For media images and interview requests, please contact: Zikhona Jafta at mediaofficer@iziko.org.za
Iziko Museums of South Africa is commemorating Youth Day under the national theme of Promoting sustainable livelihood and resilience of young people for a better tomorrow. On Youth Day, Thursday, 16 June, visit select Iziko Museums for *free – including the Iziko South African Museum (ISAM), the Iziko Slave Lodge (ISL), the Iziko Bo-Kaap Museum, Iziko Rust en Vreugd, and Iziko Koopmans de Wet.
Exhibitions at these museums provide visitors with the opportunity to learn about, understand and challenge institutional narratives – where previously untold histories are brought to the fore.
Highlights at the ISAM include PLOT: Critical Zones – an exhibition by Earth and mining artist Jeannette Unite, where the tradition of landscape painting as a response to ecological crises and contemporary understandings of materiality has been revisited, ultimately critiquing the force of human compulsion for
material goods regardless of environmental and social consequences and urging society to take a stand for the world our children will inhabit, before it’s too late.
Other highlights include Talking Heads and Heritage: in conversation with the Lydenburg Heads , JellyWorld – an ocean full of jellyfish in a world changed by people and Sentinels of the South.
The ISAM is open daily between 09h00 and 17h00; with free entry on Youth Day, Thursday, 16 June.
Highlights on exhibition at the ISL include the new exhibition, Who were the enslaved? Commemorating lives under enslavement at the Cape of Good Hope. Through the special renaming of the spaces in the Slave Lodge, this exhibition seeks to answer the questions: Who were the enslaved? What work did they do? How did they manage to survive a new, unwelcoming and often violent environment once they arrived? How were they able to communicate with each other when they came from far-flung regions: South Asia, South-East Asia, Madagascar, East Africa and initially West Africa? Also on show at the ISL is Aluta Continua – an exhibition profiling a selection of stories from students living in the Western Cape during the 1976 student uprisings, and seeks to map their individual and collective contributions to the fall of apartheid and the dream of a free and fair South Africa for all.
The ISL is open from Mondays to Saturdays, between 09h00 and 17h00; free entry on Youth Day, Thursday, 16 June.
Highlights at the Iziko Bo-Kaap Museum include Islamic Art: an African Interpretation – an exhibition that seeks to celebrate the diversity of Islam, and who we are as a people of Africa, and constitutes an unequivocal statement: that we disavow that our Africanness be defined by our race, religion, gender or historical origins. Highlights at Iziko Rust en Vreugd include Land/scapes at Iziko Rust en Vreugd and an exhibition of the William Fehr Collection; highlights at Iziko Koopmans-de Wet include the Marie Koopmans-de Wet Exhibition – not to mention the house itself!
The Iziko Bo-Kaap Museum is open from Mondays to Saturdays, between 09h00 and 17h00, while the two house museums, Rust en Vreugd and Koopmans-de Wet, are open Thursdays and Fridays between 09h00 and 16h00. All abovementioned sites are free-of-charge on Youth Day, 16 June.
Youth Day, born from the June 16 Soweto uprisings, comes as both a celebration of the rights of all citizens and as a solemn remembrance of those who suffered to secure them.
*Free entry excludes the Iziko Planetarium and Digital Dome; Castle of Good Hope; Groot Constantia; and museums closed on Sundays. Please also note that Covid-19 protocols apply.
