Civil society cautiously optimistic about Jhb Art Gallery

While civil society groupings have welcomed the return of 145 art pieces to the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG) collection, they still accuse the City of Joburg of lacking transparency on its plans to restore the gallery to its former glory.

The exhibition of the artwork, called Homecoming, was launched at the old Standard Bank Gallery last week and is dedicated to the return of the art pieces from a two year world tour.

For groups like the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation (JHF) and the Friends of JAG (FoJAG) the exhibition also represented some progress after years of pressuring the City to make the JAG and its collection of over 9 000 works fully accessible to the public again.

“The City's main priority should be to make the collection accessible to us, the people of the city. It's ours. In the original deed of donation of 1910 it puts this collection in the hands of the City, on the trust of the City to take care of and to make accessible to the people of Joburg,” said Eben Keun, a member of FoJAG.

Homecoming was made available on exclusive display toG20 and B20 dignitaries as part of Joburg’s G20 cultural showcase. It will be accessible for public viewing in February 2026.

The JHF and FoJAG have long complained that only about 1% of the JAG collection is viewable by the public, and continue to call on Joburg Mayor, Dada Morero to work with them on a plan to properly store, catalogue and display all of the art.

Over a year after the JHF and FoJAG sent a lawyer’s letter threatening legal action against the City for neglecting its duty of care for the JAG collection, the CoJ has now begun the process of relocating the artworks to alternative storage and display sites while it prepares to renovate the JAG building.

For the last decade the JAG, which opened in 1913, has suffered from neglect and mismanagement that has led to the deterioration of its building and the loss and damage of some artworks.

“The JAG is a building that, unfortunately, can't hold those assets any longer. We need infrastructure that is suitable for 2025 and for the next 25 years”.

“It's not enough for them to fix a building that was built in Victorian times, that has a whole colonial legacy. We need to reimagine the JAG entirely,” said Keun.

Keun said that they previously enjoyed a good working relationship with the City until the last decade. Now they complain that the City is refusing to work with them on the rehabilitation of the space.

Keun told OCN that renovations were currently in the planning phase, with heritage architects having been appointed.

In their 2024 letter the stakeholders demanded that the City consider a comprehensive plan that JHF and FoJAG created to rehouse, restore and digitise the JAG’s art collection. They also demanded the Metro conduct a full renovation and waterproofing of the Gallery’s leaking roof, rather than continuing to patch and repair it in parts.

A year later, Joburg’s 2025 rainy season is in full swing and the JAG collection is still largely being stored in the Lutyens building.

CoJ mayoral spokesperson Khathutshelo Mulaudzi told OCN that the partnership proposal with civil societywas still being vetted for compliance.

This, said Mulaudzi, was to ensure that “the areas of collaboration are not in contravention of the highly regulated environment within which the City and all its institutions are required to operate by law”.

But she rejected the suggestion that the JAG’s entire collection be made public.

“There is no museum in the world with a collection the size of the JAG that shows its entire collection. Museum exhibitions by their nature are curated, and as a rule we allow our curators the same license that many creatives have,” said Mulaudzi.

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• SIDEBAR

Homecoming is the product of a partnership between the CoJ and the French Embassy in South Africa, which is funding the temporary relocation.

Chief curator at JAG Khwezi Gule told the audience that the collection - which includes pieces by Picasso, Andy Warhol, Gerard Sekoto and William Kentridge - speaks to Joburg’s history and character. One etching by Kentridge, Casspirs Full of Love (referencing the armoured vehicles that patrolled apartheid-era townships) is intentionally displayed opposite a portrait of JAG co-founder and Randlord Lionel Phillips, to illustrate the connection between colonial conquest and the brutality of the apartheid era that followed.

“We thought the title of Homecoming was appropriate not only for the return of these works, but also the idea of going home, emakhaya, from the city. This collection is shaped by Johannesburg itself,” said Dr Same Mdluli, curator at the Standard Bank Gallery.