Muse-unveiling aims
Unveiling University Heritage in the Digital Era (Muse-unveiling) is a project on University Museums and collections funded by the Una Europa seed funding initiative (funding number: SF2408) and involving 5 partners: University of Bologna (Center for Advanced Studies in Tourism-CAST) as lead partner, University of Helsinki (Faculty of Arts), Jagiellonian university (Faculty of Management and Social Communication, Institute of Culture), KU Leuven Academic Heritage Agency and Complutense University (Faculty of Fine Arts. Department of Sculpture and Arts). It represents a core activity within the Una.Futura project, co-funded by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Programme’s European Universities Initiative. The project also includes the active participation of the University of Zurich, the University of Edinburgh, and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University.
Muse-unveiling focuses on the construction and curation of three digital exhibitions including objects from 8 different universities. From 2018 to 2021, 5 Una Europa workshops were held in Louvain, Paris and Bologna on the heritage of European Universities, meaning by this university buildings, gardens, museums, libraries, and archives. These workshops, undertaken also before the formal establishment of the Alliance, explored the potential of the heritage of European universities to disseminate the innovation and education processes through which universities have shaped, and are still shaping, our common civilization.
Over the last ten years, in fact, many universities have begun to enhance their museums, collections, and libraries proposing storytelling capable of highlighting the role of individual universities in creating new knowledge. However, the contribution of university heritage understanding of the main challenges of the present has been largely overlooked, a trans-national view is still missing and very often students, as well as professors and university staff, have only a limited knowledge of this heritage.
With this in mind, the aim of Muse-unveiling is threefold.
- To digitize, share and enhance the visibility of university heritage, focusing on the universities of the Una Europa alliance, widening access to their heritage and allowing diverse audiences to discover, explore and re-evaluate these less-explored cultural institutions.
- To propose new perspectives, readings, and narratives of these collections, by experimenting with new methodologies and strategies.
- To explore and unveil a multi-layered European identity, by connecting university museums and collections, bringing together institutions from different countries, and exchanging ideas, methodologies, and cultural perspectives.