University museums
as a medium of
understanding ‘us’
A Study on the opportunities for archaeological
university collections in a time of transition
Masterthesis
Promotor: Dr. Mirjam Hoijtink
Second Reader: Prof. Dr. Wim Hupperetz
Content
Aknowledgements...3
Abstract...5
Introduction...6
Problem Statement and Research question...6
Methodology...7
The Museum and the university...8
The Academic discipline and the meaning of the objects...9
The role of the university museum...10
Current state university museums: less about collections, more about universities?...10
Chapter 1: The Museum and the University...13
Historical reflection...13
The management of the university: a changing landscape...16
Relations from university to museum and museum to university...21
Integration of university museums...24
Chapter 2. The Academic discipline and the meaning of the objects...28
Historical reflection...29
Archaeology...29
Museology...33
Recent developments: the material turn...36
Material turn in archaeology...36
Objects in Museums: the material turn?...37
New Narratives: opportunities for objects in museums...40
The material turn: from objects to stories?...40
Objects with an own story: cultural biography of objects...43
Disciplinary vs. Multidisciplinary...44
Meaningfully constituted: objects as a tool for understanding each other...45
Chapter 3. The role of the university museum...48
Historical reflection...49
Current role university museums...52
The traditional roles...52
A matter of Identity...58
Reconsidering the collection: academic heritage...58
Reconsidering the university museum: a post-university-museum?...58
Conclusions: future perspectives, a time of crisis or opportunity?...61
Identity...65
Reconsidering the university museum...66
Epilogue: Lets talk money?...67
Bibliography...70
Aknowledgements
First of all I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Mirjam Hoijtink, who is Director of the master programme Heritage Studies: Museum Studies, and the promotor of this research. With her help, it was possible to outline the subject of my research, and the coordination she provided truly helped me to think outside my box and grasp ideas to which I was unfamiliar prior this study. She has not only guided me through the process of the master thesis, but also through the entire programme that I now hope to finish successfully.
Furthermore, I want to give thanks go to Prof. Dr. Wim Hupperetz, Director of the Allard Pierson Museum and professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, who is the second reader of this thesis. He has also helped out with an interview to gain a better understanding of my subject. His progressive visions were a true inspiration.
That brings me to plenty of others to thank which have given me the opportunity for an interview. Firstly, from the University of Amsterdam I would like to thank René van Beek, Curator of the Classical Collections at the Allard Pierson and Prof. Dr. Vladimir Stissi, professor in Classical Archaeology and Ancient Art History at the University of Amsterdam. Furthermore, I’m grateful for the help of the members of Ghent University, where I was given the opportunity to interview Prof. Dr. Patrick Monsieur, current Conservator of the archaeological university collections, together with Prof. Dr. Jean Bourgois, Professor of Archaeology and Prehistory in Europe, who has spend a lot of time maintaining the museum and collections on a voluntary basis. The conversations we had have provided me with a better insight in the development and history af the archaeological university collections and the new museum concept of the future Gents Universiteitsmuseum. Finally, I want to give thanks to Prof. Dr. Peter Stewart, Associate Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology and Director of the Classical Art Research Centre at Oxford University, and Dr. Paul Collins, Jaleh Hearn Curator for Ancient Near East at the Ashmolean, for taking the time to receive me for an interview and provide me with some behind the scenes insight on the working and concept of the Ashmolean.
On a more personal note, I want to thank my parents, for supporting me to take on this the challenge to do the master and to follow my interests. Without their help and patience I would not be where I am now. On top of that, they helped to type the transcriptions of the interviews and to brainstorm with me when inspiration was lost. I also want to thank my
friends Adeline Hoffelinck, who has given me the pictures of the Potenza exhibition, and Tuur Baele, for helping out with the transcriptions. Last but definitely not least, as being a student does not only consist of going to class, doing exams and writing papers, I want to thank the amazing group of graduate students I started this adventure with. It was a privilege to study and work with this group, and each of them has turned my time in Amsterdam into unforgettable memories. Thank you.
Abstract
Archaeological university museums and collections have struggled to keep their relevance visible to their governing university and to society for the last few decades. Today, many university museums are facing the issues of this ‘university museum crisis’ by renewing their museum concepts. The aim of this research is to see what the new possibilities for these collections could be in terms of narratives and museum concepts, considering their place within the university, societal role and current developments in the academic disciplines those archaeological collections represent. Three case studies, the Allard Pierson (University of Amsterdam), the Ashmolean (Oxford University) and the Gents Universiteitmuseum (Ghent University), were approached by those themes and for each case study interviews were conducted with members of both the museum and the university. This analysis pointed out that opportunities lie in the question of what a university museum should be (the model), so that different perspectives on objects, the identity of the collections (academic heritage) and role for both the university and society can be addressed in one concept.
Introduction
Problem Statement and Research question
Archaeological university collections have struggled to keep their relevance visible to their governing universities and beyond. The doctoral study by Lourenço M. (2005) has illustrated how many university museums are currently dealing with, and have been since approximately the 90’s. The significance of these institutions and collections, taken for granted in the past, has been under intense scrutiny the past couple decennia.1 The Ashmolean, Allard Pierson and
Gents Universiteitsmuseum, among many others, have recently taken steps to face this
challenge. This often proves to be a challenge, due to the shifting role of university museums in society2 and the specific identity of their collections, which are now often at odds with the
present and future agendas of the governing universities3 and departments of archaeology.4
The characterizing history of the often eclectic collections combined with the current place of such a museum in the university and its current role influences the museological approach.5At
the same time, academic disciplines like archaeology, art history, museology and anthropology6 that are at root of these collections, and how they have been used or presented,
have developed and reached new perspectives and ideas during the last decennia.7 These
transformations have not only often resulted in a decrease in the use of collections as a resource for research and teaching and even the neglecting and disposing of them8, alongside
this development of the relevant academic discipline, practised and taught at the university behind the museum, the meaning of the collections has changed.
In this research the interactions between the development of the archaeology on the one hand and of the meaning and place of the university collections within the university on the other will be examined, with a focus on the new perspectives on archaeological objects since the Material Turn9 to see what are now the current interfaces between both developments. By
analysing a few university museums and the presentation of their archaeological collections as
1 Lourenço 2005, 1. 2 Kim 2007. 3 Lourenço 2005, 1. 4 Lourenço 2005, 4. 5 Kim 2007, 46-47.
6 In the more general context of academic heritage, also hard sciences like biology and medicine take part in the crisis of university collections.
