Amateur Collections: From the Personal to Scientific Heritage

"What if the treasures hidden in our libraries, attics, or personal display cases became valuable resources for science and art?"

In June, the Science Bar titled“Amateur Collections: From the Personal to Scientific Heritage” offers an original and insightful exploration of amateur collections: rare objects, family archives, minerals, herbariums, photographs, notebooks… Behind these often intimate collections lie unique data, traces of cultural heritage, or valuable insights for scientific research—or a source of inspiration for artistic creation.

This event offers an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the collections and the research associated with them, to learn about outreach initiatives aimed at the general public, and to engage directly with experts on the subject over a drink in a friendly setting.

Join us at 7 p.m. at the Émile Zola Media Library for an evening event in partnership with the Montpellier 3M Media Library Network and the Scientific Culture Network. This event will bring together artistic, heritage, and scientific perspectives and demonstrate how personal collections can become resources that are at once emotional, cultural, and scientific.

To discuss this topic—science and society—three experts from various disciplines will answer questions from the audience:

• Benoît Gibert is Professor who specializes in the physics of minerals and rocks at the Géosciences Montpellier laboratory (a joint research unit of the CNRS and the University of Montpellier). He is interested in how the properties of minerals and rocks evolve under conditions found in the Earth’s crust, particularly in high-temperature geothermal systems. He teaches mineralogy at the Faculty of Sciences, making the University’s heritage collections available to students;
• Sofia Lautrec is an artist and poet whose work explores the concepts of the transformation of matter, erosion, and the materiality of language. Currently in residence at the University of Montpellier with the Art & Culture department, she is leading a project centered on her grandfather’s mineral collection, in collaboration with the Géosciences Montpellier laboratory. Through this process, which blends an artistic approach with a scientific perspective, she examines the collection as a space for creation, transmission, and storytelling. She will also share her personal experience as a collector, highlighting the emotional and nostalgic dimensions associated with this practice;
• Audrey Théron is the museum collections curator in the Historical Heritage Department of the University of Montpellier’s Division of Scientific Culture and Historical Heritage (DCSPH – UM). She will provide insights into the challenges of preserving, promoting, and sharing historical collections at the University of Montpellier.

The speakers at this event will shed light on the significance of these private collections from artistic, scientific, and heritage perspectives. What do they contribute to research? How can amateur collections enrich academic knowledge? How can they serve as the basis for artistic creation or become part of cultural heritage? And under what conditions do they become part of scientific heritage?

An event for everyone who collects, observes, preserves, and contributes—sometimes without even realizing it—to the creation of knowledge.

Admission is free, subject to availability.

Contact:
Marianne DUPRÉ-GABIROT
Head of Science Communication: Events, Knowledge Dissemination
04 34 43 33 84

Célia BOURHIM
Project Manager for Science Communication
04 34 43 33 82

The season is co-produced by the scientific outreach departments of theUM and its partners: INRAE, INSERM, IRD, the Montpellier Faculty of Sciences, Radio Aviva, and Radio Divergence.