MuseumAfrica: Colonial Past, Postcolonial Present

Abstract

This article uses the history of Johannesburg's MuseumAfrica (formerly the Africana Museum) to determine what happens when we enter a museum informed by its particular history. Tracing this museum's story – from its founder's arrival in South Africa in 1902 to the near present – it asserts that by probing the biographies of the museum, its personnel, and its objects its present state is rendered newly understandable. This process of uncovering biography and what is here termed backstory then becomes a methodology capable of being used in multiple postcolonial institutions.

Keywords:

• John Gubbins
• Africana Museum
• MuseumAfrica
• South Africa
• museum

Notes

¹See, for a description, R.F. Kennedy, ‘The Founders of the Africana Museum’, Africana Notes and News, 11, 7 (June 1955), 233–235.

²Gubbins sent home weekly letters during his 30 years in South Africa. See S. Byala, A Vision in Three-Dimensions: An Edited Collection of John Gubbins's letters, manuscript in progress.

³For more on collecting as a way to establish ownership, see T. Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

⁴J.G. Gubbins, Three-Dimensional Thinking (Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 1924).

⁵J.G. Gubbins, Three-Dimensional Thinking (Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 1924), 1.

⁶Wits Historical Papers (WHP), A 205, John Gaspard Gubbins (JGG) to Dunn, 27 April 1930.

⁷MuseumAfrica Archives (MAA), Photography Files, JGG to Peter Kaye, 27 March 1930.

⁸WHP A1479.5, Author unknown, ‘Treasure Hunt Successful – Links with History of South Africa: Valuable Manuscripts Recovered: Mr. J.G. Gubbins’ Long Search’, Scrapbook of Gubbins's journey on the T.S.S. Ulysses, compiled by Miss Phyllis Gubbins.

⁹WHP A1479 2.1 JGG to William Dalrymple, 6 February 1933.

¹⁰WHP A1479 2.1 JGG to Humphrey Rivaz Raikes, 30 June 1932.

¹¹WHP A1134 JGG to Dick Tufnell, 14 December 1933.

¹²WHP A1479 2.1 JGG to Gill, 13 April 1934.

¹³For more on this argument, see S. Byala, A Place That Matters Yet: John Gubbins's MuseumAfrica in the Postcolonial World, forthcoming, University of Chicago Press, June 2013.

¹⁴Gubbins had actually wanted his museum to encompass all of Africa, but the scope was limited to being just southern Africa for practical reasons.

¹⁵The museum established the following branch museums: James Hall Museum of Transport, 1964; Bensusan Photographic Museum and Library, 1969; The Museum of South African Rock Art, 1969; and the Bernberg Museum of Costume, 1973. In 1978, it took over the Museum of Man and Science.

¹⁶C. Hamilton, ‘Backstory, Biography, and the Life of the James Stuart Archive’, History in Africa, 38 (2011): 319–341. See also C. Hamilton and N. Leibhammer, ‘Ethnologised Pasts and Their Archival Futures: Construing the Archive of Pre- and Early Colonial Southern KwaZulu-Natal’, paper presented to the colloquium organised by SAVAH under the aegis of the Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art (CIHA) hosted by the Wits School of Arts and the Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research (WISER) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 12–15 January 2011, 10.

¹⁷See, for instance, E.M. Shaw, A System for Cataloguing Ethnographic Material in Museums (1958), written for the South African Museum but used widely, including at the Africana Museum. A copy is held at Iziko. This document establishes the types by which ethnographic items would be categorised and labelled and reflects the anthropological knowledge of the time.

¹⁸Lindsay Hooper, in discussion with the author, February 2011, Iziko.

¹⁹For more on this story, see S. Byala, ‘The Story of MuseumAfrica's Beginnings’, http://www.joburg.org.za/culture/guest-columns/257-the-story-of-museum-africas-beginnings, accessed 31 May 2011.

²⁰WHP A1479 9.2 JGG, Notes on the History of Marico, no. 2, 2 March 1912.

²¹WHP A1479 9.2 JGG, Notes on the History of Marico.

²²WHP A1134, The Star, ‘Livingstone in the Transvaal: Ruins Preserved’, 29 November 1913.

²⁵MAA Curator's Report to the AMAC Meeting, 3 May 1984.

²³MAA, Director's Report to the Africana Museum Advisory Committee Meeting (AMAC), 8 May 1969.

²⁴MAA Curator's Report to the AMAC Meeting, 7 June 1984.

²⁶MAA Report of Acting Director to the AMAC Meeting, 19 August 1953.

²⁷MAA Curator's Report to the AMAC Meeting, 7 February 1980.

²⁸MAA Curator's Report to the AMAC Meeting, 7 August 1986.

²⁹C. Hamilton, ‘The Public Life of an Archive: Archival Biography as Methodology’, paper presented to the Research Initiative in Archive and Public Culture, Workshop, August 2009.

³⁰C. Hamilton, ‘Backstory, Biography, and the Life of the James Stuart Archive’, History in Africa 38 (2011), 26.

³¹Hamilton and Leibhammer, ‘Ethnologised Pasts and Their Archival Futures’, 10.

³²See Byala, A Place That Matters Yet.

³³See S. Dubow ‘Scientism, Social Research and the Limits of South Africanism: The Case of Erst Gideon Malherbe’, South African Historical Journal 44, 2001, 101. For more on South Africanism, see M.J. Cardo, ‘“Fighting a Worse Imperialism”: White SA Loyalism and the Army Education Service during the Second World War’, South African Historical Journal, 46 (2002), 141–74, and J. Lambert, ‘South African or British? Or Dominion South Africans? The Evolution of an Identity in the 1910s and 1920s’, South African Historical Journal, 43 (2000), 197–222.

³⁴R. Elphick, ‘Mission Christianity and Interwar Liberalism’, in J. Butler, R. Elphick, and D. Welsh, eds, Democratic Liberalism in South Africa: Its History and Prospect (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), 66.

³⁵See S. Dubow, A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility, and White South Africa, 1820–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), and S. Dubow and A. Jeeves, eds, South Africa's 1940s: Worlds of Possibilities (Cape Town: Double Storey, 2005).

³⁶P.B. Rich, White Power and the Liberal Conscience: Racial Segregation and South African Liberalism, 1921–1960 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984).

³⁷P.B. Rich, White Power and the Liberal Conscience: Racial Segregation and South African Liberalism, 1921–1960 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 69.

³⁸See, for example, J.M. Phillips, Liberalism in South Africa, 1948–1963 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971) , 11. See also Rich White Power and the Liberal Conscience, 58.

³⁹In addition to dozens of specialist catalogues, the museum published a quarterly journal, Africana Notes and News, to a global audience of collectors from 1943 to 1993.

⁴⁰A. Wanless, in discussion with author, 15 April 2003.

⁴¹A. Hlongwane, in discussion with author, 27 July 2010.

⁴²A. Hlongwane, in discussion with author, 27 July 2010.

⁴³A. Hlongwane, in discussion with author, 27 July 2010.

⁴⁴A. Hlongwane, in discussion with author, 27 July 2010.

⁴⁵RFK, ‘The Founders of the Africana Museum’, Africana Notes and News, 11, 7 (June 1955), 233–235.

⁴⁶On the perilous state of museums see (among many others) G. Anderson, ed., Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2004); B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); S. Macdonald and G. Fyfe, eds, Theorizing Museums (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996); and A. Witcomb, Re-Imagining the Museum: Beyond the Mausoleum (London: Routledge, 2003).