Wits Art Museum (WAM)

The Wits Art Museum (WAM) in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, has around 12 000 items in its stores, with a strong southern African ethnographic collection of beadwork, drums, headrests, wooden sculpture, ceremonial and fighting sticks, dolls, masks, basketry, sculpture, wirework and textiles. The WAM collection contains many fertility ‘dolls’ from southern African cultures, and has 58 items which are named as ‘dolls’ made by Ndebele or the closely related Ntwane group. A set of seven similar Ndebele dolls is of special interest because one of the dolls is unusually tall (90 cm) and has painted horns. The goat horns increase the stature, ferocity and apparent power of the doll, and perhaps this adds to the ritual value as this is not a ‘doll’ in the conventional child’s plaything sense.

This doll is unlike any other Ndebele doll figure in the WAM collection or seen online and unlike any other doll figure noted in books dealing with southern African art and culture.

Front view of the 'mystery' Ndebele doll, 90 cm in height and with painted goat horns. The figure is also wrapped in a goat skin apron. Wits Art Museum collection, 2018.

Provenance of the seven dolls

The seven Ndebele dolls were collected in KwaNdebele at an unknown date, and donated to Wits University in 1982 by Mrs  Toni Herber. There...

I snapped the image above from the Station Street entrance of the Braamfontein East Campus  - exiting the Wits gates. Photo taken on Sunday 17th November 2019. It reminded me of how much of a city university Wits is and how layered the city is in the buildings around us. 
 
In the foreground are the old corrugated iron semi-detached workers cottages (now the Performing Arts Administration of Wits’ School of Arts). This was once a home of an artisan - we know they were here as artisan’s residences of turn of the 20th century Braamfontein. 
 
The tall building with the circular flying saucer top is the 1970s Lawson’s Corner and the flying circle was the old revolving restaurant and night club of that era. It was the pride of Wilfred Lawson who started life in Braamfontein when he established a garage and petrol station on Jorissen Street and went on to become a car agent. He held the agency for Volvo as I recollect. Many older Wits alumni recall being sold their first car by Mr Lawson. Lawson’s corner with its garage on the corner of Bertha Street (extension of Jan Smuts Avenue) and Jorissen Street grew to reflect Lawson’s  business acumen and success in the automobile world. There was initially a fairly modest building but ultimately the skyscraper rose on the corner site. The original street frontage building was then backed by the 21 storey skyscraper.

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In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie looks at the epic transformation of spaces across three buildings to form the Wits Art Museum (WAM). The piece is unique as Davie was able to draw from her experience on a behind the scenes tour shortly before WAM opened. The article was originally published on the City of Joburg's website on 6 March 2012. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

Like an excited bride dressed in crisp white waiting for the first organ note to sound before walking down the aisle, the sparkling Wits Art Museum (WAM) is about to be dressed, waiting for its first exhibition in May.

With echoes of the inviting ramps that draw one up into the spaces at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and to a lesser extent the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto, WAM has several levels of galleries linked by similar ramps and a polite staircase or two, giving the museum a stylish fluidity.
 
WAM takes the space of the former Shell garage on the corner of Jan Smuts Avenue and Jorissen Street in Braamfontein, incorporating the fat columns of the garage, as well as the curved roof, now a voluptuous balcony in the gallery. The university has thrown in sections of two other buildings, giving WAM 5 000m² of space over four floors, half of which will be available to display some of its fabulous collection of 9 000 pieces.
 
“It’s been a long journey. We are so thrilled that it’s actually...