7 Lourenço 2005, 5. 8 Lourenço 2005, 5.
9 In this research the Material Turn refers to the ‘cultural turn’ which appeared in British archaeology and social anthropology during the 1980s and 1990s, also refered to as the Material- Cultural Turn (Hicks 2010).
case-studies, I hope to find examples of museums who have yet discovered opportunities to uplift their collections and make their relevance apparent to the world outside the university. The aim is to develop a well-argued idea of what direction university museums could take with their collections with this theoretical background and with the case studies as a starting point, and to answer the question ‘How can archaeological university collections be redefined
in the changing role and position of university museums, taking into account the current archaeological and museological discourse, in order play a role in developing a support level and creating an awareness about the current meaning and relevance of antiquities for a broader public beyond the university walls?’
Methodology
The complex and multi-layered nature of the matter discussed above will require a similar approach. The subject will therefore be discussed from several angles, different questions will be asked to put this ‘crisis’ in place. Besides understanding the role of the university museum in a changing environment, this research discusses what this changing environment means, and all it could mean, and what the consequences. Is it just a crisis of universities and a lack of resources? How does the relation to the university, and the identity this institution upholds, come into the discussion? How have archaeology and museology as changing academic disciplines played a role in creating this gap between the past and present meaning and purpose of the objects in the collections? Can university museums give a new meaning to their archaeological collections that will bridge the university to the public, the academia to the objects and the past to the present? These are only a few questions that will be discussed in this dissertation, however, they give an idea of the direction of the research.
These questions will be tested by a few case studies – The Allard Pierson Museum (University of Amsterdam), The Ghentian University Museum (University of Ghent) and the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford University)10 – from which all are recently renewed or in the
process of being renewed and in which the focus will be on the archaeological collection. Together the case studies are an interesting group to examine as the Ashmolean could be considered to be the example for other university museum, the Allard Pierson the one inspired by this example, and the Gents Universiteitsmuseum they one in its very early development. The case studies will be approached by interviews with a curator as well as a faculty member
10 The Ashmolean has been reopened in 2009 after renovation. The Allard Pierson is currently being renewed, the still ongoing renovation project started in 2011, while the integration process of the Allard Pierson Museum and the Special Collections already started in 2009. The first step of uniting the collections of the University of Ghent was taken in 2013 by the approvel of the partnership ‘Gentse Universitaire Musea’, the opening of the new Gents Universiteitsmuseum is planned for 2019.
from each university/museum in order to get different perspectives on the matter. For the Ashmolean the interviews were taken with Dr. Paul Collins, Jaleh Hearn Curator for Ancient Near East, and Dr. Peter Stewart, Associate Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at the School of Archaeology of Oxford University. At the Allard Pierson René van Beek was interviewed, who is Curator of the Classical Collection, and Dr. Vladimir Stissi, Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Amsterdam. For this case study, an additional interview was conducted with Dr. Wim Hupperetz, Director of the Allard Pierson, to gain a better insight in the vision of the new museum concept. Finally, Dr. Jean Bourgeois, Professor at the Department of Archaeology and former volunteer-manager of the archaeological collection of the University of Ghent and Dr. Patrick Monsieur, current conservator, were interviewed as representatives of the archaeological collection of the Gents
Universiteitsmuseum, as well as Dr. Frank Vermeulen, Professor of Classical Roman
Archaeology and chairman of the Department of Archaeology of Ghent University.
These museums will form the ‘spine’ of the paper, the main characters that will be completely dissected through the course of three themes that will be introduced below. The themes (the relation between the university and the museum, the development of and interaction between archaeology and museology, the role of university museums) will be based on a literature study of the most recent sources available, and will serve as the theoretical background to analyse the case studies with. Every theme will start with a short historic reflection on the questions raised in that chapter. As these collections generally have a longer history, they have acquired new meanings and fulfilled different roles, and as a result have become multi-layered. It is necessary to touch on the history behind the formation of these layers, to understand the significance of the collection for the present and the future.
The Museum and the university
Universities have played an important role in the history of museums11 and have been
considered as suitable locations to hold museums for a long time.12 The entire organisation of
universities, from the structure to the curricula and collections, is based on the philosophy that education and research are fully intertwined, learning means learning how to do research. However, as mentioned above, universities have been experiencing significant changes under the pressure of becoming increasingly market-driven, next to the traditional teaching and research purposes.13 As a result, university museums have been challenged to convince their
11 Lourenço 2005, 3. 12 Warhurst 1984, 1. 13 Lourenço 2005, 3, 7.
own parent institutions of the significance and relevance of their collections.14 Many
universities have therefor reorganised their museums and collections as a response to the situation. Not only do universities want to find a less expensive and more efficient way of managing, they also aim to provide a ‘second life’ to ‘orphaned’ or ‘dormant’ collections and to build bridges to the public.15 In this chapter will be discussed how the museum is
implemented in the university and its curriculum. The aim is to understand the influence of this interaction between the university and its museum and the changing university landscape on the position and meaning of the collection. An important starting point in this chapter will be the doctoral study of Lourenço M. (2005), which provides the most complete and recent overview of the current situation of university collections and museums.
The Academic discipline and the meaning of the objects
The main significance of university collections is that they constitute the material evidence of how knowledge came into being in a university context.16 They are the witnesses of the
development of academic thinking. These collections have an unbreakable connection to the discipline that was responsible for their existence, and therefor find themselves at the intersection of two spheres: that of museums and that of academia.17 As mentioned before, the
nature of the academic discipline, in this case archaeology alongside with museology, has rapidly and significantly changed especially since the late 50s and early 60s18, and the
meaning given to its study collection has evolved with it. The interaction specifically between the meaning of the objects and the development of archaeology and museology as academic disciplines will therefore be of special interest in this dissertation. Touching on, but without focusing too much on the history of this matter, I’d rather see how this interaction plays out now and what the issues are museums are facing today. In this chapter the purpose is to see where the academic discipline, the presentation of the collections and the relation between them are now, and where interfaces and connections can be found that could respond to the contemporary significance and role of university museums. For the understanding of the changing perspectives in archaeology and museology the most important keynote literature will be applied, among which authors such as Hodder I., Shanks W., Hicks D., Vergo P., etc. With this knowledge in mind the meaning and opportunities of archaeological objects in museums today will be discussed.
