7 As home to 40 collections of technical and scientific objects and to the artworks it owns, TUD Dresden University of Technology boasts a large and significant stock of historical and contemporary artefacts from teaching, research and art. Objects in university collections differ from those in museums as a consequence of the specific nature of their origin, since they do not represent a past epoch that has now been concluded but are – as it were – in flux. They can undergo noticeable changes in meaning, either rapidly or gradually, changing their status within the university as the decades pass. Collections of scientific devices or models, such as those that have been created primarily at technical universities, usually were − and continue to be − purchased or produced for teaching or specific research purposes. These objects are utilized, used up, sometimes exchanged or renewed over the course of decades. They change during and due to the passage of time. On the one hand, they are therefore – like the scientific contexts that gave rise to them – subject to a constant yet simultaneously discontinuous process of historization: Little by little, the objects emerge from their original contexts in research and teaching and become cultural assets of past research or teaching practice. In this way, they develop into a meaningful part of the academic tradition of the individual subjects as well as of the history of the respective university as a whole. Their potential significance both for future research in the history of science and for the indispensable self-reflection of disciplines or institutions can, however, scarcely be overestimated. At the same time, scientific collections of objects from the past can provide surprising answers to pressing questions of current research, such as those regarding climate change, evolutionary theory, or biodiversity. In addition to the history-of-science perspective, natural history collections in particular hold specific, latent opportunities which only reveal themselves after sufficient time has passed. New analytical methods can be employed to examine objects such as historical herbaria, drill cores, or seafloor sediments, allowing us to read the information that they have stored for many decades or even millennia. For every university collection, this opens up new – and often unimagined – opportunities to contribute to current research. At universities, new collections arising from current contexts of research and teaching continue to be created alongside the historical inventories whose potential is being rediscovered. Nowadays, their materiality is shifting more and more into the digital space, raising entirely new questions regarding use, access, and preservation. By implication, it is a common feature of all scientific collections that they are valuable material witnesses to the development of an academic discipline and are an essential part of scientific practice at the respective university. The heterogeneity of the objects in university collections paints a complex picture. Their status and, as a consequence, their significance for The collections of TUD Dresden University of Technology – tradition and new perspectives KIRSTEN VINCENZ Historical collection cabinet from the field of chemistry in the permanent exhibition of the Office for Academic Heritage (OAH), 2019 “Collecting always precedes science; there is nothing odd about that; for collecting must be before science; but what is odd is that the urge to collect enters our minds when a science is intended to appear, even if we do not yet know what this science will contain.” Adalbert Stifter 1857
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTMyNjA1