139 The Art Collections – living testimony of the University’s history GWENDOLIN KREMER · MARIA OBENAUS There would be no University art without a campus and the institute buildings. Incorporated in the Office for Academic Heritage, Scientific and Art Collections (OAH) since 2003, the extensive Art Collections of the TUD Dresden University of Technology span many genres and date back to the founding of the Technical School in 1828. They are closely connected to building activities and campus planning, that is to the University buildings at changing locations over two centuries. The majority of these buildings are listed as individual monuments and are under the special protection of the Free State of Saxony. The campus is a reflection of the University’s institutional history and genesis. Historicist institute buildings from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries stand next to edifices built after the Second World War. Since the 1990s, the University campus has been expanded and consolidated as a result of establishing a full-range university and of the strategies for becoming a university of excellence. However, it is not only the University buildings that reveal the history of the institution and how it wished to be seen at the time. These are also communicated through the works held in the Art Collection, the paintings, statuary art, sculptures, drawings, and prints, and through site-specific art, that is art works that form an inseparable part of a building. Works donated or purchased from the founding year of 1828 up to 1945 are listed under the collective term “Altkunstbesitz”. This unites stocks of graphics and portraits that came into the University’s possession independent of “planned pictorial acquisition” (Schieferdecker 1996, p. 126). It is characterized by a gradually increasing focus on collecting portraits of University members. This focus is also what connects the “Altkunstbesitz” with works acquired and commissioned from the GDR period to the present day. It is primarily these portraits of staff and students that bear vivid witness to the institution’s history and keep alive the memory of the University’s development. The subjects of the portraits are depicted with typical professional attributes such as their work materials or in the context of their activities in teaching or studying. In this way, the artworks illustrate the social standing and the functions of the depicted individuals, but also tell of social transformations and representation strategies. By maintaining this portrait tradition as part of its acquisition policy to this day, the TUD has been able to amass more than 90 portraits among the artworks it possesses. These include busts of outstanding scientists in front of and inside institute buildings (Obenaus 2015, p. 142). A publicly accessible presentation in the shape of a gallery of University portraits of scholars and students is being planned for the Fritz Foerster Building. From 2025, it will provide a permanent overview of this characteristic focus of the Art Collection within a single exhibition. Kurt Wünsche and Harry Schulze: “Zur Elektrotechnik” (On Electrical Engineering) (1964), detail, silicate ceramic tiles, Barkhausen Building (BAR), inv. no. KB94600 (Photo: Till Schuster) In the 1950s and 1960s, several ceramic site specific art works were created at TUD under the aegis of the Artistic Advisory Board. They were conceived in close cooperation between the master potter, university educated sculptor and ceramics engineer Harry Schulze at the Chair of Building Construction of the Department of Architecture and in the workshops of the then Technical College. Reinhold Langner, Kurt Wünsche, Karl-Heinz Adler, Friedrich Kracht were among those artists who were also involved.
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