14 Lourenço 2005, 7. 15 Lourenço 2005, 146. 16 Lourenço 2005, 6. 17 Lourenço 2005, 10. 18 Boylan 1999, 51.
The role of the university museum
Universities can easily come across as being exclusive and elitist. Much of what is going on at the university happens behind closed doors and is off limits to outsiders. This is where university museums come in, as they can and have been taking on the role as ambassadors to the outside world. However, this particular purpose of university museums is often not recognised enough.19 In addition, the redefinition of the role of university collections is not
without problems. If the focus exclusively goes to the function of public display, there is a risk that the collections become more alienated from academic life, diminishing their present and future roles for science and education and diluting their history and their identity.20
Furthermore, as many university museums are missing the point of being part of the university, they currently often consider their presentations as shop windows for the university. Is it really enough though to provide access to the collections without also offering intellectual access to the work of higher research and education? Can university museums find a way to let innovative research and academic knowledge have an impact on a local and public perception and understanding of culture, history and more? Probably the way university museums choose to interpret their collections will be a crucial element they want to address these questions.21 This chapter will discuss the changing role of university museums
to public institutions, and how this influences the interpretation and meaning of the collection presented to the audience outside the university. Among others, the views of particularly Kim H.22 will be of great importance to this chapter.
Current state university museums: less about collections, more about universities?
The current situation university museums face is perhaps not very surprising, considering their governing institutes have been facing major challenges and transformations since the middle of the 20th century.23 Universities have left their museums with challenges like
alienation from research and teaching, lack of funding and professional standards and perhaps more importantly a lack of a clear identity. The ‘crisis’ is more complex than a cause and effect relation with the reasons described above and is probably more about universities than collections. By definition, universities have always been highly dynamic institutions as they are the centres of scholarly development and advancement of knowledge. Moreover,
19 Kim 2007, 47. 20 Lourenço 2005, 154. 21 Kim 2007, 47.
22 Henry Kim was the former Project Director for the Ashmolean Redevelopment Project, currently he is Director and CEO at the Aga Khan Museum.
universities are expected to mirror and adapt to changes in society leading to major reforms during the past decades. Today, universities are expected to cater to all and very contradictory needs of society. They should be democratic and elitist at the same time, contribute to local development and compete on an international level, specialise yet offer a ‘universal’ program, be the centres of innovative research but also be utilitarian and focus on the job market. Universities have been trying to adapt by merging or eliminating certain departments and creating new ones. Some universities have taken more drastic measures.24Also new disciplines
are introduced and tendency of specialising in strategic areas of knowledge is noticeable, stepping away from the traditional idea of an institution that deals with a universal range of subjects. As a result, universities are struggling with a crisis of identity.25
As their reaction as a group to the changing university landscape and the chronic underfunding of universities had been far too long in coming, many university museums and collections are now endangered.26 Lourenço’s study (2005) showed how university collections
have been reorganised, neglected, down-graded, dispersed, sold and lost for at least since the 80’s for mainly political and administrative reasons at a disturbing pace.27 It was during the
same period of time that collaboration efforts started to increase. On a national level associations of university museum professionals were organised in nine countries (in Europe: Greece (2004), the Netherlands (1997), Scotland (1998), Spain (2002), and the UK (1987)) and studies to systematically examine the situation of university museums and collections have been executed. On an international level, the European network Universeum28 was established in 2000 and later on issued a declaration “[university] collections serve as active
resources for teaching and research as well as unique and irreplaceable historical records”.
When ICOM’s International Committee for University Museums and Collections (UMAC) was created in 200129, the distinct identity of university museums was recognised for the first
time by the most important museum organisations and professionals worldwide. The creation of these two organisations has led to a significant amount of publications dealing with
24 Notably the University of Newcastle, which sold its important 19th century African and Oceanean
ethnographic collections and trasnferred its 150-year-old natural history museum, the Hancock Museum, to the local City Council. Now the university is threatening to close its archaeological museum—even though this has a central role in the teaching of the University’s highly regarded degree courses in archaeology and its recently established MA course in Museum Studies (Boylan 1999, 51).
25 Lourenço 2005, 4, 126. 26 Lourenço 2005, 4-6. 27 Lourenço 2005, 1. 28 http://universeum.it/
29 http://umac.icom.museum; UMAC is the global advocate for higher education museums and collections of all disciplines. UMAC’s mission is to contribute to society, for the benefit of all, by sustaining the continued development of university museums and collections as essential resources devoted to research, education, and the preservation of cultural, historic, natural and scientific heritage.
university museums. Finally in 2004, the issue also reached the universities themselves and several conferences on the matter were organised.30 More recently, in 2016, UMAC has
launched the UMAC Award31 in which ‘the dedication, the creativity and, more importantly,
the impact of university museums and collections on their host universities, their communities and contemporary society’ is celebrated. These initiatives have stimulated universities to
reengage with their collections. From this point on the situation would begin to change, and university museums’ voices have been better heard. It now remains to see how recently renewed university museums, such as the Ashmolean, the Allard Pierson and the Gents
Universiteitsmuseum, have taken in the debate that has now been going on for over another
decade, and how they have re-identified and reorganised their collections.
Chapter 1: The Museum and the
University
30 Lourenço 2005, 7.
Universities know a long tradition when it comes to museums and have played a relevant role in their history.32 As university collections and museums have often been finding
themselves on the bottom of priority list at many universities the last couple of decennia, many universities have been in the process of reorganising them. Besides implementing a less expensive and more efficient way of managing, they also aim to provide a ‘second life’ to the collections as their relevance to the university is crucial.33 In this chapter will be discussed
what the relation of the university museum to the university currently is, in terms of autonomy of institution, transmission of knowledge, influence from the university and the implementation of the museum in education. The aim is to understand the influence and importance of this interaction between the university and its museum and the changing university landscape on the position of the collection and where opportunities can be found to make their relevance visible.
