A new beginning

The opening of the Iziko Social History Collections, in a revamped building on Church Square Cape Town marks a significant shift in the institutions thinking and practice. Collections once separated by histories of colonialism and apartheid have been centralised and integrated.

Quoting Patricia Davison, Iziko’s first Director of Social History Collection, Lalou Meltzer, the current director notes that the term social history, as opposed to cultural history, was employed because it implies a focuses on ‘the relationship between people and things rather than simply material objects’. It also provides a useful way of breaking away from the inherited patterns of separate ethnography and ‘white’ colonial cultural history. Until recently natural history, precolonial archaeology and ethnography collections were housed in the South African Museum while collections of ‘historic’ material were housed in the SA Cultural History Museum (today known as the Slave Lodge).

Collections, which have been packed away in storage since 2006, are now being unpacked and viewed afresh by researchers and curators. It’s an opportune moment for the institution to reflect on past practices and take on the challenge of developing new ways of generating knowledge and representing the country’s complex history.

The Archival Platform was invited to attend a panel discussion initiated by the museum to engage with “thinkers on museum, archives and history issues” and to a tour of the new facility.

Panel Discussion - Social History Collections: Registering Change in Iziko after Apartheid

Lalou Meltzer, Director of Iziko’s Social history Collections, set the scene for the panel discussion, providing some insight into the institutions history and the way in which collections had been historically separated. Admitting that, “we have many skeletons in cupboards, literally, and accumulated baggage, metaphorically speaking”, she made a brave and impassioned plea for participants to engage with the institution and support it as it moved forward in a new direction.

In summing up the challenges – and the opportunities – facing Iziko Meltzer noted that, “the major divide remains that between precolonial and indigenous history collections on the one hand and colonial and apartheid history on the other – and more particularly ways of representing these in our museums - across schisms of race and class. It is in a sense a binary which we as a national museum confront daily.”

Professor Ciraj Rassool of the Department of History and Director of the African programme in Museum and Heritage Studies at the University of the Western Cape entitled his presentation, “Social History at Iziko Museums of Cape Town: a new epistemology for a new museum?” Stating that the museum had arrived at a ‘momentous moment’ Rassool commented that museums around the world were asking “What do you do with a colonial collection after colonialism?” and, in South Africa, “What does it mean to make a museum in a post-apartheid society, when the museum and its collections are characterised by apartheid?” Speaking of exhibitions and programmes at museums including the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and Te Papa National Museum in Wellington, New Zealand, Rassool pointed to two key challenges: firstly, the need to focus on the history of institutions and their collecting activities, to make the institutions themselves they ‘objects of study’ and secondly, for institutions to consider how it may be possible to change the way they ‘know’ (or create knowledge) in a way that is appropriate to a post-apartheid, democratic society.

Professor Carolyn Hamilton, National Research Foundation Professor in Archives and Public Culture at the University of Cape Town, and Nessa leibhammer, Curator of Southern Africa Traditional Collection at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, delivered a presentation entitled “Ethnologised Pasts and their Archival Futures” arising from their research into the social and cultural life of the 18th and 19th centuries in an area that straddles the Eastern Cape and Kwa-Zulu Natal provinces. They noted that material objects were excluded from the archive, marking off regulated knowledge from uncontrolled knowledge. While they had hoped to convene evidence from collections scattered across a number of institutions they found that conditions within the institutions, and a general apathy towards precolonial material, made this almost impossible. Turning the focus of their attention to the activity of collecting they concluded that creating the ‘biography’ of a collection offered them insight into the way that objects change their contexts and are shaped by their contexts.

Professor Leslie Witz of the Department of History at the University of Western Cape delivered a paper entitled “Re-imagining the chameleon in museum practice: Towards a brief history of history in South African museums”. The paper challenged the role of the post-apartheid museum in depicting the struggle, and in informing national collective memory. Witz emphasised that it is not enough to simply change labels on objects; we must but constantly challenge our own history. He proposed that this can be done by drawing from the 1980’s model of questioning the production of history. Witz uses the analogy of the chameleons to describe museums because, he says, that they can view the world from multiple perspectives; sometimes wanting to be seen and at other times wanting to hide. Pasts beyond memory are presented through anthropology, geology and archaeology, disciplines generally practiced by white men. Museums deemed ‘historical’, under apartheid, generally focused on Afrikaner history. Witz noted that many people viewed ‘apartheid’ museums with deep distrust, recognising the political role of the institution, while those institutions set up in opposition to these were said to address ‘real history’. Witz concluded by stating that when policy formation takes place, history as a reconstruction starts taking place. 
 
