How South Africa's universities can unlock the heritage within their museum collections

As South Africa celebrates Heritage Month, it is timely to reflect on the largely untapped value of university heritage collections. Across the country’s 26 higher education institutions, fewer than eight are estimated to have museums or galleries, and less than half do not provide public access to their collections.

These inherited collections, often accumulated over decades or even a century, reflect the past, present, and future traditions of their institutions, yet they remain largely unknown and under-researched.

University museums are not merely repositories of objects – they are social constructs that contribute to civic society, provide spaces for teaching and learning, and serve as instruments for preserving and interpreting academic heritage.

In a South African context, recognising and leveraging these collections offers a crucial opportunity to engage with local and indigenous knowledge, to interrogate how knowledge is curated and represented, and to position university museums as multidisciplinary spaces that advance research, education, and broader social transformation.

A comprehensive mapping of the diverse collections held within higher education – including those associated with museums – has never been fully undertaken. The closest attempt is a 2019 report by the South African Cultural Observatory, which estimated that only 15.6% of museums in the country were university museums. In reality, this figure is, sadly, much lower.

Higher education institutional collections and university museums have immense potential to promote academic heritage and support teaching and learning.

But they are difficult to manage, as academic use can conflict with public access. Each collection has its own history, content, and significance. These collections also provide opportunities for further research and learning, and, importantly, require interrogation of how and why they ended up in these institutions.

In Europe, the UK, and the United States, university museums are regulated and integrated into institutional structures. Material culture and collections are used to promote institutional identity – a process described by museum scholar Jan Kozak as “identity marketing”, where heritage serves to represent a university’s history. Yet university museums are about more than collections; they are about people, and they contribute to the arts, culture, and civic society.

Globally, and particularly in South Africa, museum collections held within higher education institutions have largely been overlooked by academics. Why have these collections been omitted from the research histories of their institutions? Why has academia been slow to publish about them? Sadly, this lack of attention means the rich academic collections kept by South African universities remain largely unknown and undefined. 

For researchers and the public to engage meaningfully with these collections, university heritage must be recognised as intertwined with disciplinary discourse and practices, whether in the arts, history, heritage, sciences, or related fields.

Moreover, heritage in universities now extends beyond traditional domains such as museology and history. This necessitates further research into how university museums function as spaces of learning and support the academic project of teaching and learning.

This heritage canon is increasingly critical to disciplines such as fine art, architecture, law, tourism, the sciences, and digital studies. The term “canon” here describes the breadth of heritage collections and the process of positioning them within higher education, similar to a canon of works of art or literature.

Defining a canon of university heritage is complex because heritage is socially intricate, and universities globally are still grappling with their role in social transformation. In the 21st century, a disjuncture remains between heritage collections and universities’ ability to integrate them into research that addresses social and other challenges. Decolonial discourses raise further questions about what is curated, how, and by whom.

University museums are, by nature, social constructs that contribute to society beyond academia. They provide access to collections for wider civic society, promote institutional heritage, educate, and preserve knowledge.

Universities without museums risk neglecting their own heritage – as is often the case with newer universities. Recently, there has been a shift towards positioning university museums as heritage and social hubs, emphasising their educational role outside lecture halls. Museums are also increasingly embracing digital technologies to make collections more accessible and globally relevant.

Fortunately, many university museums are engaging with new and complex topics such as transdisciplinarity, seeking to acknowledge diverse heritage and identify gaps in their collections.

There is a growing emphasis on collaboration with indigenous knowledge studies and community processes, promoting intangible heritage, and giving voice to previously marginalised histories. Higher education collections should, in turn, prioritise local and indigenous approaches, focusing on memory, identity, cross-cultural perspectives, emotions, and social harmony, even when breaking barriers and encouraging access proves challenging.

Despite global challenges such as limited research visibility, resource constraints, identity crises, funding declines, skills shortages, and inadequate infrastructure, university museums remain resilient. They are evolving, creative, and continue to serve their institutions, even when resources are scarce.

At the same time, universities often prioritise research outputs and rankings over heritage, overlooking the invaluable potential of university museums as tools for teaching, learning, research, and public engagement.

University museums can act as ambassadors for academic heritage, offering strategic value to both the public and private sectors, including funders and donors. African universities, in particular, need to engage with their heritage with greater ‘seriousness’ – considering not just the items in their museums, but the research potential of collections across all campuses.

There also needs to be a dramatic shift away from comparison with Western universities; heritage should be positioned within an African context rather than compared solely with Western institutions.

Heritage collections can attract students, foster partnerships, and strengthen collaboration between academia, the heritage sector, and arts and cultural organisations. In the era of AI, universities must also consider how technology can enhance accessibility and engagement with collections.

The time has come to recognise that university museums and their heritage collections serve across disciplines – they help to attract researchers and funders, and can be used as instruments for community building and boosting institutional identity.

Ultimately, the future of university museums depends on higher education’s willingness to listen, learn, and act. Embracing academic heritage requires universities to look inward, to the invaluable collections under their own roofs, and to position these museums as custodians of knowledge, culture, and institutional memory.

By doing so, South African universities can ensure that their heritage informs teaching, research, public engagement – and ultimately their future.

Dr Sian Tiley-Nel, Head of Department and Curator of the Mapungubwe Collection, and Uthando Baduza, Curator of Art Exhibitions and Galleries, at the University of Pretoria Museums