Historical reflection
According to Lourenço M. universities have assembled collections in order to fulfil their teaching and research missions since at least the mid-16th century.34 However, when it comes
to archaeological collections, many objects were assembled during a first phase of antiquarianism, from at least the 15th century until the 19th. Archaeological objects collected in
the early phases of this period can probably be best described as ‘curiosities’.35 The core of
the collections of the Ashmolean Museum date back to the Tradescent Collection from the late 16th and 17th century, catalogued in Musaeum Tradescantianum, which was funded by
Elias Ashmole36. The antiquity collection of Ghent University was originallydonated by King
Willem I to the newly founded university in 1817. He emphasized the importance of scientific collections for teaching and research, which encouraged several collections to be assembled.37
It was a private collection, assembled by canon De Bast, later on extended by private donations and finds from excavations during the 19th and 20th century.38 The entire and earlier
history of this collection has not become clear yet. The collection of the University of Amsterdam, located at the Allard Pierson Museum since 1934, has two former private
32 Lourenço 2005, 3. 33 Lourenço 2005, 146, 156. 34 Lourenço 2005, 3. 35 Stiebing 1993, 23-24. 36 http://britisharchaeology.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/collections/tradescant.html 37 https://www.ugent.be/museum/nl/about/historiek
collections, the ones assembled by Lunsingh Scheurleer and Jan Six39, at its historical core,
later extended by additions through loans, gifts, purchase and excavations.40 The core of many
archaeological university collections originally belonged to private collectors from this time. Assembling and using collections at that point was intrinsic to teaching and research in archaeology; collecting was stimulated by a blossoming humanistic scholarly interest in the past. However, integrating a museum into the university is a different thing.41 The first
teaching collections42, paving the way for earliest known university collections were provided
with space at the university so that they would be easily accessible for students and scholars. Those spaces are perhaps better referred to as ‘teaching museums’. These were not museums as would be described by ICOM, however, they housed permanent exhibitions that were sometimes opened to a more general (elitist) audience. The focus was on teaching although the early examples had wonderment and symbolism in displays which made them a kind of cabinets of curiosity. These early 1600 institutions are now seen as the predecessor of university museums, into which many of them were absorbed during the 17th century.43
Although only during the 19th century universities were capable of accommodating museums
in their mission, around the time archaeology also truly became an academic discipline44, they
were one of the first public institutions to develop what could be seen as modern museums.45
In any case, modern museums have since the beginning of their existence closely been related to universities, which played an important role in their history and the other way around.46 When it comes to archaeological collections and the development of archaeology as
an academic discipline specifically, the museum proved to be a crucial element; the museum did not only hold the material for research, but also provided a ‘stage’ for the discipline to play out. It does not come as a surprise that there were close ties between the university and the museum when archaeology began to develop within the academic world.47 This specific
origin gave shape to the university collections, as the objects are ones that played a role in the
39 Lunsingh Scheurleer 2009, 13. 40 RBK Adviesgroep 1996, 22-23.
41 Stiebing 1993, 23-24; Lourenço 2005, 65.
42 Generally, the first teaching collections, assembled starting from Renaissance times, usually consisted of botanical and medical objects. These were the precedents of later developped concept of university collections and the collecting and presentation should be understood in the context of botanical gardens and anatomical theatres. The focus of the collection extended during the 17th century to other fields such as arts; Lourenço 2005, 54-57. 43 Lourenço 2005, 56-57. 44 Stiebing 1993, 23-24; Lourenço 2005, 65. 45 Boylan 1999, 43. 46 Lourenço 2005, 3. 47 Olsen et al. 2012, 47.
construction and transmission of early archaeological knowledge. This characteristic of the university and its collections now puts university museums in a unique position between objects and knowledge.48
University collections were once seen as crucial for a proper university. Nowadays, we can see completely different views. At the University of Ghent, for example, the museum has been on the bottom of the priority list for a long time. In 1991, after some restructurings at the university, the museum lost its own budget as it became part of the larger fund of the entire archaeological department. On top of that, the official function of conservator had disappeared, leaving the archaeological collection without someone to maintain, research and present them. As a consequence, the collections were ‘neglected’ to a certain extent and many students were not even aware of their existence (Jean Bourgeois). Unfortunately, the lack of professional care for university collections is not an exception.49 The Allard Pierson has
shortly been at risk during the 70’s, when the University of Amsterdam was considering its abolition (René van Beek).50 The idea that university museums have become unnecessary or
too high of a cost, derived also from Lourenço’s survey (2005), and not only demonstrates how the university museum now takes a different place in relation to the university, but also emphasizes the major cultural gap between yesterday’s university and the university of today and tomorrow.51
This divide –and the identity problem that goes with it- is still fairly recent. Up to the middle of the 20th century, university museums were fully involved in both worlds: the one of
the museum and the one of the university. Their practices were both according to the museological and academic standards of the time. University museums usually were concerned with the three main tasks of teaching, research and to a certain extent public display, such as the Ashmolean, but it did not cause issues when they only focused on research or teaching52, as was the case with the Allard Pierson Museum and the Museum voor
Oudheidkunde en Ethnografische Verzamelingen53 of the University of Ghent. Around the 48 Lourenço 2005, 3.
49 Boylan 1999, 51-52.
50 The Ashmolean too, went through an unsettled period during the mid 18th century, in which the natural history collections got to such an extent of decay that much of the original specimens, including part of the famous Dodo, had to be burned in 1755, on the orders of the Oxford University authorities. This however, is has nothing to do with the current university museum ‘crisis’; Boylan 1999, 47, https://www.ashmolean.org/history-ashmole
51 Lourenço 2005, 5. 52 Lourenço 2005, 157.
53 A museum of Ghent University which held the archaeolological and ethnographic university collections, from 1967 to 2000.
50’s the start of a process of change can be noticed. As science and research, policies and funding, teaching and the university as a whole were evolving, the relevance for teaching and research with the university collections was gradually more and more questioned and the centuries old and close bonds between the university museum started to weaken. The former unique position of university museums between academia and the museum world, between knowledge and object, had left them now lost between two worlds that had changed significantly, and in need of a new identity. From this point on, university museums struggled to keep up with the university, the museum field in general and society as a whole.54
The ‘identity crisis’ university museums find themselves in doesn’t have to come as a great surprise when looking at the recent history of universities themselves. As has become clear, the general context is one of considerable change. As university museums are intrinsically connected to their governing university, the challenges universities are confronted with today should be addressed when discussing the current situation of university museums. Therefor a general discussion of this ‘changing university landscape’, and how university collections are managed within, will follow below. This will help to gain a clear view on what has changed for the governing institution of the university museum, and ultimately to understand the influence of the changing interaction between the university and its museum on the position of the collections.
