Architectural heritage

On 24 September every year, South Africa celebrates Heritage Day as a public holiday; an opportunity to reflect on our richly diverse origins and cultures and to engage in tours and other events that allow us to explore the many historical threads and their associated artefacts. Fortuitously, I was in a postgraduate symposium just last week in which one of my former students, now a member of staff in the Wits School of Architecture and Planning, was presenting his work on the Johannesburg Art Gallery, where he has been serving as heritage consultant for the past couple of years.

Johannesburg Art Gallery entrance
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The Gallery (or JAG, as it is often called), was designed in 1910 by one of the most prominent architects in the English-speaking world at the time, Edwin Lutyens. He was also the designer of the War Memorial in the Johannesburg Zoo, a striking landmark whenever I head out from home towards the west.

Anglo-Boer War Memorial at the Johannesburg Zoo
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Apart from revolutionising house design in the UK, Lutyens is also famous for his public buildings, especially in India, where he and Herbert Baker were the architects of many of the public buildings for New Delhi, regarded as the epitome of British Imperial architecture. This is characterised by the use of grandiose classical elements - columns, arches and pediments - with clear references to Ancient Roman architecture, as a way of expressing the power and influence of the British Empire. The interiors of these public buildings were also modelled on an interpretation of classical models, such as the Roman Bath complexes, with arches and vaulted ceilings, in a carefully curated procession of spaces.

The first exhibition space in the Gallery
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The Gallery was extended in the early 1940s, closely following the original design by Lutyens, by adding the east and west wings. A less "respectful" addition was made in the mid-1980s, separating the Gallery from Joubert Park, an important complementary design to the building. The park's formal layout was planted originally with vegetation sourced from throughout the British Empire, and includes a large greenhouse similar to the famous Palm House in Kew Gardens, London.

Over the past decades, the JAG building has not been well maintained, with much of the copper roof sheeting removed, which has compromised the waterproofing. For safety reasons, the building is presently closed to the public, with the artwork on display in MuseuMAfricA in Newtown. SAJ Architects have been working closely with the City to strategise on the restoration of the building, which has Provincial Heritage status.

This is a fairly common narrative for a historical building globally, because they are so expensive and difficult to maintain and repair, requiring specialist artisans and materials that are now rarely used in the construction industry. But with the JAG, we have another level of complexity, which relates to the original design intentions, expressing the pomp and grandeur of colonialism. In our multi-cultural society, many may feel dislocated from this heritage, arguing that there are many more pressing demands on the City's finances that are in tune with the needs and aspirations of the majority. The building and its permanent collection largely represent the cultural history of the colonial power, and the debate runs much deeper than merely the allocation of resources.

One of the questions that came up in the symposium was whether the architect (in the case of the JAG, of North Indian ancestry) could act as mediator between these two poles, and what the nature of this mediation might look like. The discussion gravitated around the role of the building and the adjacent park as a facility in the predominantly low-income and high-density residential neighbourhoods of Joubert Park and Hillbrow. 

While we were debating this, I was reminded of an exhibition by the Guyanese artist, Hew Locke, at the Tate Britain in 2022. This building has a similar provenance and style to the JAG, using the same detailing to the exterior and monumental interiors. The artwork can be read with many interpretations, with almost 100 figures in a "Procession" in the entrance space, so the first thing one experiences on entering the building. The references to a religious procession or Mardi Gras are overt, but on closer exploration (one can walk right through the installation) the details reveal a critique and reflection on slavery and colonial exploitation, especially through the cultivation of sugar cane in Guyana. 

"Procession" by Hew Locke, Tate Britain (2022)

On many levels, the work provides a profound juxtaposition of ideas - at the scale of the whole installation, the religious connotations and the life-size scale of the figures (some on horseback) speak to the vast scale of the space, as shown in my photo. Visitors are encouraged to walk through the middle of the work, which is simply placed on the floor of the gallery, so the boundary between viewer and art object becomes blurred. At the detailed level, some of the fabrics are printed with images of the decaying colonial buildings, a depiction of a hanged slave, and oil corporation bond certificates. The references to the sugar trade are a direct jibe at the Tate itself, having been built from an endowment of a sugar magnate, Henry Tate.

The question is: to what extent can the curatorship of the Gallery act as a vessel for transmitting narratives that can balance the powerful message of Empire, carried by the architecture of the JAG. Does it need a work as eloquent and commanding as that of Hew Locke, or can the architecture, in the restoration process, serve as cultural mediator?