INTRODUCTION

The mainstay of any museum, its reason for being, is its permanent collection. The story of the initiators and major benefactors of the South African National Gallery (SANG) is a significant one which cannot be told in detail here, but which all the same has to be mentioned and acknowledged. It is no exaggeration to say that there would have been no National Gallery in the nineteenth century and little in the way of a collection worthy of the institution's name had it not been for a succession of discerning and extremely generous patrons.

The first efforts towards the formation of an art gallery in Cape Town were made in 1871 by the South African Fine Arts Association, and were given further impetus by the Thomas Butterworth Bayley Bequest of forty-five paintings the following year. A property was acquired in New Street, now Queen Victoria Street. In 1895, when the South African Art Gallery Act was promulgated, there were well over a hundred works in the collection. The Act came into force the next year, the institution was incorporated, its collection declared the property of the Cape Colonial Government, a Board of Trustees was established and the building was taken over for educational purposes. Years of neglect and indecision followed, until the present building, designed by Clelland and Mullins of the Public Works Department and F K Kendall, was opened on 3 November 1930. The funds came from the Government, the City Council and from the Hyman Liberman estate for the addition of the Liberman Hall and the magnificent memorial doorway, which was carved by Herbert Meyerowitz. By 1932 the Gallery had been incorporated as 'The South African National Gallery', a State-aided institution governed by a Board of Trustees. In 1937 a number of rooms were added, and in 1969 the Marist Brothers property adjoining the SANG, and now known as the Annexe, was accepted by the Board. The main building was closed for renovations and the installation of climate control and a new lighting system between April 1989 and October 1991. The lack of adequate space and facilities has been critical for well over a decade.

The richness of the foreign collections is due almost entirely to the munificence of the early patrons of the institution. Butterworth Bayley's example was followed by Alfred Aaron the Pass, who devoted a great deal of his energy and talents as a collector to the SANG.1 During the period 1930 to 1950 the institution received magnificent presentations from Lady Michaelis, Sir Edmund and Lady Davis, Sir Abe Bailey and Henry van den Bergh. There was no regular purchase grant during the 1930s and 1940s, and no full-time Director, this task being carried out in an honorary capacity by the Directors of the Michaelis School of Fine Art. In the late 1940s Edward Roworth, with the consent of the Board, embarked upon a selling spree of works from the Permanent Collection. A commission of enquiry was appointed by the Government in 1948, and as a result of this unfortunate experience, we have a policy that no works of art may be alienated or deaccessioned (see Addendum B). Ownership of the collection is vested in the SANG, but in a sense the true owners are the citizens of South Africa. The collection is part of the national treasure, and we are temporary custodians of a cultural and educational resource of great value which requires to be conserved and safeguarded in perpetuity.

In the last fifteen years important shifts have taken place in the Acquisitions Policy, which stated that art from the European founder countries, Africa and South Africa be purchased (see Addendum A). But already by 1980 it was becoming difficult to make significant additions to the modern Western or the older European collections. Since the mid-1980s the financial situation of the national art museum has steadily worsened. Inadequate Government subsidies, unsympathetic tax laws, the low value of the South African currency and the high prices of art works on the international market combined to put the institution in an unenviable position. These realities, and the extraordinary vitality and power of the art which began to emerge in South Africa during the 1980s, brought about a decided shift in the direction of SANG acquisitions policy - from buying internationally and focusing on established South African artists to an open-ended and pluralistic approach which means, for example, that work originating in rural and other 'peripheral' contexts began to be acquired alongside art which is influenced by the Western 'mainstream'. Increasingly diversified cultural production stimulated the evolution of a policy of inclusivity rather than exclusivity. This resulted in the termination, in 1991, of the Friends' Choice Collection, which was initiated in 1975 with a view to acquiring work by young, lesser-known or unknown artists. Many works were taken into the SANG Permanent Collection, a major show was held in 1992, and those created after 1985 can be seen on this exhibition.2 The Friends continue to purchase works on request and we are enormously grateful for this generous and sustained support.

