Johannesburg In and Out of the Museum: The Joubert Park Project, 2000-2001

In and Out of the Museu 1928, it grew quickly and by the first decade of the 20th Century boasted numerous Victorian and modernist architectural m o n u ments . In the middle of the city's grid, in its only open green space, Joubert Park, sits the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Designed by the English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens and opened in 1910, the JAG was the city's cultural center for the white populace until the end of the 1970s, when demographic changes began to escalate . By the 1990s, the area was h o m e to migrants from rural areas as well as from throughout the African continent, drawn to Southern Africa's largest city in hopes of obtaining employment. The change from a "white" to a "black" city occurred rapidly, as whites, uncertain as to their place in the New South Africa, pulled u p stakes a n d moved north, taking their financial resources with them. As neglected buildings deteriorated and the surrounding streets became increasingly occupied by informal businesses, white fears concerning safety escalated, and many began to avoid the center city even during the day. The Art Gallery, in its new environment of street vendors and taxi ranks, sat like a dowager at a rock concert, a stagnant relic of the past. Thus, the museum 's walls precisely demarcate the country's deep social divisions —on the inside, the hermetic world of "art"—on the outside , where its terraces serve as places to sit, eat and sleep, "life" continues, oblivious to the building's function. Yet, arguably after a decade of dramatic change, the center city is arguably assuming its new form. Numerous development initiatives, aimed at making the city more livable for its current population and more attractive to its former one, have begun. Former Minister of Culture and JAG Director Christopher Till in 1994 initiated the redevelopment of the Newtown Cultural District. Encompassing Museum Africa, the Market Theatre, the Fordsburg Art Studios, and Artist Proof community printmaking studio, the area around JAG is becoming a cultural h u b in fact and not just in name. Recently, urban renewal efforts have E l u K e i s e r , Chandelier, ( o p e n i n g d a y p e r f o r m a n c e ) 2 0 0 1 The Joubert Park Project, 2000-2001 L acking both inspired leadership and government support adequate for the task of reinventing itself for the "new" South Africa, the Johannesburg Art Gallery has recently been described as a true white elephant,' a m o n u m e n t to the country's colonial past. Located in the center of downtown Johannesburg, it exemplifies the challenges faced by cultural institutions in South Africa today. Recognizing that such institutions need not be marginal to the cultural life of the city, many young South African artists have assumed important leadership roles in revitalizing its museums. O n e successful artist-led initiative is the Joubert Park Project. The rationale for this venture in redefining museum-based public outreach programs was articulated by artist-activist Kathryn Smith: "If people are not going to museums in South Africa, what good will it do to simply move the kind of art that is indoors, outdoors? If the gallery systems don't work, we can't begin to understand how public art will function without addressing the public it concerns."^ Via collaboration, partnership and exchange, the project's organizers have succeeded in breaking down the formidable barriers between the museum and its surrounding community, providing an object lesson in engaged public art. As the largest city in South Africa, Johannesburg can be considered its cultural and economic capital. Dynamic and edgy, it is also "a field of violent contestation between extreme wealth and extreme poverty, between luxury a n d subsistence, idyll and inferno, excess and need,"-5 suspended unstably between what was and what will be. Founded in 1886 as a mining village, it is named for its surveyor, Johannes Rissik, who selected its site, and for the mining commissioner w h o controlled its mineral use, Johannes Joubert. Although not officially...