The management of the university: a changing landscape
Higher education is often considered to be the cornerstone of our society. However, as society is changing, universities are being forced to step away from their traditional paradigm. Despite the ongoing need for adjustments in learning and in the curricula, it seems that universities are struggling to keep up with the emerging trends.55 Governments and employees
have outed their concerns about the students currently graduating at universities, calling for graduates that can contribute positively to society.56
The main issues seem to be the disconnection to contemporary needs of the employment market – and thus the significant role of the university to society- and the century old stigma of the university as an elitist institution.57 As the university is supposed to mirror
the demands of society, its traditional paradigm does not seem fitting anymore.58 The general
54 Lourenço 2005, 157.
55 Dailey-Hebert, Dennis 2015, 1. 56 Millar 2016, 471-2.
57 Lourenço 2005, 4; Dailey-Hebert, Dennis 2015, 2. 58 Dailey-Hebert, Dennis 2015, 2.
tendency in the process of transformation thus seems to be relating better to the employment market by becoming increasingly market-driven and competing at a global scale, next to the traditional teaching and research purposes.59 This trend evokes questions about the changing
role of the university and perspectives on learning. These shifts in our perspectives and understanding of all forms of learning, in between which the lines are blurring and will continue to change in the future, are necessary to accompany such transformation in education.60 This is where university museums can come in, in terms of offering new learning
experiences and challenging elitist views of universities.
Especially the Humanities seem to have experienced the consequences of this changing landscape and the need to connect with a more and more utilitarian society. In his new year’s speech (January 2018) at Ghent University, professor Marc Boone payed special attention to this matter and emphasised the need of the Humanities to show their value to society. Jean Bourgeois agreed with this view, stating that ‘not only archaeology but also the
other Humanities are taking the toughest punches’, and perhaps more importantly that ‘the faculty itself is participating in this movement [being the undervaluation and isolation of
humanities] as the budget goes to publications and doctoral research rather than a public
university museum’ (Jean Bourgeois). Nussbaum M. has already extensively addressed this
problematic trend in her book Not for Profit, in which she calls it ‘a silent crisis’. She stresses how the rush to profitability and competition in the global market, and the eager for economic growth has lead may nations’ educational system to focus mainly on science and technology in beliefs that these are the crucial elements for the nations’ success and health, and has left other equally important abilities that are related to humanities and arts at risk to get lost in these changing dynamics; abilities such as critical thinking and approaching world problems as a ‘citizen of the world’.61 The outside expectations are clearly influencing the decisions
concerning budget managing within the university.Also in the Netherlands this development is a current issue. Vladimir Stissi made an interesting note on this matter in light of the relation between the university and the museum: ‘We could say this idea [that the Humanities, and more specifically initiatives like university museums have become useless in our current society] is quit a paradox, as it is the university museum that brings society into the
university.’ Peter Stewart describes a similar trend in the UK, however with less effect: ‘The same general pressure exists in the UK, coming from politicians across the political
59 Lourenço 2005, 3, 7.
60 Dailey-Hebert, Dennis 2015, 1-2. 61 Nussbaum 2010, 6-7.
spectrum. However, I believe the Humanities, including research funding and funding for graduate students, has held up reasonably well. We have an Arts and Humanities Council alongside the other scientific councils, who are a strong advocate for the Humanities. The one area where the language of utilitarian value has led to a change in policy, is in the process of REF62 (Peter Stewart). According to Peter Stewart, this exercise which systematically assesses the academic quality of the several departments of the university through peer review every six years, has really changed the way universities are behaving in the UK, as they need to prove their impact on the society outside of the university. To succeed in this, many UK universities have reached out to museums (Peter Stewart).
The issues are often framed in an economic and political context, concerning matters of finance, governance and structure, referred to as the ‘external life’ by Wagner L.63 The
more recent study by Lourenço M. points out the same trend, and describes how these issues are often met in a similar practical way: by rationalising resources and reorganising or even merging courses, departments and faculties.64 According to Wagner’s study (1995), which
discusses the developments in UK higher education between the 1960’s to the 1990’s, it appears that this period of rapid changes in the ‘external life’ was not met by changes in the ‘internal life’. She finds that internal matters of ‘values and purpose of what is taught, and
how it is taught’, have seen far less changes the last couple of decades, causing an imbalance
between the two worlds. This would be the reason for many of the tensions and problems in higher education.65 She is referring more to the issue of the organisation of mass higher
education, while the core values of the university have remained elitist. Lourenço M. too discusses how universities had to redefine their missions in more utilitarian and vocational terms to meet the demands of contemporary society, yet to some extent the traditional ideas around teaching and research have remained more or less the same.66However, it is important
to note that what is taught, and how, hasn’t at all been a fixed matter within the discipline of archaeology as will become clear in the following chapter.
Then the question arises if by now universities have also transformed their ‘internal life’. The current situation implies new ways of from conserving, transmitting knowledge and creating knowledge. These new ways have to evolve as continuously as the environment, in
62 Research Excellence Framework programme, assessment system in the UK for the excellence of research in higher education, see https://www.ref.ac.uk/
63 Wagner 1995, 26. 64 Lourenço 2005, 4. 65 Wagner 1995, 26. 66 Lourenço 2005, 4.
which the university is embedded, changes. Then, rather than fixing the traditional model, alternative structures, processes, and perspectives are needed to establish beneficent environments that support learning for the greater good of society.67 New ways of learning
could help connect to society better, perhaps museums can play a role in this.
