As of June this year, the prime parking bay at the Johannesburg Goodman Gallery has been reserved for a petite cherry-red sports car whose customised numberplate flaunts the letters “LNE”.
These are the initials of Liza Nicole Essers, the new custodian of the Goodman empire. After almost 43 years at the helm, founder Linda Givon has sold the Goodman Gallery to Essers, a 34- year-old art consultant and curator plucked from a corporate background in private equity and e-commerce.
Essers, in proportions matching her car, is fluey and engulfed in a furry parka when she welcomes me to her new office. She is trying to deflect a stream of photographers who threaten to canonise her in ski-wear sans makeup.
Before the Goodman Gallery, Essers, originally from Durban, was director of Liza Nicole Fine Art, an art production outfit she started in 2003. This followed what she calls “an 18-month sabbatical” from the business world during which she took a photography course and studied art history in Florence under the historian and famed art guru, Rose Shakinovsky.
In addition to Liza Nicole Fine Art, Essers is credited with co-producing Gavin Hood’s 2005 film Tsotsi as well as a series of documentaries on contemporary South African art. This effort will come under the umbrella of the Goodman Gallery with the first episode, featuring William Kentridge and Marlene Dumas in conversation, due for release before the end of the year.
Buying the Goodman Gallery means the end of her own enterprise in exchange for a second-hand legacy, but she sees this as a worthwhile shift. “I looked at the art industry as a whole and realised that this was a real opportunity.
The Goodman Gallery has been the custodian of cultural development and the visual arts for 43 years, and having worked with Linda on a couple of projects and knowing that she was of ill health and that she was moving on, I felt that it was really important, in terms of South Africa’s cultural heritage, that the legacy of the Goodman Gallery continues,” she says.
An “opportunity” like this doesn’t come cheap. Essers is covert about her backer, someone she describes only as “an extraordinary businessman” and “philanthropist”, and even more so about how much it cost.
Thanks to Givon the Goodman Gallery is known to art lovers who have lived in Johannesburg over the past 30 years: Essers has big shoes to fill. I ask her whether Givon’s legacy might limit her own ingenuity as director. “I recognise that the gallery has done amazing things and has an extraordinary stable of artists and obviously I want to continue that — otherwise I wouldn’t have bought the Goodman Gallery,” she answers. “
By the same token, I think that by its nature, over time my aesthetic and creative vision will come through.”
One aspect of this “creative vision” is to bring more international artists into the gallery’s fold, a liaison Givon depended on in her early days as a dealer to remain financially afloat. “Contemporary South African art will always be the primary focus, but maybe we could look at, let’s say, 20% of the artists being international,” Essers says.
She also aims to expand the gallery’s publishing output and to initiate a “project space”, a smaller exhibition space that will provide young artists with an opportunity to make a connection with the gallery.
Essers has her eye trained on a few young artists including Mikhael Subotzky, whose international profile will skyrocket in September with an exhibition of his work opening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Minette Vari and Hasan and Husain Essop, twin brothers from Cape Town whose photographic works were “an absolute hit” at the Goodman’s stand at Art Basel this year.
Her own collection, which is “lovely” but “not massive”, she says, includes these and other contemporary South African artists. “It’s not like, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got a Damien Hirst and a this and a that’ … It’s not that significant — I’m still a young collector,” she says. “I’ve got Kentridge and I’ve got Mikhael Subotzky and I’ve got David Goldblatt and there’s a fantastic Cuban artist who I saw at the last Havanna biennale, and I completely fell in love with his work, so I’ve got lots of his work!” she says.
“I am an art addict and if I could I would just surround myself with amazing art. That’s why I think I’m the luckiest girl in the world to be doing what I do. Art’s my passion.”