History

1880-1910

Antwerp has a long but relatively unknown relationship with scientific heritage. The first important collections were built by Henri Van Heurck (1838-1909) in the second half of the nineteenth century. This chemistry teacher at the Stedelijke Nijverheidsschool (Municipal Technical School) (Paardenmarkt), groundbreaking scientist in the field of X-rays and director of the Botanical Garden (Plantentuin), brought together an impressive botanical library, an important herbarium (plants), a large diatom collection (single-celled algae) and a valuable collection of scientific equipment. Furthermore, his collection of microscopes was unrivaled and was one of the most exceptional collections of its kind in the world .

1910-1960

In 1910 Van Heurck's estate was bought by the city and divided over two museums. The scientific material was housed in the Nijverheidsschool (Municipal Technical School), where a number of exhibition rooms were set up for the Museum of Sciences and Techniques (Museum voor Wetenschappen en Technieken), while the botanical objects went to the Museum Plantentuin. Due to lack of space, the number of exhibition rooms in the Nijverheidsschool was reduced in the 1930s and suppressed at the end of the 1950s. Objects that were not taken over by other museums were successively housed in warehouses in the Kloosterstraat and the Legrellelei. Already in 1949, the museum in the Botanical Garden had been closed, and as a result, objects had to be accommodated wherever possible.

1960-1980

A new exhibition space emerged in 1968. The Henri Van Heurck Museum was opened in one of the wings of the Natural History Museum of the Antwerp zoo displaying botanical objects and microscopes. Meanwhile, others tried to find accommodation for the remainder of the objects, amongst them Karel Edward Frison, who himself had a modest collection of microscopes as well as a large collection of wood samples from trees from all over the world. After his death, these objects too were purchased by the city.

In 1965 the Sint-Ignatius Handelshogeschool and the Rijkshandelshogeschool were converted into the UFSIA and the RUCA (candidature degrees (bachelor)) and in 1971 the UIA was founded (licence degrees (masters)). In 2003, these three universities merged into the University of Antwerp.

1980-2007

In 1985 a new accommodation was found for the scientific instruments of the Van Heurck-Nijverheidsschool-Frison collections when the city transferred the objects to the university (RUCA) for inventory and restoration. On this occasion, AWIE (Antwerp Scientific and Industrial Heritage), a collaboration between the city, the universities and the Royal Zoological Society of Antwerp was established. At the end of the twentieth century, Karel Van Camp, curator of the collection, devoted himself to bring the collections back into the spotlight. He also tried to find permanent accommodation for the collections in Antwerp. When, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, this turned out to be impossible the collections were dispersed in Belgium and given on loan to several different institutions: the book collection moved to the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, the botanical objects to the Botanic Garden in Meise and the scientific instruments to the Museum for the History of Sciences in Ghent, where the microscopes can be found on display.

2007-present

With the arrival of head librarian Trudi Noordermeer in 2007, a few years after the merger of the Antwerp universities into the University of Antwerp, the time was right for a major project about academic heritage. An initial inventory, resulting from a collaboration between the Flemish universities, was published in 2013 in Balans en perspectief. Academisch erfgoed in Vlaanderen. In this brochure, the universities explore the opportunities and challenges of recording Flemish academic heritage. In the meantime, on the Groenenborger and Drie Eiken campuses Marc Demolder gathered a large collection of twentieth-century academic heritage used at the young university. In 2017, Daniël Ermens was appointed to start the inventory and recording of the academic heritage collections. Two exhibitions on academic heritage organised by Ermens and Demolder made the academic community in Antwerp aware of the richness of its collection: 'The collective memory of the University of Antwerp' (2019) focussed on memorabilia of the university and its predecessors, while 'Storytellers: academic heritage at the University of Antwerp in twenty objects' (2024) showed the wide scope of the heritage collection.