Traditionally an art museum is a place where unfading, immortal works are kept, a place of permanence which values proven rather than experimental works of art. The SANG is such an art museum, but it is also much more. Here tradition merges with or is juxtaposed to experimentation; young art, untested and untried art, and the art of protest and anger and concern about a place and a society confront the spectator alongside great art works from the past. Taking new directions and bringing about profound shifts in thinking and working mean that definitions, distinctions and standards have to constantly be assessed and debated among ourselves and in public forums, many of which are initiated by the SANG. We are, in turn, challenged about what is suitable and appropriate for the collection of a national art museum - issues about 'art' and 'craft' and 'high' and 'low' are often raised, as we continue to erode traditional boundaries and eliminate categories which have invariably been imposed from outside our own borders and experience. These only serve to hinder the potential for interchange and the creation of our own theories and terminologies.

We believe that we are doing more than passively holding up a mirror to society, that we inform, construct, change and direct the narrative - aesthetically, culturally, historically, politically - through our acquisitions and exhibitions, that we invigorate art practice and that the national art museum is integral to refiguring and reinventing South African art and identity. This offers a partial explanation for the unease, disapproval and controversy with which the first manifestations of the new directions were greeted.3

Furthermore, at the SANG we have moved away from the idea of a museum as only a repository for objects to one which places the emphasis on social and educational responsibilities. We have become actively involved in the preservation and presentation of a multiplicity of cultural manifestations and we strive to foster an understanding, among all South Africans, of those parts of our history which have been neglected, which remain unrecorded or unacknowledged, or which have been suppressed. One of the major tasks since 1990 has been to establish a collection which acknowledges and celebrates the visual culture of southern Africa, and the repatriation of art works which were taken out of the country principally during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Our achievement in this field has been reflected in exhibitions such as 'Ezakwantu: Beadwork from the Eastern Cape' (1993-1994), 'IGugu lamaNdebele (Pride of the Ndebele)' (1994-1995) and 'African Art Heritage Collection' (1995).4 Our acquisition and exhibition policies (see Addendums B and C) enable us to redress the imbalances created by our history and by Eurocentric attitudes and approaches, to participate in the writing and rewriting of South African history and art history, and to use the context of art to address the historical problem of cultural difference in South Africa. We at the SANG are in a position to bring the past into the present, to challenge perceived culture, to stimulate and celebrate contemporary creativity, and to counter the separation between heritage and contemporary cultural production, between history and current expression.

The way in which we arrived at the exhibition 'Contemporary South African Art 1985-1995 from the South African National Gallery Permanent Collection' and the reasons for organising it are outlined by Emma Bedford in her Curator's Preface. Now we, and the public, are confronted by the works themselves, works which are carriers of the characteristics of South African art created over a period of ten years, and which reveal the directions and decisions taken by staff and members of the Board of Trustees of the SANG who serve on the Acquisitions Committee (see Addendum D). One of the most striking aspects of this show is the broad range of contemporary visual expression, with regard to medium, style and subject matter;5 another is the confirmation of the richness, diversity and complexity of our art.

What and where is South African art at this juncture? There are many divergent opinions and positions regarding the meaning, role and future of our art, a situation which has been brought into sharp focus by the end of the academic and cultural boycott, and years of isolation. The discussions and debates are local and specific, but they are also situated in the global context of post-colonialism and neo-colonialism, as well as post- and late-modernism, multi-culturalism and pluralism. There is no consensus on the exact meaning and application of such nomenclature in South Africa; no word, concept or construct can be taken at face value, or be dissected or theorised upon in any objective, academic or distant manner - our history is too painful, out challenges are too great.

Some artists are informed and influenced by the international mainstream while others are examining, reassessing and rejecting Western styles, methods and norms. Many find their inspiration in the kinship - or dissimilarity - between Western concepts, traditions of thought and training and the experience of living in Africa. For the past decade or so, potent works have emerged from the crossover and overlapping of cultures and the celebration of the creative and revitalising potential of hybridisation and transgression. Whatever the direction, South African art is no longer determined by ready-made, imported culture or mindless copying of fashionable styles; it is imbued with local content, context and specific cultural references.

Black artists in the rural areas are trained in fine traditions of woodcarving, mural painting, basket weaving, beadwork and pottery, and these techniques and skills have been harnessed by some to create intensely personal visual testimonies.6 They challenge and move us with the visionary and expressive power of their work. However, the majority of artists born in the townships are largely self-taught and continue to struggle for survival, without having access to either education or materials. Community art centres, art foundations, museums and galleries play a crucial role in the advancement of black art and artists in South Africa. Established black artists, teachers and administrators have stimulated and encouraged a process of redefining black art making, challenging market demands and prescriptions (which often focus on ethnicity and exoticism), and white preconceptions. Many black and white artists stretch between Africanism and Internationalism, or they grapple - like artists working in 'Third World' contexts - with making a contribution to global art while exploring own roots and concerns.

History and identity are critical elements in our consciousness. Art works produced before and after April 1994, when the first democratic elections were held in South Africa, bear witness to the need of some artists to face history and to confront memories, to combat the desire for historical amnesia; they seek the visual vocabulary and syntax with which to figure the unmentionable. Their quest is currently underpinned by the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was established to record the pain of the past, to open and clean the wounds of apartheid in a series of public hearings, so that the process of healing may commence and give rise to reconstruction and a more just future.

Our identity as Africans - our place on and relationship to the African continent - is not receiving a great deal of attention. A notable exception is the moving and inspired speech made by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, on behalf of the African National Congress, on the occasion of the adoption by the Constitutional Assembly of The Republic of South Africa Constitution Bill 1996, in Cape Town on 8 May. He began by saying 'I am an African', and proceeded to describe the complexity of his Africanity and his relationship to the many different population groups which comprise the South African nation and some events in our history. He spoke eloquently of the realities and difficulties facing the continent and affirmed that Africa 'is continuing her rise from the ashes.' He asserted that the 'constitution whose adoption we celebrate constitutes an unequivocal statement that we refuse to accept that our Africanness shall be defined by our race, colour, gender or historical origins.'

For centuries many white South Africans associated themselves with Britain and Europe, emulating in every possible way the 'civilised values', the 'standards', the 'way of life' and the art and culture of distant places, while ignoring, neglecting and destroying not only existing cultural manifestations, but also ones emerging from the struggle for political freedom. The majority of the people became the missing persons or the barbarians in the history of the land. Acknowledgment of and support for the arts by the State was exclusively to the benefit of white South Africa, and Eurocentrism and élitism were the driving forces. Things have changed rapidly - the days of the numerical majority functioning as a cultural minority are over, and different structures are being put in place or are emerging.7 We are now in a position to locate ourselves and our country within Africa, and this will be one of the major challenges facing the SANG in the next decade.8

The exhibition 'Contemporary South African Art 1985-1995 from the South African National Gallery Permanent Collection' serves as a powerful reminder that art and politics cannot be separated, and that we have acquired a significant collection of art which draws its inspiration from socio-political conditions. In the old South Africa culture was used both as a basis for apartheid and as a site for liberation. Art was a weapon for political struggle, and the country has a proud history of political art, and of intellectuals resisting oppression and registering dissent. Political art, in the form of direct and unambiguous comment on militarism, the security forces and the repressive Pretoria regime, emerged in the 1970s with artists such as Herman van Nazareth and Robert Hodgins. Dumile Feni, who died in exile, chronicled the disillusion and despair of black South Africans in intensely expressionistic drawings. In the late 1970s and early 1980s Michael Goldberg, Lucas Seage, Paul Stopforth and Gavin Younge produced political works of great power and resonance. They, like many artists represented on this exhibition, have worked towards finding the most appropriate technical, formal and expressive solutions for summing up, responding to and giving substance to the demands of their society and of humankind. They have shifted and pushed the boundaries of their methods and techniques, and along with it, they have altered the scope and nature of our vision and perception.

That art plays a powerful role in society, that it can move and provoke, was brought home to us in a most devastating way on 15 January 1992, when four uniformed members of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement) walked into the exhibition 'Recent Acquisitions 1990-1991' with two people who had identified the location of a ceramic sculpture in advance and proceeded to destroy it with hammer and boot. Eugene Terre'blance and his two side-kicks was a ceramic sculpture created by Gael Neke. It was a telling and powerful comment on a particular element in South African society, and members of the organisation smashed it in order to 'defend the honour of our leader'. They threatened to 'blow the place up' should the SANG again show monstrous images of Terre'blanche. The SANG was awarded damages in court, but the damage to the work was irreparable.9

Since the elections, South African society has moved from confrontation and opposition to reconciliation; from resistance to reconstruction. There are calls that political considerations be put aside and that artists find themes, images and metaphors for the new democratic society; there is indeed a crisis in the ranks of artists - and I use the term in the broadest sense to include writers, performing and visual artists - for whom resistance to apartheid was the prime, or only, source of stimulation and inspiration. We are embracing notions of empowerment and nationhood, but the horrors and inequities of apartheid will haunt this society for a long time, and they are exacerbated by the fears, contradictions, dreams and expectations which characterise this period of transition and transformation. Issues of gender, ecology, language, abortion, the death penalty, literacy, job creation, lack of basic services and education, land ownership, unbridled criminal violence, financial fraud, rampant capitalism, international drug dealing and the devastating effects of AIDS are on our minds and our lips.

So much of the old South Africa remains in place and in power, and a continued culture of secrecy, incompetence and corruption is a real threat to the well-being and growth of our fledgling democracy. It is incumbent upon civil society to guard and defend the principles of democracy and of the human rights which are enshrined in the Constitution. Culture was a successful tool of empowerment and demarginalisation in the old South Africa - sometimes in the face of great odds and hostility; it remains at the centre of the questions we are asking and the solutions we are seeking. From the above it is clear that there is a place for artists who choose to be activists and to engage with the demands of a new society. But the challenges and the possibilities are now infinitely more complex, diversified, ambivalent and contentious. Some artists will continue to reside in the breaking of the waves, others will plummet the depths of their own experiences, private explorations and emotions; they can neither be compelled nor coerced to tow any line, political or aesthetic. Demands cannot be placed upon them by politicians, institutions, self-appointed guardians of public morals and well-being, or by other artists.

This exhibition offers us an opportunity to take stock, to assess and measure our Acquisitions Policy and its implementation, to identify gaps and map future directions. When acquiring works of art one has to take risks and acknowledge the possibility of making mistakes. Purchasing for a national collection, we are obliged to exercise the best judgement we can, for if we make mistakes, we have to live with them, and so do the people of South Africa. So we have to be careful, responsible and cautious in the spending of public money, while at the same time being astute and adventurous enough to recognise and acknowledge new talent and trends. The national art museum has to lead and anticipate, rather than follow. Kirk Varnedoe, Director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, sums it up: 'We believe that sins of omission are worse than sins of commission. You get punished more for what you don't do than for what you do in error.'10

Acquisition procedures are detailed in the policy document (see Addendum B). Those few lines do not, however, capture the enormous amount of work that is required from staff, and the time it takes to visit exhibitions and artists' studios, to follow up possible donations and to keep abreast of new developments and emerging artists. While the Director and some members of staff are able to travel to other centres in South Africa, our budget does not allow us to devise or pursue a strategy for buying nationally. We are therefore often dependent on Board members and colleagues living in cities other than Cape Town to alert and inform us. By establishing and maintaining contact with South African artists living abroad, we have been able to purchase work by some of them.11 We have done remarkably well with the funds at our disposal, but every year we fall behind in every respect. The financial contraints of which my predecessor wrote, and on which Neville Dubow elaborates in the interview in this catalogue, are now such that we are frequently unable to acquire major works by young South African artists - particularly those who are rapidly building international reputations.12 This, as well as the critical lack of space, which mitigates against acquiring and accommodating large works and installations, urgently demand the attention of the Board of Trustees and the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology.

We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to all the Board and staff members who, over the years, have worked tirelessly and with vision, and sometimes against the wishes of the powers that be, to give substance to the ideal of building a national collection which reflects and reveals the African and Western roots and histories of South African art, as well as contemporary manifestations (see Addendum D). I would like to pay tribute to Neville Dubow, Chairperson of the Acquisitions Committee during the decade under consideration, for steering the process and practice with wisdom, insight, knowledge, articulacy and an unwavering eye for excellence and that which is unusual and meaningful. He was an active participant in creating and finalising the current Acquisitions Policy. It is fitting that the interview with Neville Dubow is conducted by Emma Bedford, who has also been part of the Committee for the past decade, and Jane Taylor, newly appointed member of the Board of Trustees and elected Chairperson of the Acquisitions Committee. In this sense the exhibition and the catalogue mark the end of an era.

I wish to thank warmly all the staff members who have committed themselves to the work which a museum collection demands, and which, because it is not always part of the public domain in which we operate, may go unnoticed - documentation, conservation, research, exhibition and education. Emma Bedford acknowledges the individuals who have worked on the project in her Curator's Preface; it remains for me to thank her for the way in which she took on the responsibility of curating the exhibition and editing the catalogue - in addition to her other curatorial functions inside and outside the SANG, and her many routine and managerial tasks as Head of the Curatorial Departments.

I have touched on the inadequate funding of the national art museum. The subsidy which we receive from the State is such that money has to be raised for all major exhibitions, publications and educational activities. This project could not have happened without generous international support and we are deeply grateful to Emmanuel Arinze and Gaël de Guichen of ICCROM the International Centre for the study of the Preservation and the Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), Mr A Perrin, Swiss Vice-Consul, and Dr Dora Rapold, Co-ordinator of the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation. I also gratefully acknowledge the initiative, support and assistance of Carol Kaufmann (SANG Curator) and Marianne Hildebrandt in obtaining the necessary funds.

What does the future hold? Visitors to the SANG frequently comment on the way in which South African art reflects both collective consciousness and individual concerns, social identity and personal anxiety; they notice that artists engage and grapple with who and where they are, and how they dig into meaning instead of wandering over the surface of our lives. As a result, many South African artists have escaped the superficial aspects of postmodernism - pastiche, appropriation, cynicism and mindless eclecticism - and have developed new approaches and methods through the liberation of forms and disciplines which postmodernism encourages. It is in the further exploration of complexity, of dealing with the past while constructing the present and the future, and giving it shape, that the challenge lies.

In the past fifteen years the pendulum has swung from modernism to postmodernism, from abstraction to figuration; it is swinging again - swiftly - in an opposite direction, incorporating notions of the disintegration of established art forms such as painting, sculpture and printmaking and the ascendancy of time arts such as video, sound, ephemeral installations and performance. Postmodernism is dead, but how do we define the epoch that follows it? We are not yet able to give it substance by giving it a name - all we know is that the doctrines of progress offered by capitalism and communism have failed, that we are part of profound changes in the topography of cultural expression, that we are post-postmodern and, at the same time, pre-something. How will artists be affected by unprecedented technological acceleration on the one hand, and a growing obsession with ethnicity and regionalism on the other? Are they going to reconcile - or oppose - globalisation with tradition, multiculturalism with fundamentalism, modernity with atavism, uniformity with the individual creative act? Are they going to confront, contest and contain the global village, the fast-speed, screen-based, special-effects world, with their diverse histories, cultures, and political and economic realities? These might be some of the most fascinating aspects of contemporary aesthetic production to watch and to follow as we move, inexorably, towards the fin de siècle, indeed the fin de millénium.

