Picturing Change

Brenda Schmahmann

Description

Since South Africa’s transition to democracy, many universities have acquired new works of art that convey messages about the advantages of cultural diversity, and engage critically with histories of racial intolerance and conflict. Given concerns about the influence of British imperialism or Afrikaner nationalism on aspects of their inherited visual culture, most tertiary institutions are also seeking new ways to manage their existing art collections, and to introduce memorials, insignia or regalia, which reflect the universities’ newfound values and aspirations. In Picturing Change, Brenda Schmahmann explores the implications of deploying the visual domain in the service of transformative agendas and unpacks the complexities, contradictions and slippages involved in this process. She shows that although most new commissions have been innovative, some universities have acquired works with potentially traditionalist – even backward-looking – implications. While the motives behind removing inherited imagery may be underpinned by a desire to unsettle white privilege, in some cases such actions can also serve to maintain the status quo. This book is unique in exploring the transformative ethos evident in the curation of visual culture at South African universities. It will be invaluable to readers interested in public art, the politics of curating and collecting, as well as to those involved in transforming tertiary and other public institutions into spaces that welcome diversity.

Sujets

• Social History
• HISTORY
• EDUCATION
• Histoire
• University
• Higher

Informations

• Publié par: WITS University Press
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776141203
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 17 Mo

Extrait

Published in South Africa by
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg
www.witspress.co.za
First published 2013
Text © Brenda Schmahmann 2013
Photographs, unless otherwise indicated, © Paul Mills 2013
Published edition © Wits University Press 2013
ISBN: (print) 978-1-86814-580-5
ISBN: (digital): 978-1-86814-579-9
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
Copy-edited and project managed by Mary Ralphs
Designed and typeset by Oliver Barstow
Printed and bound by Interpak Books
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1
Negotiating works from the early twentieth century
2
Rethinking university insignia
3
New art acquisitions
4
Portraits of university officers
5
Controversies
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
Acknowledgements
This work is based upon research supported by the National Research Foundation. I am also grateful to Rhodes University, where I was employed previously, for funding which enabled me to do research towards this book. I am indebted to Mary Ralphs, who served as managing editor, for her attentive editing of the text and careful attention to the various details of this project, as well as to Roshan Cader and Veronica Klipp for the support of Wits University Press. I thank Oliver Barstow for devising a design that is entirely apt for the book. I am deeply grateful to Paul Mills, my husband, who took most of the photographs included in the book as well as images I needed as reference material.
The following people afforded me invaluable assistance through interviews, directing me to apposite material, enabling my access to material I needed or engaging with one or other aspect of my research during the development of this book:
H UGH A MOORE , Registrar, University of Cape Town
P ROF B RUCE A RNOTT , Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town (retired)
W ILLEM B OSHOFF , artist in Johannesburg
A NDRIES B OTHA , Senior Lecturer, Fine Art and Jewellery Design Department, Durban University of Technology
M ATILDA B URDEN , Senior Curator and Researcher: Cultural History, Sasol Art Museum
J ULIA C HARLTON , Curator, Wits Art Museum, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
C YRIL C OETZEE , artist in Johannesburg
M ARIÉ C OETZEE , Head of Archives and Special Collections, University of South Africa
P AUL C OX , Assistant Curator (Archive and Library), National Portrait Gallery, London
R ESHADA C ROUSE , artist in Johannesburg
G ERARD DE K AMPER , Curator of the University of Pretoria art collection
D R L YDIA DE W AAL , Director, Sasol Art Museum, Stellenbosch University
E LIZABETH DE W ET , Librarian, Rhodes University
F RIKKIE E KSTEEN , Lecturer in Visual Art, University of Pretoria
D R S TEPHEN F OURIE , Registrar, Rhodes University
B RIAN G ARBUTT , Operations Manager, T Birch & Co., Grahamstown
P ROF M ARGARET G RADWELL S LABBERT , Associate Professor in Visual Art, University of Pretoria
P ROF C AROLYN H AMILTON , NRF Chair, Archives and Public Culture Research Initiative, University of Cape Town
P ROF K AREN H ARRIS , University Archivist, University of Pretoria
L ESLEY H ART , Manager, Special Collections, Manuscripts and Archives, University of Cape Town
The late D R D EREK H ENDERSON , former Vice-Chancellor, Rhodes University
P ROF L OUIS J ONKER , Department of Old and New Testament, Faculty of Theology, Stellenbosch University
J ACOB L EBEKO , Curator, UNISA Art Gallery
B RONWYN M C L EAN , Designer, Graphics Services Unit, Rhodes University
P ROF L. M OLAMU , former Registrar, University of South Africa
H ERMINA N EL , Marketing and Corporate Communications, University of South Africa
C HRISTOPHER P ETER , Director of the Irma Stern Museum, University of Cape Town
T ANYA P OOLE , Lecturer in Fine Art, Rhodes University
D EBORAH P OYNTON , artist in Cape Town
E LIZABETH R ANKIN , Professor of Art History, University of Auckland
F IONA R ANKIN -S MITH , Curator, Wits Art Museum, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
P ROF S TAN R IDGE , Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of the Western Cape (retired)
S ALLY S CHRAMM , Librarian, Rhodes University
S ALLY S COTT , artist in Grahamstown
M OHAMMED S HAIKH , Senior Director, Communications and Liaison, Stellenbosch University
Staff of Rhodes House, Oxford
A NTHONY S TARKEY , Head of Fine Art and Jewellery Design Department, Durban University of Technology
B RONWYN S TRYDOM , formerly Archival Assistant, University of Pretoria
D R D EREK S WEMMER , Registrar, University of the Free State (and formerly of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)
A NGUS T AYLOR , artist in Pretoria
P ROF P ETER V ALE , Professor of Humanities, University of Johannesburg
M ARY VAN B LOMMESTEIN , Curator of the Irma Stern Museum, University of Cape Town
J ANÉTJE VAN DER M ERWE , Pretoria (formerly in the Department of Corporate Communications, University of Pretoria)
R IA VAN DER M ERWE , Archival assistant, University of Pretoria
S USAN VAN DER M ERWE , Communications and Liaison, Stellenbosch University
F RANCESCA V ERGA , Curator, DUT Art Gallery, Durban University of Technology
P ROF G AVIN Y OUNGE , Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town
Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and the NRF accepts no liability in regard thereto.
Introduction
In 1999, the former Rand Afrikaans University commissioned Willem Boshoff to make an artwork to celebrate the institution’s shift into the new millennium. Placed within and just outside the entrance of the primary buildings of what would subsequently become the Auckland Park Kingsway campus of the University of Johannesburg, Boshoff’s Kring van Kennis (or Circle of Knowledge ) is comprised of eleven black granite boulders with planed tops and rough-hewn sides ( F IGURES 1–5 ). Invoking reference to the remains of a site where sacred gatherings once took place, the rocks look as if their arrangement may have been determined by an early belief system. This allusion to the remnants of arcane knowledge production provides an apt context for spirals of script inscribed onto the boulders ( F IGURES 6–7 ). Offering definitions for a set of obscure English words, each boulder provides its explanations in one of South Africa’s eleven official languages.
The words chosen are all ‘ologies’ and ‘isms’. Boshoff selected them, he suggests, because they ‘are the things that are taught at the university: they are things that people study’. 1 But these are not regular or predictable research topics. Some make us laugh because they suggest fields too esoteric to be probable in a contemporary context:
TEGESTOLOGY THE HOBBY AND INTEREST CONCERNING BEER MATS .
VEXILLOLOGY A STUDY OF FLAGS AND BANNERS .
Others make us smile because, while sounding highly erudite, they in fact describe actions far removed from the realms of the highbrow:
CATAGLOTTISM A KISS IN WHICH THE TONGUES ARE TOUCHING .
HYPOCORISM A TERM OF ENDEARMENT OR A PET NAME .
Still others refer amusingly to modes of conduct, the nouns for which are generally unknown:

Figure 1
Willem Boshoff with one of the eleven granite rocks constituting Kring van Kennis ( Circle of Knowledge ) (2000), granite with sand blasted text, University of Johannesburg.

Figure 2
One of the granite rocks from Circle of Knowledge .

Figure 3
Indoor components of Circle of Knowledge .

Figure 4
View of Circle of Knowledge from indoors to outdoors.

Figure 5
Outdoor components of Circle of Knowledge .
But the words and their definitions do not involve only light humour. They may also discomfort the viewer, invoking reference to prejudice or guilt, and thus to ‘ologies’ and ‘isms’ which we perhaps ought to study rather more than we do:
ETHNOPHAULISM INSULTING SPEECH IN A RACIAL SENSE .
HAMARTOLOGY THE DOCTRINE THAT DEALS WITH SIN .
The Rand Afrikaans University campus was just over two decades old at the time of the commission. Opened officially in 1976, and providing a new home to a university that had been located in temporary premises since it had commenced operating in 1968, its design and construction coincided with what Clive Chipkin (1998: 259) terms ‘the heyday of state triumphalism’ in Johannesburg – that is, the period between the late 1960s and mid 1970s which saw other large-scale projects such as the South African Broadcasting Corporation complex, the Carlton Centre and the Standard Bank Centre also reach fruition. Like these other structures, the principal buildings comprising the campus were of a grandiose modernist design, and conveyed a sense of the power and confidence of the apartheid state. But unlike these other examples, the university’s architecture also included a key Afrikaner nationalist trope: the centralised arrangement of the buildings was unmistakably reminiscent of a laager, as Daniel Herwitz (1998: 417) observes. While universities more commonly deploy architectural elements that articulate some relationship between town and gown, this campus instead presented itself as a concrete bastion intractably resistant to outside forces – an incursion into anglicised Auckland Park, ‘a mainly residential suburb served by Kingsway [Avenue], with its monarchal English ring, and scattered with Thames-side street names from Henley to Cookham’ (Chipkin 1998: 258–259).

Figure 6
Detail with English definitions from Circle of Knowledge .

Figure 7
Detail with Setswana definitions.
But the university which commissioned Willem Boshoff had changed fundamentally since the dark days of its founding when its first rector, Professor Gerrit Viljoen, was