‘The war has started’ – Gayton McKenzie

The City of Joburg’s chronic mismanagement of the Joburg Art Gallery (JAG) may have finally met its match in sport, arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie. 

The minister told a packed crowd at Joburg’s Everard Read Gallery on Thursday night that “the war has started”. 

“The president has taken it upon himself and given me clear instructions that the Johannesburg Art Gallery has to be brought back to the way it used to look. And the [Friends of JAG] should not be seen as enemies like they’ve been seen as enemies,” he said.  

“Our art has been stolen and sold throughout the world. Some Africa art in the Johannesburg Art Gallery is no longer there and nobody can tell you where it is. But tonight I want to give you an assurance: I don’t care if it is in Cairo, I don’t care where it is, we are going to find it.” 

As for the JAG’s most valuable collection – currently on tour in South Korea – McKenzie said: “You ask yourself, what is our art doing in faraway places?” 

When Currency raised the issue of why the gallery had lent out 145 pieces to various Korean exhibits this year, amplifying an art loans policy that began with a small collection of 33 pieces to Italy in 2015, our story prompted a furious backlash from the city’s director of arts culture and heritage, Vuyisile Mshudulu.  

The JAG’s profile, Mshudulu said, had “vastly improved globally and is recognised for the importance of its collection which would otherwise not have been as widely known” were it not for the loan. However, experts Currency spoke to questioned both the size of the collection and the benefit to the city itself.  

A picture of neglect

The art on loan is but one issue between city staff, the Friends of JAG – a body established in the 1970s to support the collection – and the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation (JHF), which last year accused the city of failing to preserve the JAG art collection, let alone showcase its incredible heritage to Joburg residents.  

Built up under a deed of trust established more than a century ago, the collection has become perilously vulnerable to theft, decay and criminal neglect by the city meant to steward it, as Currency reported last year. And the risk has ramped up exponentially in the past five years under the city’s increasingly dysfunctional department of arts, culture and heritage, not least because the art gallery building in which the collection is housed in Joubert Park – an area which today is one of the most crime-ridden parts of the city – is in “deplorable condition”. 

It’s why, in August last year, the Friends of Jag and the JHF contracted law firm Webber Wentzel to serve the city with a letter of demand to move the collection ahead of Joburg’s rainy season – which, it turns out, has been especially pronounced this year. 

Months of wrangling ensued. But the collection remains in the leaky and mould-ridden building. And it’s still not clear that the city has read the room.

The Friends of JAG, the JHF and the ministry have proposed that the collection be temporarily relocated to the Ditsong collection of museums in Pretoria while a new plan for the JAG building is developed. This was a proposal floated last year already and which Mshudulu said would happen in three months – back in October 2024. Now, the city appears to be running its own parallel process to move the art and restore the historic art precinct in Joubert Park, under the auspices of the Joburg Development Agency.  

Besides Ditsong, the city is considering moving the art to the Standard Bank and Absa buildings in Joburg’s city centre, and the Newtown precinct, as possible storage locations. A 44-page document released last week as part of a “JAG stakeholder engagement” day has pledged to complete a due diligence before finalising a move by April 30. 

However, Currency sources say that the city has already appointed a contractor, Lamela Consulting – which bills itself as a “professional infrastructure services firm” – to undertake the gallery’s renovations. The stakeholder “consultation”, they say, was more of a show and tell.

Currency has asked the city about this and will update this story once we have a response.  

A timeline provided on the city’s document envisages that phase 1, to prepare and obtain “regulatory approvals”, will run until September, after which “infrastructure development & security enhancements” will take place, and “business model implementation & final approvals” will kick in for the gallery between August and October 2026, with an “operational launch” set for November 2026. 

_{Top image: Sport, arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie speaks at the Everard Read Gallery. Picture: supplied.}