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Transforming the Johannesburg Art Gallery from white elephant to catalyst for sustainable growth in heritage

Michael Gering and Abiel Mngomezulu
By Michael Gering and Abiel Mngomezulu
22 Nov 2024
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Instead of treating the Johannesburg Art Gallery as a white elephant, we should think of it from the perspective of sustainability, investment and of generating revenue for future growth.

The Johannesburg Art Gallery is periodically in the news and for all the wrong reasons.

In the first of two excellent recent articles on the gallery, Ferial Haffajee notes that while heritage experts have underlined the urgency of repairs to the gallery, Johannesburg’s mayor says the budget will only be allocated next year.

On the one hand the experts are emphasising the value of the asset and the damage entailed. On the other hand, the bureaucrats are noting that the City, according to Mayor Dada Morero, has a deficit of about R50-billion per annum and a worsening state of finances under its current City management.

As the old economist joke goes, on the one hand, on the other hand and on the third hand. The third hand is the perspective of institutional sustainability and a return on investment.

While sustainability in the museum space is acknowledged to be difficult, it has worked in similar heritage contexts. Yes, to make money you have to invest money. But we would argue that instead of treating the Johannesburg Art Gallery as a white elephant, we should think of it from the perspective of sustainability, investment and of generating revenue for future growth.

The term white elephant has its origins in Southeast Asia where an albino elephant was considered a symbol of power, prosperity, and divine blessing. These animals were kept by monarchs and treated with great care and luxury.

However, legend has it that Thai kings would gift a white elephant to an official they wanted to ruin. Because these animals were sacred, they could not be used for labour or sold, while their upkeep was costly. Similarly, with the public art galleries, if not treated with care they would be white elephants in the true sense of the term.

Sacred nature of heritage


The sacred nature of heritage means that generating a return needs to be done with care. However, we have seen examples where this has been done. Instead of trying to warehouse art with an insufficient budget and under less-than-ideal conditions, art can be loaned out and displayed for significant income, and be in a space where it is viewed and appreciated.

According to Haffajee 9,000 artworks are stored improperly, with only a tiny fraction on display.

Instead of spending money inadequately maintaining space that barely attracts use, space can again be loaned out, increasing footfall and therefore the appreciation and value of the heritage. We have seen this work in similar contexts, even in South Africa. If only two of nine exhibition halls are functional, what use can the others be put to?

Of course, to get this right, all of this needs investment, management and leadership. You need to invest money to make money. You need a team who understand heritage, finance, management and negotiation. At the very least, you need managers who are agile and entrepreneurial.

From what we have seen, this is not simple in the heritage space; but it does appear possible. Iziko Museums of South Africa, for example, have an excellent track record of targeted investments resulting in significant income that supplements their funding while at the same time increasing their reach and their impact.

Morero is probably being quoted out of context when he states that the budget needed to save the art is at least a year away “because of how the government works”. 

When the new government took over in 1994, a wise old hand advised us to take three steps when told that something was not possible:

  1. Ask to see the actual legislation; the legislation probably says something else or maybe doesn’t actually exist.

  2. If the legislation does actually exist, read the whole act — if what you are doing is needed, it may well have been foreseen and referenced in the fine print.

  3. Even if it isn’t in the fine print, if it is needed, it is always possible to write a motivation.


The delay in action might be the way some of the government currently works, but it is not the way the government works in general. We would not have said such things in the Madiba years. Nor in the years under then president Thabo Mbeki.

The approach attributed to the mayor is reminiscent of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa, Prasa. Passenger trips as reported by Prasa fell more than 88% in less than five years. They fell from well over 500 million passenger trips per annum in 2014/15 to fewer than 15 million during Covid-19, and about 40 million in 2023/2024.

The reason given was, in effect, “this is how the government works”. In the Mbeki years, with discussions around the developmental state, there was a belief that anything the private sector could do, the government could do equally well. Not “this is how the government works”.

We are not arguing that sustainability is the aim of a public space. At some stage the sustainability pendulum will have swung too far. The need for institutions to be sustainable is driven in part by the increasing demands on a struggling government. And the public-good investments that generate funds can be used for further investment that generates more public good and even more funds.

As the second of Daily Maverick’s excellent two articles note, “this decay is taking place in a city whose issues — and budgets — are increasingly existential: no water in public sector hospitals, no electricity for hundreds of thousands at any one point in time, no housing for the indigent, an immigration crisis”.

What, asks the second article by Giulietta Talevi, is the value of a child sitting in front of a painting?

Let families in for free


At some stage, if the focus is solely on sustainability, some child might not have entered, because perhaps her parents were not sufficiently aware or had not budgeted for such a visit. That is when we argue: let the family in for free, press a memento into the parent’s hands, a health snack for the child and a subsidy for transport.

Sustainability means having additional funds for additional public good; we are not arguing that sustainability is an end in itself.

But right now, we would be suggesting, let’s give that elephant some exercise. Let’s put the elephant to work. Let’s get the heritage out of the damp storeroom so that it can be seen and appreciated. And let’s use the money that it generates to increase awareness, interest and enjoyment.

In the rest of the world, “Art and Heritage” is an economic growth sector that brings employment, economic growth, income and, yes, joy for the benefit of very many people. DM

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