Fine art: Brenda Atkinson
The relationship between the private sector and the arts in South Africa has not traditionally been characterised by a spirit of mutual largesse: corporates regarded artists as garret-based idealists, while artists saw suits as conniving Thatcherites with philistine aesthetic inclinations.
The terrain, however, has shifted notably in the past few years, in part thanks to the endeavours of a clutch of people willing to engage with corporates and steer their marketing and social responsibility budgets firmly towards the arts. Gencor blazed a bright trail with its groundbreaking collection of contemporary South African art. Although the avant-garde bite of its choices caused controversy among employees, a bit of education goes a long way, and Gencor has survived opposition, cloaked in glory.
In the past few years, with provincial councils curbing contributions to artistic production, the burden of sponsorship has increasingly fallen to corporate concerns. There is now hardly a bank not involved in some form of cultural sponsorship, and there are several – such as Nedbank, Standard, Absa, and FNB – who allot considerable sums to contemporary art. The birth of Business Arts South Africa (Basa) in 1997, under the patronage of Thabo Mbeki, has also gone a long way towards diminishing the cognitive gap between artists and businesses.
Where corporate art collections are concerned, not all attempts are equal, and many collections languish unnoticed and unadvertised to the wider public, for whom they should in fact exist. So it’s to the relief and satisfaction of many that a new art collection emerges, marked by careful thought, cultural savvy, and the kind of historically grounded, forward-looking approach unheard of since Gencor’s brave move in a visually challenged, sport-obsessed society.
MTN has recently launched this collection, not as a complete and definitive body of South African art, but as a resource in progress. The collection– currently housed at the company’s head office in Sandton – was originally conceived of as a print collection that would focus on the “neglected tradition” of black South African printmakers, whose work was all but ignored during apartheid’s paranoid reign.
Thanks to the efforts of consultant Ronel Loukakis, the original concept has expanded into a wide-ranging project that situates work within three categories: precolonial, colonial and contemporary. What makes the collection significant and valuable – both financially and culturally – is that Loukakis has from the outset consulted with artists and art historians who are specialists in these fields, and whose experience ensures that those who benefit from the collection will have a sound sense of local art history.
Most importantly, this is not a collection that will collect dust in the company corridors, but a dynamic resource that will be moved to schools – via an “art bus” – for art education workshops. The educational focus will be strongly enforced by the establishment of the MTN Institute of Art and Material Culture, which, when opened early next year, will work with the University of the Witwatersrand to develop a national education programme to preserve and promote local art and heritage.
South Africa is sorely in need of a culture of literate appreciation of the visual arts, and education around contemporary art – much maligned by an alienated public – must take place within an historical context that gives us a sense of our artistic heritage.
Initiatives like MTN’s investment underscore the fact that art is as crucial a part of social and political progress as any other factor, and will hopefully encourage other private sector concerns to follow suit.
Finally, while the flipside to the corporate sponsorship coin – the achievement of product branding in the market place – will inevitably lead to competition, other corporate collections should ideally look to complementing, not imitating, existing projects.