Introduction to the Africa Centre
Africa has entered the 21st Century without a major international museum, research institution or performance venue dedicated to the arts, culture and heritage of Africa. For a variety of historical, political and economic reasons, most of the important collections and productions of African art today are located outside of Africa. Consider:
- The major historic collections of African Art are owned by institutions and private collectors in the United States and Europe
- There is no single, major institutional collection of contemporary African art anywhere in the world;
- Significant exhibitions of African art, historic or contemporary, developed by major North American and Western European museums rarely tour the African continent;
- There exists no single, major institution dedicated to research on the contemporary arts and cultural practices of Africa and the African world;
- Only small and intermittent artist-in-residency programmes exist on the African continent;
- Africa is suffering a significant “brain drain” in the creative field, as performers, visual artists, authors, curators, choreographers and scholars, lacking means and infrastructure to create at home, look and increasingly, move to the “North” in search of funding and appropriate work and exhibition spaces; and
- Exceedingly few institutions globally, outside (often highly restricted) university departments, take a multidisciplinary approach to African arts, culture and heritage.
As a result, Africans living on the Continent have limited access to their own artistic heritage and to works created by contemporary African artists - visual and performance.
How these glaring needs were approached
In 2003, the Africa Centre began to explore how it could address some of these needs by:
- Appointing a reference group of respected African artists, curators, choreographers, sociologists, and art historians to define the contextual framework for a new arts and cultural organisation based in Africa for Africa.
- Their mandate was to convene a series of colloquia to focus on; the artistic and cultural content of the organisation; the multiple constituencies of the organisation; and the nature of the programmes it would present;
- Designing and implementing a stakeholder consultation and public dialogue process involving South African and Pan African individuals and organisations. This included over 50 personal interviews which explored the need for such an organisation;
- Conducting an international funding study to garner an understanding of what kind of philanthropic support existed for a venture such as this; and
- Financially modeling the project based on a range of specific assumptions regarding size, costs of operations and visitor numbers.
After two years of research and planning the Africa Centre emerged
Based in South Africa, the Africa Centre is both a physical entity and an ongoing philosophical process. It is meant to grow spatially and conceptually over a period of several years, in time it will emerge as a multi-sited, multiple-usage space where the visual, intellectual and performance cultures of Africa, South and North are celebrated, studied and brought to life for diverse audiences in innovative ways.
The objectives of the Africa Centre are to:
- Create an international arts and cultural centre in Africa which documents, disseminates and celebrates both the visual and performing arts throughout Africa and its Diaspora
- Develop a meaningful theoretical, literal and philosophical space for artistic dialogue and engagements
- To build on best practice and pursue innovation in art and cultural theory, practice and praxis
- Explore the space and architecture of cultural encounter
- Pursue new audiences and the means and method of engagement
- Explore ways in which communities of the continent and its diasporas can engage with their heritage and histories and become entrepreneurial owners of their own cultural industries
- Interrogate the role, identity, transience and performance of art
- Use the arts and culture to enhance relationships within and between African nations, strengthening ties and promoting nation-building across the continent and
- Collaborate with partners nationally, continentally and internationally in pursuit of these objectives
