A history of the Johannesburg Art Gallery

Abstract

"To write a history of the Museum is to give account of the evolution of two concepts: that of the Museum and that of Time." The "history" of the Johannesburg Art Gallery, in Afrikaans "Johannesburgse Kunsmuseum" starts way back when the concept "museum" from the Greek "museion", Latin "museum", was first applied to a collection of works of Art. The Italian Renaissance was responsible for that. Prior to that, the concept museum like the one in Alexandria, founded by Ptolemy Philadelphus (Ptolemy Soter) did not include works of art. In the same way the word "gallery" is derived from the Italian "galleria" and was first used in the time of the Renaissance to mean "a succession of splendid rooms, like the galleria Palatina in the Pitti Palace" in which works of art were displayed. By the end of the 16th century the word "gallery" was firmly established in the English language to denote a venue for housing or exhibiting paintings and sculpture. The concept "museum/gallery" is thus rooted in Time, i.e. in History and is a manifestation of man's desire to preserve and display, for whatever reason, that which gives him spiritual sustenance. But as man is the product of the age in which he lives, what he conceives as beautiful or worth preserving will depend on the society in which he finds himself. His taste will reflect his social, economic and political environment and that is something which is never static. It will thus follow that what one generation deems worthy of preserving might not necessarily be valued by subsequent generations.