Ghent University plans unified museum for valuable collections
Ghent University is gathering artefacts across scientific disciples to build a new all-in-one museum
Academic heritage
Universities accumulate all kinds of objects that can be considered cultural heritage, from rare books and manuscripts to scientific instruments and objects collected for research. In 2013 a survey reported that there were about one million such objects in Flemish universities, two-thirds of them in Ghent.
“So we bear a huge responsibility for academic heritage,” says Jeroen Vanden Berghe, the university’s chief logistics administrator. “We want to take up that responsibility and make it our own.”
The present plan concentrates on Ghent’s archives, museums and other collections, exempting its library which is already considered to be performing well. Seven major collections are currently managed within individual university faculties, covering archaeology, ethnography, zoology, animal morphology, botany, the history of medicine and the history of science.
The objects they contain range from the skeletons of large sea mammals to thousands of leaf samples, used to identify and name plants. There are ritual masks from Indonesia, Africa and Central America and recordings of Flemish dialects. There are microscopes used by generations of scientists and instruments linked to personalities such as moving image pioneer Joseph Plateau and Nobel prize-winning chemist Friedrich August Kekulé.
The seven faculty collections will be brought together so that they can be managed as a single university museum. “Then there are a lot of objects around the faculties -- in basements, corridors and cupboards. We want to make a complete inventory of them and integrate them in the professional management of this university museum,” Vanden Berghe explains.
As well as a single inventory, the university museum will help academics get the most out of the collections for their research and teaching. This support will be provided from depots and in work spaces across the university.
A niche in the sector
But there will also be a new space that will showcase the best of the collection and act as a focus for engagement with the public and professionals outside the university. Three floors of a building on the Ledeganck campus, near Ghent’s Citadelpark, will be renovated to house the museum. Two floors will be devoted to a permanent display, while the third will be for temporary exhibitions.
We want something unique that will add something extra to the cultural scene in Ghent
This site places the museum adjacent to the university’s botanical garden, with its important collection of plants. More significantly, it will be a stone’s throw from the city’s museums of contemporary and fine arts, building the neighbourhood’s status as a museum quarter.
A lot of thought has also gone into the presentation of the new museum. “We want to find a niche in the museum sector,” explains Vanden Berghe. “We don’t want to have a hands-on museum like Technopolis in Mechelen. We are also not interested in telling the story of a university; that is something that other universities do. We want to find something unique that will add something extra to the cultural scene in Ghent.”
So the museum’s story will be the nature of science, in all its complexity. “We are going to focus on scientific practice and the meaning of science,” explains Willem Dedobbeleer, a researcher who is working on the project.
Questions to be addressed range from definitions of science to its relationship with the humanities, the border between science and pseudo-science and the interaction between science and society. “Within these themes, we also want to highlight some ethical questions, such as the use of animals in experiments,” Dedobbeleer says. “And we want to have an honest view on science - not just the big success stories but also where science fails.”
Vanden Berghe agrees that this will be challenging. “But this is what a university is for,” he says. “Critical thinking about our own practice is very important. And by introducing this scientific profession to young adults or new students, it should be thought provoking for their futures as well.”
A museum with a view
He also thinks that visiting the museum should be an aesthetically rewarding experience. “When you enter the museum, you have to be overwhelmed by the richness of the collections, but at the same time come out saying: I’ve learned something about science, about being a good researcher and what it lends to society.”
The cost of the project, including the museum, will be met in a number of ways. Its support for education, research and public outreach all contribute to the university’s core mission and so it will be able to draw on the central budget. It is also expected that the museum will be recognised by the regional and provincial authorities and receive some structural support.
The business plan envisages additional income from tickets and the museum shop and that the museum will be appealing in the university’s fundraising efforts.
The Ledeganck campus as a whole is already under redevelopment, with work on the museum building due to begin at the start of 2016. “But that’s the easy part,” says Vanden Berghe. “The difficult part will be the storyline and how to bring it physically into the building.”
The next step is administrative, moving people from the various faculties so that they are working together in a distinct university museum team. These changes are expected to be approved by the university’s board of governors next month.
There will also be new posts to fill with specialists in museum design and public outreach. “We are building a new museum, and that is difficult,” says Vanden Berghe.
The treasures of Ghent
Ghent University’s various buildings are home to more than 600,000 objects of academic heritage, including:
• A scale-model in cork of the Pantheon in Rome, by Italian architect Antonio Chichi (1743-1816), one of only three remaining in the world
• Over 700 Gallo-Roman medical instruments, collected in the 19th century by Victor Deneffe
• An original Phenakistiscoop and discs made by 19th-century moving image pioneer Joseph Plateau (disc pictured above)
• A mounted skeleton of horse and rider, demonstrating their comparative anatomy, by Jan Cools (1956-2001)
Photo courtesy UGent
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