Footnotes

This collection was displayed at the SANG from 25 January to 30 June 1995; a catalogue, written by Anna Tietze and sponsored by Phillips Fine Art Auctioneers London, was published.

The exhibition, held from 9 April to 2 May 1992, was accompanied by a catalogue, Friends' Choice 1975-1991, with contributions by Joe Dolby, Melvyn Minnaar and Deon Viljoen, and sponsored by Creda Press (Pty) Ltd, Cape Town.

A public debate was organised at the SANG at the time of the exhibition 'Recent Acquisitions 1990-1991'; it was attended by 208 people and was characterised by a great deal of criticism by the traditional stakeholders of the SANG and some artists. The public will be invited to express opinions on the current exhibition and it will be an interesting barometer of how perceptions and concerns have changed.

A substantial catalogue, edited by Emma Bedford, was published in conjunction with the exhibition 'Ezakwantu: Beadwork from the Eastern Cape', which opened at the SANG in December 1993 and ran for more than a year; in 1995 it travelled to Würzburg in Germany and Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape. The bead works from the SANG Permanent Collection which were seen on the exhibition 'IGugu lamaNdebele' (Pride of the Ndebele) (December 1994 to April 1995) were bought for the institution by the Department of National Education in 1991. The 'African Art Heritage Collection' was acquired with the generous assistance of the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology; the exhibition opened on 24 September 1995, South Africa's first official Heritage Day.

There are sculptures in various media (bronze, marble, fibreglass, wood, ceramic, rubber, metal, tin, wire); paintings in oil, acrylic, gouache and water-colour; photographs; many works in mixed media, including collage and photo montage; prints (etchings, screenprints, lino- and woodcuts, lithographs); photocopies; drawings in ink, pastel, pencil and charcoal; baskets, fabric adorned with beads and other objects; film and video.

The term black in this article means black African; the generic term, favoured by the liberation movements during the struggle, and referring to all people who are not white, is no longer acceptable to many South Africans, who prefer to be called coloured, Griqua, Indian or however they choose to describe their identity in relation to population group.

At the time of writing the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology was in the process of finalising the White Paper on Arts and Culture (which proposes legislation for the more equitable distribution of skills and resources for arts, culture and heritage), establishing the National Arts Council, and restructuring the eighteen museums holding national collections.

This process has already begun. At the time that Bruce Arnott was Assistant Director of the SANG (1970-1971), a number of sculptures from Central and West Africa were acquired, including a superb collection of Ashanti gold weights from Ghana. As we make contact with colleagues from other African countries and travel to those countries, our opportunities for acquiring works increase. An exhibition of works from West Africa from the Permanent Collection, scheduled for May 1997, will be a direct reflection of Kim Siebert's nine-month stay in Ghana in 1995, when she attended the 7th PREMA (Prevention in Museums in Africa) course, and the Director's visit, referred to in the Curator's Preface, in the same year.

Gael Neke has 'reconstructed' the work, Untitled (Remains)(1994-1995); it was shown on the exhibition 'Siyawela: Love, Loss and Liberation in South African Art' curated by Colin Richards and Ptika Ntuli for 'africa95', and mounted at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Varnedoe, K. 'Museums have never been more central to culture'. Art International, 10, Spring 1990, p. 36.

These artists are Doris Bloom, Diana Kenton, Vivienne Koorland, Craig Hamilton and the late Davydd Myburgh.

The acquisitions budget has remained static - at R200 000 ($41 025 or &27 190) - for more than a decade, and it is incumbent upon the Director and staff to find creative solutions for augmenting the amount annually.