National art collections are about visual history, memory and identity. At their best, they offer a key to the map of our past, a means of preserving roots and a document of unique and shared cultural formations. In South Africa, the politics and ethics of forming such collections are emerging from a history marked less by remembrance than selective ideological forgetting.
Education, earning power, “high” and “low” art and a dwindling local art market are some issues in a debate around the so- called “neglected tradition” of black South African artists, many of whom were lost to exile under tragic circumstances.
The recent return to South Africa of a substantial body of Grard Sekoto’s works raises often painful questions about the nature and history of museum acquisition policies, still grappling with the gaps apartheid carved into national art history.
In Paris, Sekoto played piano for booze, not money; his contemporary Dumile died a crack-cocaine addict in New York, where many of his works disappeared; half of Durant Sihlahle’s works went to American collectors who bought them in job lots at absurdly low prices.
Today, these works are more likely to be sold locally at absurdly high prices. Warren Siebrits, art dealer and brainchild behind Rosebank’s Gallery Metroplex, says he’s appalled by the figures Sekoto’s works are fetching.
He cites the case of The Proud Father, which was auctioned in 1986 for R7 000. Today, says Siebrits, it’s worth R100 000. At a Sotheby’s Johannesburg auction in April 1991, a private collector acquired Sixpence a door for R180 000.
“People are not courageous enough to get works into collections early,” says Siebrits, “which results in gaps in collections and also high prices when there’s suddenly a rush for a particular artist”.
Sandile Zulu is a good example of this – people are clamouring for him now, but why didn’t they buy from his first show?” He adds that museums are repeating old mistakes through political overcorrection, and that white conceptual artists will soon constitute the “new neglected tradition”.
Museum directors are quick to defend their collecting policies. Rochelle Keene, of the Johannesburg Art Gallery, cites numerous examples of the museum’s steps to redress historical imbalances.
Employing the research skills of art historian Else Miles, the gallery has acquired works by Ernest Mancoba, Selby Mvusi, and Valerie Desmore, all artists previously unknown in their own country.
But predictably, the bottom line for acquisitions comes down to inadequate funding. Despite having an acquisition budget of R300 000 – the largest in the country – and financial assistance from the Anglo-American Johannesburg Centenary Trust, Keene says the gallery’s purchases are still inhibited by budgetary constraints.
“We can’t buy in the depths we’d like to, nor do we buy from first exhibitions. We buy conservatively, and we also spend a large amount of our grant on repatriation of artworks.”
As for the purchase of contemporary conceptual work, Keene produces last year’s buying list to indicate that white artists are not being left to shiver in cold studios.
But names like Mark Hipper, Luan Nel and Alan Crump might not, for some, represent the emergent conceptual cutting edge.
Marylin Martin, as director of the South African National Gallery, runs a tight ship with a high profile investment in community consultation, education and cultural relevance. Asked about the potential pitfalls of political correctness, Martin states simply that “we’re not being PC. We’re reflecting the history of South African art, and if Beezey Bailey managed to sneak in as Joyce Ntobo, that’s part of that history. We’ve exhibited both their works anyway, and we certainly continue to collect the works of young conceptual artists.”
For Martin, funding remains a concern in terms of Gear, the government’s macro- economic strategy, presented in June last year. An acronym for Growth, Employment and Redistribution, Gear is about the full or partial privatisation of state assets, to reduce costs and allow government to spend elsewhere.
“There is a danger,” says Martin, “that museums may be denuded of their social role by becoming institutions that are driven by the profit motive, or constrained in their activities by their need to minimise costs to the state.” She adds that “corporate money is often `nervous’ money that is not interested in new, controversial, and difficult work.”
Siebrits says that part of the solution to funding constraints is canny, “relatively radical”, buying that looks for counterpoints to the hype, and makes informed decisions outside of popular taste. “You have to challenge the collecting policy and throw the net wider,” he says. “Private and corporate collectors are getting the best stuff, and often for nothing. R80 000 for a Willie Bester might rather be used to buy works of 80 young South African artists.”
Siebrits cites the “bad patronage” of white liberal influence as the greatest danger to emerging artists, but Bongi Dhlomo, director of the Africus Institute for Contemporary Art, says times are changing. Having sat on the acquisitions committees for both the Johannesburg Art Gallery and the South African National Gallery for several years, she’s been able to chart her own growth as a black artist and art administrator in a largely white liberal world.
“I was initially very guarded because I was uncertain of my own educational grounding,” says Dhlomo. “There’s been such a disparity in education in our history, and even as we look for works by black artists, we find that there are not many who are up to scratch.” Dhlomo believes firmly in the recognition given to the artists of the neglected tradition.
“It’s incredibly important that this work is found and documented, and I question the generosity of white artists who complain about this. Early colonisers simply plundered African art, and it disappeared. At least now, if works do leave the country, they go with a clear indication of their provenance.”