Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.Weighing in: Max Hollein, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, visited South Africa recently.
But Hollein wasn’t in Hout Bay to dish out impromptu plaudits to local artists. His visit to Cape Town marked the start of a two-week business trip to museums and cultural sites across southern and East Africa. “The Met is, yes, a big universal institution,” Hollein began his speech in Hout Bay. “We have over 1.5 million objects in our care.”The Met holds about 26 000 pieces of Egyptian art dating from the Palaeolithic to the Roman period. The Michael C Rockefeller Wing — opened in 1982 and named for a scion of the Rockefeller dynasty who died while on a collecting expedition in New Guinea in 1961 — is home to nearly 3 000 works from sub-Saharan Africa produced over the past 800 years.
Earlier in the day, I met Hollein and LaGamma at The South African Museum to talk about their visit in greater detail.There is a lot of work to be done. The intention is to present this documentary content, filmed by Ethiopian-American filmmaker Sosena Solomon, in the museum’s African art galleries. Cape Town photographer Jo Ractliffe was also invited to show 23 photos of desert scenes where conflict had occurred during the South African Border War.described it as an “idea-filled and troubling show”. Troubling how? Earlier in 2015, before Kongo opened, the controversial Congolese businessman and art collector Sindika Dokolo added his voice to a growing chorus calling for Western museums to return looted artefacts.
Hollein’s tenure as director coincides with a sea change in attitudes towards the cultural patrimony of Africa held in Western museums. One layer, he said, involves the political environment in the US, which is essentially laissez-faire, leaving it to museums to regulate policy. Hollein reiterated his museum’s initiatives in reimagining the Rockefeller Wing and plans to integrate African art into the forthcoming modern and contemporary wing.He also emphasised the dynamic Africa-led programming introduced during the current pause.
“The Met is a very good place for objects, not only because we conserve and take care of them, but the level of research and sharing of information is really significant.