Introduction to
Microcosms: Objects of KnowledgeThe University of California's physical collections are vast and dispersed. The UC system contains about forty million objects, placing it among the largest university collections in the world. As the second largest collection in the Western Hemisphere, after the Smithsonian, it would conservatively cost $30,000,000,000 to replace. These objects are found and used in every division and department of the university, across the spectrum of sciences, humanities, and arts. Yet, despite the huge investment in research, space, personnel, and other resources that these holdings represent, there is an almost complete absence of scholarship and discourse about the history, purpose, and future of university collections. Indeed, university material holdings are largely invisible outside the narrow disciplinary boundaries that contain them. As a result, there exists no consistent policy concerning development, conservation, and research purposes for material collections, no general understanding of their value, no discourse on their meaning. Microcosms: Objects of Knowledge is a multiyear, interdisciplinary project that seeks to research comprehensively a material "economy of knowledge" within the university. We will plan and mount a series of exhibitions and symposia throughout the UC system, produce publications, then propose policy directives on the use and expansion of UC collections.
Microcosms: Objects of Knowledge began at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a two-part exhibition, a symposium, and a graduate seminar in 1995-96. Mark Meadow and Bruce Robertson, both of the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, organized this first phase of the project. In 1996-98, we received bridge funds from the UC Humanities Research Institute (HRI) to begin transforming this UCSB-based project into a system-wide investigation of the epistemological status of material collections. Over the course of a year and a half, we visited collections and conducted ethnographic research. Based on this research, the Getty Grant Program and the Delmas Foundation awarded us support for the conceptual phase of the project. During the first six months of 1999, Microcosms convened a residential research group at HRI, with scholars from four UC campuses, as well as workshop participants from two more UC campuses, and many international and American scholars. The group was composed of anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, artists, computer scientists, geographers, historians, historians of science, and literary scholars. In 1999, Microcosms received the recognition and support of the UC Office of the President, which designated Microcosms as a Special Humanities Project, and moved into our new home at the the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
{University of California Office of the President}