The neglect of the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG) is not the first time this “cultural jewel” has suffered such a fate.
The gallery was bequeathed to the city when it was established. After construction began in 1911, it took another four years for the building to be completed because the city council was unwilling to commit enough money to the project. It took the intervention of Florence, Lady Phillips, wife of randlord Lionel Phillips, to finish the job.
Lady Phillips, according to former JAG director Christopher Till, believed there had to be “some semblance of cultural life” among the “bars and bordellos of Joburg”. She sold a diamond ring to buy the first artworks for the gallery, but refused to attend its opening.
Today the JAG is the biggest art gallery in Africa, but it’s in a poor state. One of its treasures, the Brenthurst Collection of rare and valuable Southern African artefacts, has been moved to a safer haven at the Brenthurst Library in Parktown, Joburg. The location of the JAG in one of the most rundown parts of the city, opposite Joubert Park, adds to its precarious status.
The JAG was entrusted to the City of Joburg, but “that trust has effectively been broken”, says Till. “The result is what we see now.” He urges a reassertion of the JAG’s founding idea by providing the city’s people “with a cross-section of art and creativity for their edification and enjoyment”.
The gallery has also been the subject of recent politicking, with the DA offering to accommodate its collections in Cape Town, and an academic scorning the idea because the “heritage system in the city and the province is a mess” after a recent court ruling allowing the development of a riverside site despite describing it as having cultural value.
Ciraj Rassool, professor of history at the University of the Western Cape and a museum scholar, has also questioned local commitment to JAG. He asked whether art students at Wits University were making their voices heard. But Steven Sack, a former director of arts & culture in Gauteng, says the Wits art department is active in the life of the JAG.
In the mid-1980s, when Till was director, he approached Harry Oppenheimer and Anglo American to buy the Brenthurst Collection. At the time, the city council had refused to invest in the JAG. Under an ANC local government after 1994, money was committed for the restoration of the building, but the upgrade was poorly managed and the contractors not qualified to do specialist heritage work.
“The problem with the JAG is that it is inappropriately governed,” Rassool says. “It is a cultural jewel that just so happened to come out of the achievements of mining capital and because of that it is associated with the mining wealth of Joburg. But when democracy came and you had a restructuring of government into different tiers and different spheres, the continued governance of the JAG as a municipal museum was completely and thoroughly at odds with the significance of the collection and this museum.”
Sack says that for at least 20 years since 1994 it was well managed. “There was never any likelihood that the JAG would have become a national cultural institution,” he says, but it was more effective than most national institutions.
Rassool says the JAG needs to be governed by a national council; Sack says it has limited tourism appeal because of its location; Till is adamant it should stay as part of Joburg.
The Joburg situation is also happening in other South African cities, says Till. “The Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg, which also has a very good collection, is going through the same situation.”
Sack says Khwezi Gule, the chief curator of the JAG, has arranged exhibitions in partnership with Wits University and international partners. “We need to lobby the city to find funds to fix the building. We need to look to 2028 or thereabouts as the date on which the [Brenthurst] collection will be housed again in a restored JAG in Joubert Park, with safe public transport provided to enable public access.”
Sally MacRoberts, the head librarian and library manager at the Brenthurst Library, says the collection of about 800 items needs cleaning and conservation work before being photographed and digitised. The collection is not going to be mothballed, she says. It will be available on loan to appropriate institutions.