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There is a new man at the reins at Museum Africa; Ali Hlongwane has moved from the Hector Pieterson Museum and Memorial in Soweto to downtown Joburg.
Ali Hlongwane, newly appointed chief curator at Museum Africa, has big plans for the museum
MUSEUM Africa in Newtown has a new chief curator, and he's encouraging his staff to have tantrums as a way of creating a lot of noise around badly needed new vision for the museum.
He is Ali Hlongwane, formerly the curator of the Hector Pieterson Museum and Memorial in Orlando West, and he has been in the post since 1 November. The museum has been rudderless for some years, with curators coming and going.
Hlongwane admits that one of his major challenges is to take on more curators. "We are unacceptably understaffed - the museum had 30 but now has 15 staff members, and they are mostly museum attendants."
He adds that the museum only has two curators and it needs six. It has six sub-departments: images, history, cultural history, geology, photography and contemporary exhibitions.
Recent appointments are Dudu Madonsela, who is the curator of the Bensusan Museum of Photography; and Zola Mtshiza, the curator of contemporary exhibitions. In the coming months Hlongwane will be advertising to fill the other curatorships.
Another challenge is to overhaul the museum's permanent exhibitions. Only three are in good condition, he says: the Gandhi exhibition, the Bensusan exhibition, and the cultural photography exhibition.
The Treason Trial exhibition, going back many years, is under serious review, says Hlongwane, mainly because it covers political history, which is well-represented by other institutions in Joburg, like the Apartheid Museum, the Hector Pieterson Museum, the Kliptown Open Air Museum, and the Constitution Hill museums.
Hlongwane wants to shift Museum Africa's focus to what he believes it should be - cultural history.
"We need to ask: ‘What does Africa mean in the context of this museum?', and ‘What is Africa, African art and culture?', and ‘What are the different African experiences?'"
Hlongwane sees the strength of the museum in its large collection of Khoi and San material; its art from the 1930s onwards; and its cultural products by African communities. "But most of this is in its storerooms. We want to see it coming out, both in permanent and temporary exhibitions."
Thousands of items
The museum has some 850 000 items, half of which are photographs in the photo archives. They cover a wide range of artefacts - fashion, paintings, costumes, rock art, numismatics, philately, furniture, ceramics, past technology, beadwork, basketry and carvings.
The collection was bought by the City from John Gubbins in 1935, the original collector, who collected Africana across all racial groups. For many years the museum was called the Africana Museum.
However, after 1994, says Hlongwane, the themes and concerns were sometimes considered to not be politically correct, and so items were stored away.
But he wants to revisit the museum's collections, and ask several questions: what does this collection say to us today? What opportunities are there to re-interpret the collection from new perspectives? What can the indigenous collections contribute to these perspectives?
He sees the museum as a collage. "The museum is characterised by multiple things - art history, photography and contemporary items." It should be seen to complement the Johannesburg Art Gallery collection, also a city-owned museum.
He says there is a need to debate and discuss the collection, and not to be afraid of tackling controversial issues.
Two new exhibitions
Immediate plans are for two new exhibitions. One, called L'Afrique, is planned to open on Africa Day in 2009 - 25 May. It will look at the museum's collection of African art and African furniture, and showcase a selection of its extensive catalogue collection.
Museum Africa makes a bold statement at the western edge of the CBD
The other exhibition will showcase African art from various countries on the continent, including rock art.
In recent years, the museum's wonderful spaces have been used for functions and public events, but Hlongwane sees this as a two-edged sword. It brings in people who would not normally come to the museum but at the same time there is discord between what the museum offers and these public performances; as a result, the museum experience has suffered.
"Although public events are a trend internationally, we will be very selective in future, and take only those that add value to the museum."
Madonsela's vision for the Bensusan Photography Museum is firstly to balance the collection, which at present focuses more on cameras than photography. She also plans to put together a mobile exhibition to take to previously disadvantaged communities.
Mtshiza is particularly keen to dip into the ethnographic collection, and exhibit some of it on a permanent exhibition. He likes the museum's drum collection, which dates back to the late-1890s, and wants to bring some of the drums out of the storerooms.
Museum space
Hlongwane sees the physical space of the museum, with its high half-moon steel arches, as very much part of its dynamics. He likes the open-plan feel, and would in future like even to highlight the architecture of the building, a unique structure 200 metres in height and 37 metres in width, stretching along a full block of Bree Street.
It was the largest building of its kind in South Africa at the time of its construction in 1913, designed by draughtsmen of the city engineer's department. It has large, striking, domed-topped corner columns, finished with a burgundy tin roof and facias, with dusty pink walls and deep blue metalwork.
Hlongwane will, in future, indicate the different sub-museums, like photography and geology, at the entrance, to guide visitors to the wealth of material on display.
Sandra de Wet, the manager of information services at Museum Africa, is pleased with Hlongwane's appointment. "He comes with a good notion of what needs to be done," she says. "He knows the inside story here, he knows how the city works, he knows the staff situation, he has no illusions."
She is particularly pleased that he has a heritage background, and will "make proper museum decisions, and will fight for heritage preservation aspects".
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