum of the University of
Barcelona 77
von Braun, Wernher 40
von Kármán, Theodore 40
Wanlin Art Museum, Wuhan University 33
Weill Cornell Medical School, Cornell
University 51
Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles
43n16
Weisman Art Museum, University of
Minnesota 33
Index 167
Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine
University 43n16
Weisman, Frederick R. 33
Wesleyan University Connecticut 89
Whipple Museum of the History of
Science, Cambridge University 27
Whipple, Robert S. 27
Williams College Museum of Art 89
Wilson, Professor George 29
Wissenstheater 30
Wolfsonian, Florida International
University 114
Wonder Cabinet of Mankind 4
Wuhan University 33
wunderkammer 2, 12–3, 108;
see also cabinets of curiosity
Yale Art Gallery 51
Yale Collection Studies Center, Yale
University 85
Yale Peabody Museum = Yale Peabody
Museum of Natural History 91–2
Yale University 51, 66, 114
Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, Pan-
Atlantic University 23n16
Zhu Pei 33
Ziqian Institute 33
zoological collection, University of Rennes 34