February 14, 2006
By Lucille Davie
WHAT do a Nelson Mandela mask, a trouser press, VOC crockery, forceps, a medical saw, a toy cardboard peepshow and a gun camera have in common?
They are all quirky items that have turned up in the Heritage Collection Asset Register Project, at present being conducted at Museum Africa in Newtown. In particular they have been put on exhibit by some of the 50 staff members who have been employed to delve into the dusty depths of the museum and log some one million items that are owned by the City's nine museums.
About 800 000 of the one million items are kept at Museum Africa. Of those, the museum houses up to 20 000 costumes, 350 000 historical photographs and 20 000 historical paintings. In addition, 8 000 paintings live in the storerooms of the Johannesburg Art Gallery.
Museum Africa in Newtown, home to 800 000 items in the process of being audited
The items at the museum range from Bartholomew Dias stone crosses from the 1400s, to a collection of old maps and wonderful Thomas Baines paintings, the traveller who left a valuable record of southern African landscapes from the 1800s.
The exhibition has been put together by officers from the history, archaeology, ethnology, costume and photography departments of the museum.
Sandra de Wet, the manager of information services, says in the explanatory note to the exhibition, "Do enjoy this brief glimpse into the hidden corners of our stores."
I had a brief tour into these hidden corners of the museum, to get a sense of this enormous task, which started in April 2005 and, it is hoped, will be finished by June this year.
An effervescent Victor Reed, in charge of the costume inventory and sometime curator of the Bernberg Costume Museum, has the delightful chore of sifting through handbags, hats, shoes, linen, army uniforms, coats, capes, furs, dresses and thousands more items, dating from the late 1900s to the present day.
He says he started on the fur capes, the most fragile items – they were fumigated first, then cleaned and stored in thick plastic hanging envelopes, with bold labelling.
He leads me through to a large, airtight room, stuffed with racks of plastic-covered costumes, and neatly labelled boxes holding hats and shoes.
It is any fashionista's paradise – beautifully beaded wedding dresses and exquisitely embroidered lace capes that would look gorgeous on anyone today.
When asked what his favourite item is, Reed holds up an Edwardian handmade day cape in black and white velvet and silk chiffon, with jet-black beadwork. It's dated 1904, and although the records don't indicate its source, it was most likely a donation to the collection.
"Ninety percent of items in the collection are donations," he says.
Problems in the storeroom are dust from the freeway – the west wing is directly under the freeway – and the need to keep the room cool, to help preserve the items.
The audit is good for the collection, though, because Reed is washing items as he goes along, before he carefully folds them and hangs them up again.
De Wet agrees. Part of the exercise is to barcode each item and to enter the details on to a database. These will eventually all go on to a website which will make them instantly accessible to the world. Most of the world's major museums have their vast catalogues of items on line.
"Then anyone can go online and see what we have, and order a photograph," says De Wet, referring to one of the sources of the museum's income. At present researchers have to visit the museum to access the catalogue.
It also means that museum staff will be able to access their stores more easily, and this will facilitate suggesting items for exhibitions and loans to other museums.
In addition, says De Wet, the museum has been able to acquire new database programmes that are specially designed to store this kind of data.
She explains too that the audit has meant that sifting through drawings and similar items has forced them to come up with standardisations of categories, for instance, the ethnic groupings in the country. This has simplified the identification process.
So far, R5,5-million has been spent on the audit, and more money will be required before the June deadline.
The City is anxious to complete the audit to get a clean audit report from the auditor-general, to fully balance its books. At present its assets sit at R13-billion, according to the finance, strategy and economic development department.
So far the Hector Pieterson Museum has completed its audit, and the Johannesburg Art Gallery is three-quarters through the final stage – capturing the information on the database.
The other City museums – the James Hall Museum of Transport, the Sandton Art Gallery, the Roodepoort Museum, the Bernberg Museum of Fashion, the Bensusan Museum of Photography and the Geology Museum – are still working on their audits.
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