Iziko Museums of South Africa: South African National Gallery in Cape Town closes for four months!

Iziko Museums of South Africa has announced that it will temporarily close the Iziko South African National Gallery (ISANG), housed in the Company’s Garden in Cape Town. The ISANG will close from 23 May 2022 for a period of four months. During the closure, Iziko's curatorial, collections, education and operation teams will have time to reimagine the ISANG in terms of exhibitions, collections practices, and, to rethink it's approach to educational spaces and teaching methodologies. ISANG will re-open to the public with a celebratory show called Breaking Down the Walls: A celebration of 150 years of the Iziko South African National Gallery on 24 September 2022 (Heritage Day).

The iconic Iziko South African National Gallery (ISANG) is Cape Town's premier public art museum, housing a vast and critically engaging collection of historical, modern and contemporary South African, African and international artworks.

Iziko Museums of South Africa operates 11 national museums in Cape Town as well as collection-specific libraries, a world-class Social History Archive and the most advanced digital Planetarium and Digital Dome on the African Continent. 

South African rock art joins the Google Art Project

The Rock Art Research Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg is now collaborating with the Google Art Project to make South Africa's rockart available online. The Art Project currently includes more than 30,000 high-resolution artworks from around the world, with Street View images for over 46 museums.

The selection of the artworks from South Africa includes rock art images from five different community-run tourism sites in South Africa, including those in Giant’s Castle Nature Reserve and Kamberg Nature Reserve, as well as over 50 works from the South African National Gallery collection (Cape Town). The South African National Gallery collection also includes photographs of cultural artefacts such as beaded aprons, headrests, and engraved cattle horns, some of which date to the 19th century.