Heritage Cases

This exhibition will build on the British Museum’s outstanding South Africa collection and experience of exhibiting South African objects and telling South African histories (e.g. Social fabric: African textiles today, textiles of southern and eastern Africa (14 February-21 April 2013); South Africa Landscape: Kew at the British Museum (29 April - 10 October 2010); The Wealth of Africa (20 January - 26 June 2005); Impressions of Africa: money, medals and stamps (1 April 2010-6 February 2011); Voices of Southern Africa (14 November 2000 – 28 January 2001); Zulu Beadwork, BP Ethnography Showcase (29 October 1997 - 18 January 1998)). In addition, the British Museum has engaged with South African issues through the annual Mandela Day celebrations, the opening of the BP Auditorium by Nelson Mandela, and the International Training Programme (ITP), which has hosted six curators from South Africa (2006,07 and 08), four of whom then joined the ITP Cairo Conference in 2010. Furthermore, this exhibition will present a unique perspective on the history of South Africa through its focus on the development of art objects beginning with early humans and ending in the present day. Although other exhibitions including South African objects have taken place, these have tended to focus separately either on historical or contemporary material and have not combined both in an episodic, chronological fashion as proposed here. Furthermore, with regards to historical material, South African art objects have typically been exhibited within the larger geographic unit of southern Africa and have not been linked to recent national histories and contemporary issues. Examples of previous major exhibitions, outside of South Africa, that have included historic South African art objects include: The art of daily life: portable objects from southeast Africa, Cleveland Museum of Art (16 April 2011-26 February 2012); Ubuntu: arts et cultures d'Afrique du Sud/ Ubuntu: art and culture of South Africa, Mus e national des arts d Afri ue et d c anie, aris (2002); Austausch: Kunst aus dem südlichen Afrika um 1900/Exchange: art from Southern Africa around 1900. Museum für Völkerkunde, Wien (now Weltmuseum Wien). (1998). Africa: The Art of a Continent, Royal Academy, London (1995). The British Museum’s South Africa exhibition will also coincide with the opening of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (MOCAA), Cape Town, South Africa, which will be the largest museum of African contemporary art in the world. Although the exhibition will celebrate the artistic accomplishments of South Africa, the location of the exhibition at the British Museum may be viewed critically by some South Africans due to the colonial relationship between Britain and South Africa. In terms of loans, the majority of objects in the exhibition (c. 2/3) will be from the British Museum’s collections. However, it will be necessary to loan star archaeological objects and contemporary art works from collections in South Africa. Regarding the archaeological objects, many of these are national treasures, which will need approval from the South African government to be loaned, a process which will require careful and early handling. The South Africa High Commission to the UK is aware of the exhibition and is highly supportive.