Faculty of Preservation of Cultural Heritage

Profile

The study of Preventive Conservation and Conservation and Restoration focuses on the preservation of works in the visual arts and objects of cultural value that represent irreplaceable documents by virtue of their historical, artistic and cultural value.

Among universities with conservation and restoration programmes, our faculty has developed an unmistakable profile.

Characteristic of the Hildesheim courses of conservation study is a comprehensive understanding of culture with a corresponding wide, varied range of subject-matter incorporated in each field of study, the focal point always being on hands-on conservation and restoration projects.

The approximately 180 students enrolled in our practice-oriented university courses receive personal tutoring. The teaching methods applied are manifold.

As the student body is small, with the lecturer's encouragement, students often interrupt the lectures with questions and remarks. Some lectures alomost have a seminar atmosphere.
On excursions, museums, churches or other buildings become extra-university sites of learning.

Unique among German universities, the faculty has in addition to its archaeometric laboratory, its own professorship for microbiology and a corresponding laboratory, which offers the students a thorough insight into microbiological damages to cultural heritage.

There also is a teacher for the basic techniques and practical application of photography. And we have expanded the bachelor programme by adding the competence subjects “Museology,” “Historic Building Conservation" and ”Archeology”. All these elective courses are headed by professors.

Only in our faculty are the students brought into the European research work on restoration history.

Students also have access to additional Internet courses given by their professors and lecturers.

Through their many close contacts to regional museums, state departments for the conservation of monuments and sites, archives and libraries, the faculty demonstrates the importance of working close to practice. This becomes apparent, in particular, through a permanent staff position dedicated to cooperation with the Lower Saxony State Department for the conservation of monuments and sites.

The intensive maintenance of international partnerships reflected through numerous cooperation contracts with foreign universities (in Egypt, Belgium, Bolivia, Ireland, France, Finland, Latvia, Malta, Mexico, Austria, Poland, Spain, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Hungary) and research institutes (The Getty Conservation Institute, Istituto Centrale per il Restauro, among others) is as characteristic for the Hildesheim faculty as are the exchange programmes for students and teachers. Through an accelerated introduction of the Bachelor and Master programmes, the university’s administration has strongly implemented the restructuring of the study courses according the European criteria of the Bologna process.

Outlook

We have even greater plans for the future. Based on the suggestions of our students, we are continuously improving our curriculum and our organization.

In addition, we are planning a new university campus.

For further information about the conservation-restoration study programmes you can download here our Image Brochure of January 2008 (pdf-document: 2,67 MB).