In the research process, universities acquire and produce material artefacts and specimens in enormous numbers — the bones, rocks, art, insects, scientific instruments, musical instruments, anthropological specimens and myriad other things that researchers research and students study. Organized into research and teaching collections, these innumerable things have a determining effect on the formation, development and current practices of academic disciplines. Yet surprisingly little is known at a comprehensive level about the historic or current roles of material collections in the university.
Drawing upon research on the University of California’s collections, this lecture addresses the frequency and speed with which objects and collections move from place to place, and even from one discipline to another, continually changing functions as they do so. The study of university collections reveals a much more complex system than Thompsons so-called „Rubbish Theory“ first proposed, one in which circulating objects and specimens participate simultaneously in multiple dynamic value systems. This in turn suggests that viewing the collections of the university historically and holistically can enhance their research potential now and in the future.
Mark A. Meadow is Professor of Art and Material Culture of the Early Modern Period at the Universiteit Leiden and Associate Professor at the Department of History of Art and Architecture of the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is Co-Director of the Microcosms project, which aims to investigate the history, functions and future of the material collections in the contemporary university. As a specialist in Northern European art of the early-modern period, Professor Meadow has particular interests in the histories of rhetoric and collecting and in early-modern
ritual and spectacle.
Moderation: Prorektor Professor Dr. Michael North