A collection of rare and valuable Southern African artefacts has been moved from the Johannesburg Art Gallery to the Brenthurst Library in Parktown for safekeeping. The library is a private repository for Africana, built in 1984 with funding by mining magnate Harry Oppenheimer.
The collection was brought from the UK in the mid-1980s and entrusted to the Joburg gallery on permanent loan.
Brenthurst Library director Sally MacRoberts says the collection was withdrawn because of the condition and location of the gallery in Joubert Park. “It is no reflection of the actual staff of the gallery, who are all amazing,” she tells the FM. “We are cleaning it up and putting it into permanent storage, which is quite a pity. But we are itemising the collection and we are going to have it digitised properly.”
When Christopher Till became director of JAG in 1983, he was struck by the absence of African art. There was French, British and Italian work in the gallery, but no work of an African origin. “I was determined to try to put together a collection such as I had done in Zimbabwe for the National Gallery of Art there,” he tells the FM.
During a discussion with Liz Rankin, professor of art history at Wits University, Till was alerted to a good collection in London that had been put together by Jonathan Lowen, a South African who was a judge in London.
Till went on a mission to bring the collection to South Africa in the hope that Joburg would find money to buy the collection. He set off for London in the company of the chair of one of the committees responsible for JAG at the time, a man “who didn’t have much interest in anything that was of a black origin, particularly a collection of traditional material”.
Till encouraged the city to buy the collection but says his travel companion vetoed the suggestion. He then approached Oppenheimer and the Anglo American Corp. The Oppenheimers bought the collection in 1986 and gave it to JAG on permanent loan.
“I kept it in storage while I worked on it and became familiar with the various individual pieces,” says Till. He later exhibited it in the gallery, “achieving my objective of introducing elements of traditional African art into what was a very Eurocentric gallery”. The exhibition, Art and Ambiguity: Perspectives on the Brenthurst Collection of Southern African Art, was opened in 1991.
As a centenary grant in 2010, Anglo American presented the gallery with R4m, primarily to buy new art. By that time the building had been upgraded with an extension that Till refers to as “the new ruin”.
The Anglo American Johannesburg Centenary Trust was established and the gallery was “flush with a very strong purchasing grant, which most other galleries in the country didn’t have”, says Till. One of the purchases was of Southern African headrests collected by a missionary, Father Alexander Auguste Jaque, who had loaned it and which had been held in the old Africana Museum, now Museum Africa.
The missionary’s descendants had wanted the collection returned so they could sell it. Till used some of the money to buy it. The two collections were amalgamated in one of the wings of the gallery. “Though they were distinct, they were of the same material,” Till says.
“At that time nobody was really interested in the Southern African material,” says Till. “They were interested in West African artefacts and art and not much attention was given to the Southern African material. However, over the years there were other collections that were added to JAG’s collection of Southern African material and it became a sizeable and very valuable collection.”
Over the past few years the poor state of the gallery has been revealed. Early in 2022, the City of Joburg said it was exploring ways of moving the collection to a safer environment while the gallery was being repaired. It gave a detailed overview of maintenance and restorative interventions that had been initiated despite constraints.
Several teams of architects were contracted by the city. Recurring challenges, including roof leaks, problems with the water reticulation system and electrical wiring, were being attended to as far as possible and at one stage there were discussions with Anglo American about temporarily storing artworks in the old Anglo American building at 44 Main Street.
Meanwhile, the state of the gallery, and its surrounds, have deteriorated and talks with Anglo American about storing the work deadlocked, with some city officials indicating support for the idea and others dismissive of what was referred to as “a colonial vanity project”.
“It is a story of endless disappointment,” says heritage architect Brian McKechnie. “I think moving the gallery is like admitting political failure. It is like the city admitting that they have let that part of town disintegrate into chaos and that they have also mismanaged the gallery to the point that it is no longer a viable cultural asset to Joburg citizens.
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“It’s a travesty — these are not works that you will see anywhere in the world. The collection is so uniquely Southern African and so special to JAG and one of the most interesting cultural assets that is being lost because the city doesn’t care.”
When Till visited the gallery recently he says he was so alarmed by what he saw that he felt compelled to take action. “I went into the gallery and there was nobody there. I walked around and behind doors which had notices on them saying ‘no entrance’. There was just pure devastation behind those doors. It was raining and water was streaming down the walls and dripping onto the floor.
“The gallery spaces, or previous gallery spaces, were now storerooms of everything you could think of: old furniture and rubbish and boxes. There were rat droppings and dead birds. The new extension, which I had overseen, which had been closed for some time, was an absolute ruin. And the works were lying on top of one another. Some of the collections were stored upstairs in the old café. The condition and neglect of the building was an absolute disgrace.”
Till told MacRoberts at the Brenthurst Library that he didn’t feel comfortable about not bringing this to her attention. “I believed the material was at risk,” he says. “I persuaded her to take the collection out of JAG, which has subsequently happened and which I’m very pleased about.”
Till says he is looking for ways to save other works at risk in the gallery.
The City of Joburg did not respond to questions about the move of the artefacts to the Brenthurst Library.
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