To the community of avid museum-goers, University Museums are distant outliers. They do not dazzle visitors the way standalone museums do. Statistics suggest that prominent university museums lag behind renowned standalone (or mainstream) museums in footfall numbers. In terms of search engine visibility, the website of the 17th century Ashmoleon Museum (affiliated to the Oxford University) does not compare favourably to that of the British Museum. Nor is the Ashmoleon Museum easy to find on the Oxford University website. A visitor must navigate a string of sub-menus before hitting the museum link under the University’s GLAM Department. Top universities in the world advertise their greatness by showcasing their faculty resources, sprawling infrastructure and formidable research prowess. In-house museums are tucked away as appendages of ‘campus life’. Had University Museums valued their art collections and projected their image quotient well enough, their profile would have considerably gone up in the university scheme of things. Unfortunately, this has not happened so far.
Most studies on University Museums delve on the typology of collections, curatorial approaches and representation styles. There have been very few studies that have explored the management dimensions of these museums.
Post- COVID 19, eminent museums of the world (including leading University Museums), have been experimenting with unique VR/AR imaging applications that seek to provide immersive experience to both on-premise and digital visitors. These efforts aim to transcend the physicality of museum buildings through alternate spatio-temporal systems. There have been an equal number of creative, non-tech projects initiated by University Museums that have elicited unusual visitor interest. Unlike mainstream museums, University Museums have the natural ability to draw in a talent pool of researchers, academics, teachers and students to work on innovative and impactful inter-disciplinary projects of the kinds mentioned. The ‘South Asian Archives Research and Digital Access Project’ of the Ashmolean Museum, the ‘Isotopic Silk Road Project’ of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (attached to Harvard University) and the ‘Banarasi Kimkhwab Exhibition Project’ of Bharat Kala Bhavan (attached to the Banaras Hindu University) are stellar examples of novel inter-disciplinary projects taken up by University Museums.
Normalising Collections
Renowned University Museums of the colonial period owe their foundation collections either to bequeaths or gifts, or to the incorporation of established museums in its ranks. The ‘Ashmolean’, attached to the Oxford University has its origins in bequests while India’s Bharat Kala Bhavan, attached to the Banaras Hindu University, came into the University’s fold through incorporation.
A few well-known University Museums such as the Tokyo University Museum have sprouted from within the university ecosystem.
The problem with bequeath/gift-based University Museums is that their collections tend to be skewed towards a particular art form or a specific genre of art, to the exclusion of arts emanating from diverse social groups. Ideally speaking, a University Museum should expose its stakeholders (students, teachers and the outside community) to art forms of differing origins and styles. It is desirable that skewed foundation collections of University Museums are normalised through subsequent acquisitions that overcome the imbalances in legacy collections.
Successive waves of thoughtful acquisitions and bequests explain why the Bharat Kala Bhavan could complement its classical art collections with folk and tribal artefacts (including rare hand moulded terracotta pieces). Similarly, later phase contributors to Ashmolean Museum collections like Francis Douce were instrumental in filling gaps in the original Ashmole collection, particularly in the realm of decorative arts.
New waves of bequests are however not easy to come by, unless the museum concerned demonstrates innovative research, high quality preservation practices and success in reputation (or brand) building.
Provenance Issues & Ethical Collection
The world’s oldest University Museum, the Ashmolean, which opened at the Oxford University in 1683, was founded on a bequest/donation by Elias Ashmole, an influential antiquarian. However, the authenticity of Ashmole’s bequest/gift was challenged on the grounds that legal ownership of the collection originally vested with Tradescant Jr. Ashmole disagreed with his critics and claimed that Tradescant Jr had gifted him the collections before his death, through a properly executed deed. This claim was aggressively challenged by Tradescant’s widow, Hester. According to scholars, following Hester’s death, Ashmole went ahead and executed his bequest. Ashmole’s success was mainly enabled by the limitations of the legal norms on provenance that prevailed at the time.
The connotation of ‘provenance’ has vastly changed since the 17th century. Thanks to the ethical arts collection movement in the 20th century, the scope of the term ‘provenance’ today, goes beyond authentication and legal ownership to include information on the means by which these works were acquired by its owners. Given these facts, it is doubtful if Ashmole’s deal with Oxford University would have gone through today. Indeed with present day scholars like Robert Lomas still keeping the story alive, the Ashmole bequest controversy refuses to die down. With Generative AI tools, advanced tool mark analysis and AI enhanced object registries, provenance research has advanced by leaps and bounds in the preceding five years. It will not be surprising if the Ashmolean Museum (with the assistance of Oxford University) comes out with its final word on the controversial bequest that led to the formation of the museum.
At a more fundamental level, the ethical arts collection movement has a major influence in the way museums value their collections. Artworks with troubled history, lodged in ethically responsible museums, have been de-accessioned and repatriated to their rightful owners. Indeed museums which comply with ethical collection protocols earn enormous goodwill from their stakeholders. An illustration of this point is the groundswell of plaudits that the Smithsonian Institution earned after returning the looted Benin Bronzes to Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments in 2022 .
However, for such goodwill to be translated to brand power, museums need to undertake brand valuation exercises. University Museums are best positioned to undertake this as they can draw upon the expertise of university faculty and researchers.
Had a University Museum like the Ashmolean undertaken brand valuation, its standing and online visibility would have drastically changed for the better. In the process, the 330-year-old museum could have also emerged as a trailblazer of modern museum management practices.
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Originally published in Museum Mosaic 2024, published May 2025.
Part of our annual review. Descriptions reflect the publication’s reporting period.
