This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

7th April 2007

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Over the next few weeks and months, visitors to the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town will see both less and more than they might expect.

They will see less because, included amongst the items displayed in the current exhibition, “Why Collect? New Acquisitions Made By The Iziko Art Department 2005-2006”, are a handful of empty frames – a deliberate gesture aimed at raising public awareness of the heavy financial restrictions placed on the Gallery’s attempts to broaden its collection. The “Gaps” include works by black South African artists such as Moses Tladi and John Koenakeefe Mohl that have sold to private or overseas collectors, and international artists such as Paula Rego. Alongside the empty frames are brief notes explaining the importance of having such pieces in the Gallery: collecting South African artworks is a question of national heritage, while increasing the number of international artists represented is necessary if the Gallery is to attain greater global prestige and thus attract more interest from abroad.

Visitors will see more than they might expect, however, because the exhibition-campaign reveals some fairly sobering statistics. Firstly, there are comparisons between the state-funded National Gallery’s annual budget for purchasing new artworks (a paltry R141,000) and the buying power of various municipally-funded local institutions: the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum in Port Elizabeth has R280,000 at its disposal annually, while the William Humphreys Gallery in Kimberley spent R776,966 in 2005-2006 (92% of which was used to acquire works by black artists previously under-represented in the collection). As one would expect, these figures constitute just a fraction of the amount spent by national galleries in other countries: R45 million in Britain, R60 million in Australia, R205 million in the USA. Secondly – lest anyone should argue along the “art is a luxury in a developing nation” line – there are comparisons to the enormous amounts of money spent on, for instance, the arms deal (R52 billion) and the president’s new security fence (R90 million). Add to this the fact that no funding at all was made available for acquisitions from 1997 to 2002, and it is easy to see why the Gallery is in a distressing position.

In the 1960s, the ministry turned down a chance to buy the Labia Collection of Old Masters for what was then around R1 million; individual pieces from this collection were subsequently sold for millions abroad (Proud is a marvelous raconteur and, in his inimitable fashion, he relays to me sub rosa the tales of woe regarding Prince Labia and his severed connection to the South African art world, including the story of the Natale Labia museum in Muizenberg – but that’s a separate concern). In the 1970s, money that had been set aside for much-needed building extensions was apparently seized and used towards the Angolan war. The following decade saw a continuation of the pattern of mistreatment. With the flourish of a barrister submitting evidence, Proud hands me a copy of a newspaper article dated 27 April 1980; it reveals that, when funds were made available for “the cultural advancement of South Africans”, the Gallery received about one-sixth of the amount that was spent on other leisure facilities, such as camping grounds.

If, apart from enforcing race-based admissions policies, the attitude of the “Nats” to the National Art Gallery was marked chiefly by indifference, then the new democratic dispensation’s approach has tended towards the kind of state interference that can compromise the intellectual and aesthetic freedom needed by any art gallery. The Gallery is occasionally granted a kind of ad-hoc “transformation funding” to purchase works on particular themes that adhere to the ANC government’s national priorities: HIV/AIDS, empowerment of women, youth issues and the like. Glancing at some of the items displayed in the “Why Collect?” exhibition, I find myself wondering aloud what criteria are applied to categorise a work of art in this way – does an abstract painting with a title that hints at the pandemic qualify? What qualities should a portrait of a woman have in order to be empowering? Proud doesn’t take the bait, but he does acknowledge that there is “an odour of prescriptiveness” about the guidelines laid out by the Department of Arts and Culture, making the staff of the gallery feel they are “being drawn down a political path”.  

The Gallery thus relies heavily on donations from benefactors or from artists themselves. Unfortunately, in South Africa this practice is discouraged by legislation that prevents donations in cash or in kind to museums from being tax-deductible (in addition, the VAT exemption of state-funded museums was removed in 2006). Some years ago, for precisely this reason, the National Gallery lost the opportunity to add a group of Picasso paintings to its collection – a loss that was only emphasised by the extremely successful “Picasso and Africa” exhibition held last year. Proud and his colleagues argue that the establishment of a charitable trust for South Africa’s national museums, donations to which would be tax-deductible, is one of various steps that need to be taken to solve the problem. Furthermore, an increase in spending on collecting and exhibiting is required: currently, Iziko Museums of Cape Town spends only 3% on these core functions, indicating both the administrative cost of incorporating such a large number of museums (thirteen) into a single umbrella organisation, and the restrictions placed on individual institutions under the Iziko Museums mantle.

Proud is too diplomatic to admit it, but the operation of the Gallery is probably hampered by the fact that it is part of the Iziko fold, exacerbating the twin problems of funding shortages and lack of independence. Iziko describes itself as “a non-profit organisation partially funded by the national Department of Arts and Culture” and is thus nominally autonomous, but when the government indicates the direction it would like Iziko Museums to take, the organisation is able to impose these policies on its members (along with collections of fine art, the Iziko group has divisions of natural history and social history, and includes institutions as diverse as the Planetarium, the SAS Somerset, the South African Museum, the Castle of Good Hope, Rust en Vreugd, the Slave Lodge, the West Coast Fossil Park, the Bo-Kaap Museum and Groot Constantia). At the National Gallery, there are implications both in terms of fund-raising and in terms of the distribution of those funds. For example, the proceeds of a blanket R10 entry charge go to Iziko coffers and not to the Gallery; even if the money went to the Gallery, the revenue would be nearly negligible, but imposing an entrance fee undermines the principle of having an accessible public art gallery. As for spending money, Proud notes that the Gallery’s operating budget barely takes into account hidden costs such as conservation and storage (indeed, the Gallery is still in desperate need of expansion, while the costs of developing off-site storage space are prohibitive). The CEO of Iziko Musuems, Professor Jatti Bredenkamp, and Executive Director of Core Functions, Dr. Patricia Davison, were unavailable for comment.

Repeated attempts by The Weekender to obtain a response from the Department of Arts and Culture have been unsuccessful. The Gallery is located alongside Parliament on Government Avenue, but for now it seems that the pleas for increased funding – along with Hayden Proud’s convincing argument that the collections in South Africa’s galleries and museums “should ultimately be a focal point of national pride” – are falling on deaf ears.