With the exhibition A Day in the Life of the University of Pretoria, the UP Archives hopes to provide a more complex, nuanced window into the University’s past.

Last year’s exhibition A Day in the Life of the University of Pretoria was recently expanded by staff at the University of Pretoria (UP) Archives to include a range of new panels, filling up previously neglected noticeboards.

Towards the end of last year, the UP Archives launched the exhibition on Hatfield campus, making use of unused noticeboards on the south side of the Humanities Building. These daily anecdotal pieces highlighted amusing, controversial, contested and interesting titbits from UP’s past. The initiative began during the COVID-19 pandemic as an online source of interest for the UP community during the solemn days of lockdown. The material was compiled and posted daily by Alida Green of the UP Archives, who used a range of primary sources available in the UP Archives, including UP publications, student newspapers Perdeby and PDBY and the general media.

With this exhibition, the UP Archives hopes to provide a more complex, nuanced window into the University’s past. From the tarring and feathering of two UP professors, protests over language and racial policies and student support for government policies during the apartheid era to the #FeesMustFall movement, it is clear that UP has not existed in a vacuum, but has both initiated and felt the tides of changing historical contexts.

The combination of more weighty events with light-hearted stories showcases the dynamic and multi-faceted nature of the University community. Staff and students are invited to browse the exhibit and reflect on the various events that played out at UP over the past 115 years. UP community members are also encouraged to contact the UP Archives to consult their collections and add their memories to the institution’s memory bank.

The UP Archives was able to share this exhibition with the UP community on Hatfield campus with the generous support of the Office of the Registrar, the Department of Facilities Management and the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

The online exhibition can also be viewed at https://www.up.ac.za/up-archives