Review of Art & Today by Eleanor Heartney

If the museum, for Paul Valéry, was where "we put the art of the past to death," artists throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first have undertaken projects of revival and renewal, assuming the roles of collector, archivist, and curator with subversive, political, or playful intent. They have reconfigured display mechanisms, reimagined taxonomies, and introduced into museums formerly banished objects and images. Artists have approached the museum gallery as a rich site of freighted yet pliable conventions and structures, a creative space of possibility.

Arch SA 96 - Journal of the South African Institute of Architects, 2019

Rock art and the new Origins Centre Rock Art Gallery at the University of the Witwatersrand share a fundamental characteristic: intention. They are examples of artefacts that record what was meaningful to their makers at the time and guided the purposeful process of making. While there is no precise record of the intention guiding the ancient rock artists, this essay reveals the intention behind the new and unique gallery that is home to the largest rock art collection in the world by exploring the hidden meaning, thinking and events that led to its creation. It traces Mashabane Rose and Associates’ design rationale within a much longer story of artistic expression and cultural documentation, thereby contextualising their new contribution to Johannesburg’s urban identity on the university’s public edge along Enoch Sontonga Avenue. This essay shows the connection between past events and ideas, and present-day responses and uses the notion of connection as a tool to describe the historical narrative and the design. An aspect of the design that the gallery space incubates so well (and which this essay endeavours to transmit) is that it invites deeper thinking and further questioning: to try to creatively engage with diffcult questions about origins, identity and how we want to be in the world now, and in future.

Museum Worlds

■ Exhibition Reviews project was ultimately a failed one: the government saw little value in the information gathered and dispersed the collections to various institutions around the British Isles. Playful string games engage the visitor on the first panel of this intriguing exhibition. The text tells us that anthropologists became fascinated by the wide variety of string games around the world. String-inspired designs adorn the walls, capturing the objects on display. The design connects seemingly disparate artifacts and creates a visual cohesiveness that might, at first glance, seem to be lacking. The first case shows an anthropologist's toolbox from the early twentieth century and some of the collected material. Various forms of cameras stand void of action, wax cylinders next to a silent phonograph, sitting on wooden campaign furniture, published volumes are open but the pages static. A certain listlessness emanates from the case. Outdated technology lies unwanted, as an image of Thomas stares out of the case, alone, although in fact he was accompanied by several assistants. A display of photographs of people, taken by Thomas, seemingly unnamed but with a number, look out as a video plays. The screen shows how different people interact with the photos. Members of the African diaspora react to the images, offering views from colonial violence and defiance to happiness, and the eyes of Thomas himself. Nameless individuals become types, numbers, information, and data. Yet Thomas recorded many names, and these are on a slightly hidden panel just to the left of the photographic display. However, there is no mention of how the photographs were taken. Was it under duress? Were the people free to choose whether to engage? Glassless mirrors hang above a large shattered photographic plate adorned with an image of Thomas, flexing a contemporary artist's approach to the fragility and lifelessness of collections. Collected, commissioned, and paid for, these mirrors may never have seen action and are types just like the people in the panel before, whom they will never reflect. Contemporary interventions continue throughout the exhibition: painted panels hang, reflecting the photographic display, carrying numbers; clay faces mirror pot shards, stacked onto each other, pronounced Figure 2. People as types. The video shows reactions to Northcote Whitridge Thomas's collected images. Photo courtesy of the author and reprinted with permission from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. Exhibition Reviews ■ 259 ichi marks (scarification) on their cheeks and foreheads; remade and recovered historical clay and contemporary brass containers sit atop one another. These contemporary pieces change the atmosphere of the space, disrupting the timelessness of many Africa-based exhibitions. The real showpiece of this exhibition lies behind the many QR codes dotted around the room. Paul Basu, the lead curator, suggests that rather than the Cambridge exhibition being the product of finished research, it is part of an ongoing conversation. A point in time: a question, not an answer. To really appreciate the project, you must travel to the website. The site has all the videos, further contemporary reactions to the Thomas collection and links to an informative and enjoyable podcast (hosted by Chris Wingfield and Benjamina Efua Dadzie). Exhibitions have been held in Nigeria, photographs shown to descendants, and recordings of long-forgotten voices sing aloud. This exhibition raises several questions that it fails to answer, purposefully leaving dangling threads of inquiry for the visitor to follow. It is engaging. At first glance, I found it reminiscent of displays found within many ethnographic museums. Although, in this space, colonial power is not hidden behind the lens but is laid bare. Indeed, Thomas appears at almost every step, the visible hand of categorization. One does leave this space with the feeling that people were collected. Without the information contained within the website, the exhibition could feel timeless, just another space in which to look at the "Other. " Yet, thanks to Paul Basu and others, the project does offer a sense of hopefulness and ideas on how we can approach problematic collections in a new, enlivening way. It questions how we engage with these collections, and those who collected, to offer alternative narratives and future pathways.

African Historical Review, 2019

African Arts, 2002

de arte, 2019

The term transitional art was first introduced by an anthropologist Nelson Graburn in the mid seventies of the twentieth century. Graburn stated that the defined phenomenon refers to the cultural production of this group of the Third World population which he regards as completely and well assimilated with the Western culture and which forms a new kind of community, defined by him as the „Fourth World”. The scholar was careful to underline that his proposed division of art is particularly adequate in respect to this part of the „conquered minority” of the population which is quite susceptible and prone to such behavioral patterns as joining into the new society and at the same time submissive to the ways and patterns of the European civilization and which gives up easily placement in their own cultural context. The principal object of this text is the art of the Republic South Africa. The problems concerning transitional art are ever so present and quite visible in many exhibitions and critical texts relating to art originating from this area of the world (ex.: A. Nettleton, M. Martin, M. Manaka). The term transitional art seems to be especially well connected with the black art of South Africa and most often applied to the works of such black artists, as ex.: N. Mabasy, P. Seoka, J. Maswanganyi, B. Makhubele or J. Hlungwane. Nevertheless it is interesting to observe that as a result of political changes that occurred 17 years ago in South Africa – the abolition of apartheid in 1994 – today more and more white artists such as ex.: A. Botha, N. Catherine, B. Blignaut, C. Schreuders – create art works which can be defined as transitional art and which are well assimilated with the dominant black culture.

1989

2016