These changes can also be seen at the University of Amsterdam, where the curriculum has been changed to meet the expectations of society. Courses like ‘Landscape, Food Economy and Nature’ and ‘Archaeology and Society’ now take part of the curriculum and show a more recent focus of the archaeological discipline.68 The Master programmes
‘Landscape and Heritage’ and research master ‘Heritage, Memory and Archaeology’ as possible tracks of the MA Archaeology too point at the influence of the heritage sector on the curriculum of archaeology.69 However, according to Vladimir Stissi there seems to be a
strange paradox: ‘On the one hand we want to be more of a professional programme with
more professional experience for the students, on the other hand the structure of the university and the demands for the programme go in the opposite direction: the amount of fieldwork has even diminished.Perhaps the pressure to graduate on time has something to do with this. The idea is that students can do this outside of the curriculum. In the theoretical curriculum, however, more courses like ‘Archaeology and Society’ and heritage related courses are introduced, where the emphasis is on the effects archaeology has on society and the social place of the discipline.Moreover, the curriculum has relatively taken small steps away from archaeology as a research discipline. Most of our students will work at government institutions and private companies after they graduate, and this has clearly had an impact on the programme the last few years.’ But also at the University of Ghent the
curriculum of the BA Archaeology has been extended with some additional courses that seem to focus on the more natural scientific side of archaeology and the possibilities of prospection methods.70 The MA programme has recently profoundly been changed, the focus of the
programme (it seems for all tracks) has in a large extent shifted to landscape archaeology, courses that relate to society and practical skills like GIS.71 In the UK too, a similar trend can
be recognised, although might not have had the same effect on universities. ‘The trend of
utilitarian value is very strong, although I’m not sure if it really has a strong influence on any university in the UK in terms of curricula. It may do in the future, however. I think Oxford in
67 Dailey-Hebert, Dennis 2015, 2.
68 http://studiegids.uva.nl/xmlpages/page/2017-2018/zoek-opleiding/opleiding/2881/21686 69 http://studiegids.uva.nl/xmlpages/page/2017-2018/zoek-opleiding/opleiding/2881/21686 70 https://studiegids.ugent.be/2017/NL/FACULTY/A/BACH/ABARCH/ ABARCH.ht 71 https://studiegids.ugent.be/2017/NL/FACULTY/A/MABA/AMARCH/AMARCH.html
particular has been a little immune to it. In some ways it is a very traditional place and has a strong reputation. It is consistently ranked as one of the top universities in the world, so the pressure hasn’t affected the university policy internally’ (Peter Stewart).
Moreover, it seems that the university has been dealing with issues of identity. Naturally, this way it becomes very difficult for university museums to find a place and meaning in this environment, often leaving them in a vulnerable position. This has been very clearly the case in for example the University of Ghent, where the archaeological collections were at risk after certain reorganisations at the university, as discussed above. This shows indeed that the restructuring of the university can have a significant impact on the well-being, and even more on the presentation of the collections. However, the reason as to why just these collections are the ones to take in the toughest punches can be found in deeper reasons than the Calimero-effect Lourenço M. is referring to.72 The reality seems to be that, however big or small the
collections, the university museum has been at the bottom of the priority list for a long time. At the University of Amsterdam, even though also dealing with the changing university landscape and the constant problem of limited budget, the university’s archaeological academic heritage has never been put in such a position (René van Beek). The collection is obviously bigger than the one from University of Ghent, however, it is still part of a larger university complex. Within this ‘big university’, the collection was never deemed in such a low esteem that it was considered unnecessary or was neglected. There was always a budget put aside specifically for the collection and museum. Of course, there is never enough money to support all the ambitions of the museum, however, the collections have been safe guarded in a museum for quite a long time. The step to bring these collections to the public has been taken here sooner than in Ghent, and the museum has developed into a true public museum, rather than an academic one. Moreover, on a larger scale, the initiatives to protect academic heritage have started sooner than in Flanders.73 It is probably true, as Lourenço states, that for
many university museums changes at the university can have a considerably impact on them, as they remain connected to and dependent on these universities. She believes the reasons are ultimately political and economic.74 One could ask the questions, however, if this
vulnerability of university museums might have something to do with anything other than size or budget, if there could also be a ‘sublevel’ of reasons besides the economic and political ones, as to why university museums are often held in low, and perhaps more interestingly,
72 2005, 155-156.
73 National survey project to map out the academic heritage already started in the 90’s in the Netherlands, while a similar project in Flanders was carried out in 2011 (see below).
different esteem at different universities. Perhaps developments in the academic world, and the changes in the archaeological discipline can provide a more profound insight in this discussion (more on this in the following chapter), as practical matters can barely be the only reason why the academic collections –at the University of Ghent, but according to Lourenço’s survey also on a larger scale in Europe- have been hold in such low esteem.
Relations from university to museum and museum to university
As discussed above, universities take on the role of both creators as distributors of knowledge. The university museums have therefor a unique position between knowledge and collections, and constantly fluctuate between the world of academia and the world of museums.75 At one point they might find themselves with one foot in each of both fields and
at another with both feet on one or the other, although university museums don’t appear to fit in completely at the museums sector nor at the university. Starting from the 70’s, many university museums have tried to deal with the situation by stepping entirely into the world of museums. They are looking for inspiration with non-university museums for their missions, public, identity and even history, considering themselves as scientific museums rather than university museums. The idea had arisen that a successful public image of a museum was incompatible with that of a university, so all ties to this institution would be ignored in public.76 The management of the Ashmolean under the previous director, Christopher Brown,
is exemplary for this trend. “The idea then, when the new building for the opening in 2009
was discussed, was to move away from the university as far as possible in the public eye, and in that sense opening the doors to the ‘entire world’. The museum didn’t’ use the university’s name, as it was feared that the traditional academic label of the institution, especially with Oxford being considered such a prestigious place, would discourage people to enter the museum. It would seem too intellectually challenging.”, according to Dr. Paul Collins. René
van Beek, Curator at the Allard Pierson Museum, too, questions the relevance of specifically communicating the connection between the university and the university museum to a larger public: ‘The close connections between the museum and the university are not communicated
to the public and I don’t believe it is an essential feeling for most visitors to know that they are visiting a university museum’. However, he does believe that it is important to maintain
the close relation to the university, and does not feel that the museum is moving away from the university as the trend discussed by Lourenço M. describes.77 Perhaps in his view a
