Exhibiting knowledge

Over the next few years, a “museum of knowledge” is to be established in Göttingen. The focus of the museum will be on the production of knowledge in its historical depth and current breadth on the basis of the more than 30 academic collections of the Georg August University. By using “objects of knowledge” to communicate the sum of what is known, the museum draws on the long tradition of this “university of the Enlightenment,” in which teaching and research have been “object-based” for more than 275 years. We will take the founding of the museum in Göttingen as an opportunity to discuss, on the basis of specific examples and projects, if in fact and how knowledge can be communicated: What topics and concepts are there for presenting specimens and plaster casts, written sources, models and instruments as storehouses of previous world views and systems of thought? What media and methods help to explain how research is done today and knowledge is produced? And finally how can the topic of the creation of knowledge be considered a human act that both influences and is influenced by society?