Dr Guy Hansen, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Historical research at the National Museum of Australia delivered a paper entitled, “The Sum of many parts: The history of the national historical collection”, drawing attention to Australian experiences that may be of use in the South African context. Hansen highlighted the burden of being called a “national” museum as it creates the impression of nationhood. In his illustration of the history of the collection, he began with collection activities of a certain McKenzie who believed that Australia’s indigenous people were more related to fauna. During the 1980’s collections focussed on working life, domestic life and agricultural activities. Hansen stressed that the museum continues to collect material, citing the case of the Australian flag discovered at the site of the World Trade Centre attack. According to Hansen, transformation and changes in government provide opportunities to create new knowledge.

Dr Noor Nieftagodien, Deputy-Director, Wits History Workshop and Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, University of the Witwatersrand in his paper entitled “(Re) capturing social history in the bounded space of the museum addressed the challenges of dealing with social history within the museum context. In the discussion following his input, Nieftagodien noted wryly that the ‘experts’ had made their input, but the museum staff had been silent.

The Iziko Social History Centre: a world-class museum facility

Iziko’s Social History Centre is housed in a building designed by Sir Herbert Baker for the National Mutual Life Association of Australia in 1905 and extended in the 1930’s. The building was purchased by the state in 1989 to house the collections of the former South African Cultural History Museum, now an integral part of Iziko. In 2004 the buildings derelict state was communicated to Inister of Arts and Culture, Dr Pallo Jordan. The Minister secured funding, via the Depatyment of Public Works to undertake the necessary restoration and conversion of the building into a world class collections facility. 

Over the past three years the building has been renovated and extended to include a 9 storey state of the art storage facility that will house collections of indigenous cultural material from southern Africa, artifacts from the colonial period of the Cape, including maritime and historical archaeology, as well as collections of world ceramics, furniture, coins and textiles, totalling over 250,000 objects!  These collections will be stored in a secure environment, with excellent climate control (temperature and humidity) fire prevention and supression and security systems devised according to international best practice.

The Social History Centre also houses an excellent reference library, with an array of social history publications. The library is open to the general public, learners, students and specialist reserachers.

It’s an impressive facility, planned with meticulous attention to detail and awareness of the need to treasure the elements of historic significance, but that’s not all. Most importantly, it doesn’t stop at being a safe and efficient store-house; it presents an opportunity for the museum to rethink its curatorial practice, to move forward creatively. While we were impressed by the high-tech facilities, the sight of a collection of contemporary ceramics sitting side by side with pots unearthed from an archaeological site brought home the complexities of our history and heritage, and the possibilities to engage with these in new and exciting ways.

For more information about the history and significance of the building see the attached report.

Jo-Anne Duggan and Xolelwa Kashe-Katiya

A new beginning

The opening of the Iziko Social History Collections, in a revamped building on Church Square Cape Town marks a significant shift in the institutions thinking and practice. Collections once separated by histories of colonialism and apartheid have been centralised and integrated.

Quoting Patricia Davison, Iziko’s first Director of Social History Collection, Lalou Meltzer, the current director notes that the term social history, as opposed to cultural history, was employed because it implies a focuses on ‘the relationship between people and things rather than simply material objects’. It also provides a useful way of breaking away from the inherited patterns of separate ethnography and ‘white’ colonial cultural history. Until recently natural history, precolonial archaeology and ethnography collections were housed in the South African Museum while collections of ‘historic’ material were housed in the SA Cultural History Museum (today known as the Slave Lodge).

Collections, which have been packed away in storage since 2006, are now being unpacked and viewed afresh by researchers and curators. It’s an opportune moment for the institution to reflect on past practices and take on the challenge of developing new ways of generating knowledge and representing the country’s complex history.

The Archival Platform was invited to attend a panel discussion initiated by the museum to engage with “thinkers on museum, archives and history issues” and to a tour of the new facility.

Panel Discussion - Social History Collections: Registering Change in Iziko after Apartheid

Lalou Meltzer, Director of Iziko’s Social history Collections, set the scene for the panel discussion, providing some insight into the institutions history and the way in which collections had been historically separated. Admitting that, “we have many skeletons in cupboards, literally, and accumulated baggage, metaphorically speaking”, she made a brave and impassioned plea for participants to engage with the institution and support it as it moved forward in a new direction.

In summing up the challenges – and the opportunities – facing Iziko Meltzer noted that, “the major divide remains that between precolonial and indigenous history collections on the one hand and colonial and apartheid history on the other – and more particularly ways of representing these in our museums - across schisms of race and class. It is in a sense a binary which we as a national museum confront daily.”

Professor Ciraj Rassool of the Department of History and Director of the African programme in Museum and Heritage Studies at the University of the Western Cape entitled his presentation, “Social History at Iziko Museums of Cape Town: a new epistemology for a new museum?” Stating that the museum had arrived at a ‘momentous moment’ Rassool commented that museums around the world were asking “What do you do with a colonial collection after colonialism?” and, in South Africa, “What does it mean to make a museum in a post-apartheid society, when the museum and its collections are characterised by apartheid?” Speaking of exhibitions and programmes at museums including the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and Te Papa National Museum in Wellington, New Zealand, Rassool pointed to two key challenges: firstly, the need to focus on the history of institutions and their collecting activities, to make the institutions themselves they ‘objects of study’ and secondly, for institutions to consider how it may be possible to change the way they ‘know’ (or create knowledge) in a way that is appropriate to a post-apartheid, democratic society.