75 Lourenço 2005, 3, 156 76 Lourenço 2005, 156-157 77 2005, 157.
difference is made between the practical connections to the university and the less tangible ones. Of course, as Lourenço also noted, this approach is not favourable because it denies the history of the academic collections.78
Vladimir Stissi noticed the contradiction in this situation: “The university museums
could be a way to bring society into the university, in that light it would make sense that we’d pull the museum back into the university, which is actually not the current trend. I believe there are some university museums and collections in the UK, however, that are already taking steps in this direction. This way the education for students and the museum are more integrated again, and there would be a better contact with society.” In this case the idea is
that students are brought from the university into society, in order to make connections between both worlds this way, rather than bringing a larger public into the university. It seems true however, at least for the Ashmolean, that the museums in the UK are again recognising the importance of being part of a university. The Ashmolean is returning to the university in a
“really deliberate but this time very positive manner. Rather than putting people of, we now consider the university as an opportunity to engage with the sorts of intellectual thinking that is going on, with the museum being the k for that to the public”, says Dr. Paul Collins. “The benefits of such a relation are now recognised, paying attention to an effective cooperation with colleagues at the university in order to improve the offer for the general public and selling this as a strength.” At the University Museum of Ghent on the contrary, the trend of
stepping away from the university has never occurred. This has to do with the fact that this university museum is only now taking its first steps of truly becoming a public museum, rather than being part of this emerging trend of ‘returning to the university’, as is the case at Oxford University.
The widening gap between the university and the museum has already been noticed a few decennia ago, and can perhaps also be recognised on the level of the academic discipline itself. The Art Bulletin has witnessed a few times of this evolution by implying that there is a difference between a carrier in the museum and the university and both carriers seem are moving further and further apart, and by including the stimulating of closer relations between the universities and their museum part of mission of the journal.79 In April 1999 the
conference ‘The Two Art Histories: The Museum and the University’80 was organised on this
78 2005, 157.
79 Haxthausen 1999, ix.
80 The conference focused specifically on Art History, however, as archaeology was originally part of art history as an academic discipline, the ideas brought forward on this event seem applicable for this research.
subject. With this event some viewpoints came forward that give an insight on the reality of the relationship between the two branches. On the hand it seems that the academic discipline of art history has ‘ceased to be interested in the aesthetic dimensions of the art object’.81 In
other words, the museum has different needs and perhaps therefor applies a different ‘academic’ discipline. In this context it can also be noted that, when it comes to archaeology, new programmes of for example ‘museum archaeology’ are introduced at universities, implying a different kind of archaeology. How archaeology views the ‘object’, and whether this causes a discrepancy between university and museum are questions for the following chapter. On the other hand, there is the view that museums have become part of the entertainment industry, where a focus on social, economic and political conditions and the unrelenting quest for money and visitors comes in the way of critical scholarship.82 Although
the implication in this view that critical scholarship might not happen in a museum or that public outreach and academics are incompatible can be up for discussion, the case studies within this research do seem to show that those university museums that moved away from the university and developed in certain ways as more autonomous institutes, are also experiencing a certain discrepancy with the ‘academic archaeology’ practised at the university. The cooperation between the Allard Pierson Museum and the University of Amsterdam is quite limited when it comes to intellectual exchange. The creation of narratives for the exhibitions usually is the responsibility of the curators. Vladimir Stissi stated the following in this context: ‘What I believe some other museums like the Van Gogh or the
Rijksmuseum manage to do better than the Allard Pierson Museum is to keep in touch with the current scientific developments of their field. It’s strange that an academic museum doesn’t succeed in that matter as much as we would expect. The question, however, remains how you do that. Perhaps being so close to a university makes this even more difficult, as other museums ‘buy’ external expertise, and therefor end up with something ‘fresh and new’, as opposed to when you have the expertise nearby, it is perhaps more difficult to keep up as the responsibility then lays with the curators who are already part of the museum, rather than giving the job to an external person that might be the best for a particular task. We could not expect a single curator to keep up with all de scientific developments, next to their daily tasks. I’m curious to see what will happen now that the Allard Pierson Museum is hiring younger people without any expertise in a specific field. Those people will have to go look for that expertise elsewhere and this way might bring new perspectives into the museum.’
81Haxthausen 1999, x-xi. 82 Haxthausen 1999, xi.
At the Ashmolean the cooperation between the university and the museum for the creation of narratives is really a mixture of different situation. Many exhibitions are created ‘in the house’ based on curatorial expertise, and some are bought, for example travelling exhibitions. More recently however, some are occasionally being proposed from within the university itself and presented in the Ashmolean, like ‘Imagining the Divine’ which recently closed. This exhibition was the public output of a research project organised by Oxford University and The British Museum. The latter did not want to have an exhibition at the end of this project, but there was an interest from the Oxford side to do so. It was curated by the researchers, and here the museum played more the role of shop window of the university. It didn’t turn out to be a blockbuster when it comes to visitor numbers, however it was hugely interesting in terms of delivering academic research (Paul Collins). Finally, at the University of Ghent the connections to with the museum will be very strong. The expertise will come straight from the Archaeological Department, where the conservator of the archaeological collection is also employed (Jean Bourgeois, Patrick Monsieur). The implication of this second view discussed by Haxthausen, is the idea that the knowledge and expertise should be transferred from the university scholar to the curator, and that, in other words, the university and not the museum is the place where the real academic discipline is practised.83 Only a few years after this
publication, Lourenço M. too concluded that when it comes to research and teaching, academic collections could greatly benefit from close connections with departments and that sometimes these connections have even become an essential requirement.84 One could ask the
question whether the museum could not also take in a position as research centre, however, this might make the gap between both institutions even bigger and somehow the university museum could then miss the point of being part of the university in the first place.
Integration of university museums
In context of the difficult position universities museums have found themselves in for some decennia alongside the changing university landscape, the relations of the museums to their governing institutions have been put through a similar process of change. The reality of having to renew the relevance –one that is more suitable not only for the ‘new university’, but also a fluctuating society- of their museums and collections, or otherwise risking to having to dispose of their collections, many European universities have been taking steps to reorganise this part of their organisation.
