MuseuMAfricA in Johannesburg, South Africa

Bio

Housed in what used to be the city's main fruit and vegetable market, MuseuMAfricA is Johannesburg's major history and cultural history museum. The structure of the original building, erected in 1913, has now been imaginatively built into a modern arch building, with new pillars driven into the clay soil to support the several floors, without connecting to the original outside skin of the building.

Its collections have been accumulated and preserved since 1933, when an impressive collection of Africana was bought by the Johannesburg public Library from J C Gubbins, turning the museum into Africana Museum in Progress, with most exhibitions showing collections of black traditional culture.

With funds from the City of Johannesburg, the Africana Museum reopened in 1994 as MuseuMAfricA with new displays and a mission, according to curator Diana Wall, "to tell stories that had not been told before".

Perhaps by far the most culturally evocative of the displays, Sounds of the City traces South African music from the Marabi music and dance of the 1920s slum yards to the township jazz of a Sophiatown shebeen. Born in the city's slumyards in the 1920s, the Marabi gave birth to many kinds of music in the 40s and 50s, including the "kwela", "tsaba-tsaba", "mbaqanga" and township jazz. This mockup of the country's truly first cosmopolitan setting, Sophiatown, takes your breath away.

Sponsored by the First National Bank, the Royal Netherlands Embassy and the City of Johannesburg's Cultural and Heritage Services, the exhibition carries prizes totalling more than R80 000, and includes entries from the rural areas and disadvantaged craftspeople from South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. The biggest craft show the country has ever seen, the exhibition will be opened, on August 17, by veteran journalist and documentary artist Denis Beckett. The awards will be presented by the executive mayor of the City of Johannesburg, Amos Masondo, who will honour the role of women in ceramics in recognition of the fact that most of the potters in the exhibition are African women.

Entrance at MuseuMAfricA is R7 for adults and R2 for children, students and pensioners. Exhibition hours are Tuesday to Sunday from 09h00 to 17h00. The museum is closed on Mondays.

ZAJohannesburg, South Africa

Contact

+27118335624
MuseuMAfricA Johannesburg
Profile added by Ano Shumba on 30 Sep 2015
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