Professor Carolyn Hamilton, National Research Foundation Professor in Archives and Public Culture at the University of Cape Town, and Nessa leibhammer, Curator of Southern Africa Traditional Collection at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, delivered a presentation entitled “Ethnologised Pasts and their Archival Futures” arising from their research into the social and cultural life of the 18th and 19th centuries in an area that straddles the Eastern Cape and Kwa-Zulu Natal provinces. They noted that material objects were excluded from the archive, marking off regulated knowledge from uncontrolled knowledge. While they had hoped to convene evidence from collections scattered across a number of institutions they found that conditions within the institutions, and a general apathy towards precolonial material, made this almost impossible. Turning the focus of their attention to the activity of collecting they concluded that creating the ‘biography’ of a collection offered them insight into the way that objects change their contexts and are shaped by their contexts.

Professor Leslie Witz of the Department of History at the University of Western Cape delivered a paper entitled “Re-imagining the chameleon in museum practice: Towards a brief history of history in South African museums”. The paper challenged the role of the post-apartheid museum in depicting the struggle, and in informing national collective memory. Witz emphasised that it is not enough to simply change labels on objects; we must but constantly challenge our own history. He proposed that this can be done by drawing from the 1980’s model of questioning the production of history. Witz uses the analogy of the chameleons to describe museums because, he says, that they can view the world from multiple perspectives; sometimes wanting to be seen and at other times wanting to hide. Pasts beyond memory are presented through anthropology, geology and archaeology, disciplines generally practiced by white men. Museums deemed ‘historical’, under apartheid, generally focused on Afrikaner history. Witz noted that many people viewed ‘apartheid’ museums with deep distrust, recognising the political role of the institution, while those institutions set up in opposition to these were said to address ‘real history’. Witz concluded by stating that when policy formation takes place, history as a reconstruction starts taking place. 
 
Dr Guy Hansen, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Historical research at the National Museum of Australia delivered a paper entitled, “The Sum of many parts: The history of the national historical collection”, drawing attention to Australian experiences that may be of use in the South African context. Hansen highlighted the burden of being called a “national” museum as it creates the impression of nationhood. In his illustration of the history of the collection, he began with collection activities of a certain McKenzie who believed that Australia’s indigenous people were more related to fauna. During the 1980’s collections focussed on working life, domestic life and agricultural activities. Hansen stressed that the museum continues to collect material, citing the case of the Australian flag discovered at the site of the World Trade Centre attack. According to Hansen, transformation and changes in government provide opportunities to create new knowledge.

Dr Noor Nieftagodien, Deputy-Director, Wits History Workshop and Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, University of the Witwatersrand in his paper entitled “(Re) capturing social history in the bounded space of the museum addressed the challenges of dealing with social history within the museum context. In the discussion following his input, Nieftagodien noted wryly that the ‘experts’ had made their input, but the museum staff had been silent.

The Iziko Social History Centre: a world-class museum facility

Iziko’s Social History Centre is housed in a building designed by Sir Herbert Baker for the National Mutual Life Association of Australia in 1905 and extended in the 1930’s. The building was purchased by the state in 1989 to house the collections of the former South African Cultural History Museum, now an integral part of Iziko. In 2004 the buildings derelict state was communicated to Inister of Arts and Culture, Dr Pallo Jordan. The Minister secured funding, via the Depatyment of Public Works to undertake the necessary restoration and conversion of the building into a world class collections facility. 

Over the past three years the building has been renovated and extended to include a 9 storey state of the art storage facility that will house collections of indigenous cultural material from southern Africa, artifacts from the colonial period of the Cape, including maritime and historical archaeology, as well as collections of world ceramics, furniture, coins and textiles, totalling over 250,000 objects!  These collections will be stored in a secure environment, with excellent climate control (temperature and humidity) fire prevention and supression and security systems devised according to international best practice.

The Social History Centre also houses an excellent reference library, with an array of social history publications. The library is open to the general public, learners, students and specialist reserachers.

It’s an impressive facility, planned with meticulous attention to detail and awareness of the need to treasure the elements of historic significance, but that’s not all. Most importantly, it doesn’t stop at being a safe and efficient store-house; it presents an opportunity for the museum to rethink its curatorial practice, to move forward creatively. While we were impressed by the high-tech facilities, the sight of a collection of contemporary ceramics sitting side by side with pots unearthed from an archaeological site brought home the complexities of our history and heritage, and the possibilities to engage with these in new and exciting ways.

For more information about the history and significance of the building see the attached report.

Jo-Anne Duggan and Xolelwa Kashe-Katiya

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