83 Haxthausen 1999, xi. 84 Lourenço 2005, 156.
Lourenço M. conducted a survey of this process in European university museums. Some of those are within the geographic scope of this research (The Netherlands, Belgium and the UK) are for example the Utrecht University Museum, which was renovated in 199685, and is
now again in the process of being renewed.86 Furthermore, in the Netherlands Groningen
University Museum was renovated in 2004. From then on, the museum would also house the collections of the Volkenkundig Museum Gerardus van der Leeuw and the Anatomisch
Museum, both university museums that were closed.87 In the United Kingdom the university
museums of the University of Manchester (Manchester Museum) and the University of Cambridge (Fitzwilliam Museum) underwent renovations and were opened to the public in 2003 and 2004.88 The University College London has moved its archaeology, art and library
collections in the new Panopticon in 2008, while The Ashmolean Museum of the University of Oxford opened in 2009 after major renovations.89 In Belgium, the University of
Louvain-la-Neuve has recently opened its new university museum.90 Many more new or renewed
university museums all over Europe were inaugurated in the early 2000’s.91
Initially, the process of reorganisation of the university collections started of similarly across Europe. Most universities saw to an assessment of the collection, followed by a selection and sometimes even disposal.92 Furthermore, general surveys have been conducted
on a national level. In 2007, in Belgium (more particularly Flanders) the Interuniversitair
Platform voor Academisch erfgoed was created from a cooperation of four Flemish
universities, which organised the project Balans en Perspectief in 2011, of which the results were published in Balans en Perspectief. Academisch Erfgoed in Vlaanderen.93 Another
survey commissioned by the Flemish Society was carried out to gain an overview of the problems in management, restauration, conservation and presentation of archaeological collections in museal context.94 The Stichting Academisch Erfgoed (SAE) in the Netherlands
did a similar project, and already in 1996 the rapport Om het academisch erfgoed was written, which consisted of an inventory of the Dutch academic collections, the managing institutes
85 Lourenço 2005, 144. 86 http://www.universiteitsmuseum.nl/collectie/praktische-informatie 87 https://www.rug.nl/society-business/university-museum/history/museum 88 Lourenço 2005, 144. 89Lourenço 2005, 146. 90 http://www.museel.be/nl 91 Lourenço 2005, 144-145. 92 Lourenço 2005, 146-147. 93 https://academischerfgoed.be/wat-is-academisch-erfgoed/
94Monsieur P., 1999. Archeologische Collecties, Beheer, Conservatie en Restauratie van Museale Collecties 2, Brussel: Ministerie van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap.
and their conditions.95 In her survey, Lourenço M. (2005) found that, even though general
trends can be recognised (cf. below), universities handle the integration of their collections in significantly different ways. In the university museums analysed in this research too, different approaches can be recognised. One way it to create anentirely new museum96, as is the case at
the University of Ghent, that was purposely built for the reorientation of the university collections. Here, all the different academic collections will be integrated into a new museum concept and building.97 Another way is to integrate independent museums and collections in a
common ‘umbrella’ structure. The museums and collections are maintained in the departments and institutes but are coordinated through this structure when it comes to management and part of the financial responsibility.98 For most universities in the UK this has
been the case. Some universities however, like UCL, Oxford and Manchester among others, have kept their museums and collections within the departments, but created special committees and units within the university structure to manage them.99 The Ashmolean
however, has been brought together in 2016 with the other university museums of Oxford under GLAM, which stands for Gardens, Libraries and Museums, formerly known as Academic Services and University Collections (ASUC).100 At the University of Amsterdam,
the common structure was positioned under non-academic or administrative units. The Allard Pierson Museum and Special Collections were placed under the University Central Library.101
Although there are many differences in the way universities handle their collections, the emerging tendency seems to be the increasing integration of collections in a single museum or under a single management structure. This process has several advantages. First and foremost, a single management structure is more efficient and less expensive to maintain than having several collections scattered around the university. Furthermore, the integration of the collections could provide an opportunity to give a second life to connections that seem to be lost at first sight. Finally, universities are also looking for opportunities to reach a general public.102 It appears that management of university collections and their position within the
university structure has a direct influence on the research, teaching and output to the public.103
95 RBK Adviesgroep, 1996. Om het academisch erfgoed, Den Haag: Adviesgroep Rijkdienst Beeldende Kunst; https://www.academischerfgoed.nl/over-sae/ 96 Lourenço 2005, 148. 97 Anoniem s.d., 1-2. 98 Lourenço 2005, 148. 99 Lourenço 2005, 148. 100 Https://glam.web.ox.ac.uk/about 101 Lourenço 2005, 150. 102 Lourenço 2005, 146-147. 103 Lourenço 2005, 156.
A clear and renewed structure could make it easier for the university to find the local community and the other way around. Although integrating different academic collections into one museum structure can be challenging, it also provides a remarkable opportunity for their recognition.104 This idea can be supported by what Paul Collins had to say about the
integrations of the university museums of Oxford into the university division GLAM: “Next
to the organisational shift, it is also a psychological shift. Before the integration we were seen as part of the ‘support group’, such as libraries and administration, basically everything that was supporting the academics who were really what it was all about. We were sort of second class civilians in the university. Now with the creation of its own division, there is a sense that we are all embedded in the teaching mission of the university. This does not necessarily mean there is more money available for the museum, however it has changed the way of thinking. We are now considered to be part of what the university is about, rather than simply being a supportive element.” This shows how not only the integration of the collections, but also the
position the museum has in the ‘umbrella’ structure is important. On a ‘psychological’ level too, the relations between the university and the museum are important, as this can be reflective of how the university collections are valued at a particular institution. The same can be recognised for the University of Ghent, where the museum has been at the bottom of the priority list for a long time. An official position of a conservator and the creation of a new university museum not only gives the archaeological collections security, but also opportunities, appreciation and purpose. Only if the university itself values their collections and museums, and supports their existence from within their own institute, opportunities can be found to make the relevance of these collections visible in a meaningful way to a public that goes beyond the university.
This chapter has described the relations between the universities and their museums when it comes to organisational structure and on a psychological level, the transmission of knowledge and the connections in the public eye. Finding those ‘opportunities’ however, starts with the definition of university museums today, as their position ‘in between’ provides them with a unique identity which separates them from any other museum.105 If the new
university museums succeed not only for future research and teaching but also to make the relevance of collections visible in a meaningful way for the public in a sustainable and long-lasting way, university collections could finally live up to their potential.106 It might seem
104 Lourenço 2005, 146-147. 105 Lourenço 2005, 156. 106 Lourenço 2005, 147.
contradictory as the university itself is not necessarily closely connected to society in its broadest sense, but to create a relevant role for themselves in society, university museums should see their connection to the academic world as an opportunity rather than an inconvenience. Perhaps the way to do all this can be found in the stories that the collections can tell.
