Home to more than 9,000 artworks, JAG holds the largest public collection of art in sub-Saharan Africa, spanning historic African art, European works from the 14th–20th centuries, and contemporary South African art. As many major galleries have drifted northwards with capital and development, JAG’s position near Hillbrow in the City Centre, combined with its layered history, places it at the intersection of questions about art, power, and belonging in Johannesburg.
But JAG’s symbolic weight contrasts sharply with its material reality. Despite sustained curatorial efforts to redress historical exclusions and reshape the collection, public discussion of the gallery has increasingly centred on decay, deterioration, and mismanagement. Disastrous attempts to repair the building, damage to parts of the collection and archive, and plummeting visitor rates have come to shape how the gallery is seen. By 2024, legal action by the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation (JHF) and Friends of JAG (FOJ) underscored the severity of the crisis. Against this backdrop, confirmation in November 2025 that the COJ had approved a major restoration programme marked a significant turning point.
Separate histories
Near Hillbrow, the Johannesburg Art Gallery and Joubert Park – the oldest and most central public park in Joburg – were originally conceived as elite leisure spaces for white South Africans. Both formed part of a broader mission to reshape Johannesburg from a mining town into a city in its own right. Art, of course, has always been entangled with the colonial project. As cultural worker Thulile Gamedza noted in her response to critiques of the 2025 FNB Art Joburg art fair, questions of race, power, and who holds the resources to shape the art world remain unresolved.
JAG’s history as Johannesburg’s premier gallery, combined with its position in Hillbrow – an area that has undergone some of the city’s most profound social shifts since Apartheid and is now largely home to black working-class residents – places it in a uniquely charged position. It sits between worlds that have long remained separate, with many seeing the gallery as holding the potential to bridge the often siloed art sphere and the lived realities of the city around it.
Like many of Johannesburg’s historic institutions, JAG is inextricably linked with the legacies of colonialism and extractivism. Lady Florence Phillips, wife of mining magnate Sir Lionel Phillips, drove the creation of the gallery, and in 1915, the building designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens was completed. The structure reflected the aspirations of the newly formed Union: to embed itself within European imperial and modernist traditions. Unsurprisingly, the early collection was dominated by European works from the 18th to the 20th centuries.
The gallery’s detachment from its immediate context was evident even in its original south-facing design. Aside from the notable acquisition of Yellow Houses by artist Gerard Sekoto in 1940, JAG largely remained a space of segregation and exclusion until the end of Apartheid.
Photo: Goodman Gallery.
Since then, the collection and programming have shifted considerably, with conscious efforts to redress historical imbalances. Historic African works, once framed as ethnographic artefacts, have increasingly been recognised as artworks deserving of the same research and curatorial care as European traditions – a transition reflected in exhibitions such as Art and Ambiguity (1991). Other shows, including The Neglected Tradition (1988), which documented the history of black South African artists, and Africa Remix (2007), further signalled the gallery’s departure from its earlier role as a repository for colonial imaginations.
Deterioration, decay, and mismanagement
Johannesburg Art Gallery still inspires awe. Its opulent halls and towering pillars retain their grandeur – but the signs of deterioration are impossible to ignore: cracking walls, holes in the roof, and damaged parquet flooring.
Since the 2010s, the gallery has struggled visibly. The JHF notes that JAG receives roughly 5,000 visitors per year – a stark contrast to the 189,000 visitors recorded by Cape Town's Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in 2023. Perceptions of the surrounding area undoubtedly play a role, with concerns about safety continuing to deter many would-be visitors. Yet the decline is also materially driven: damage to the roof and flooring has significantly reduced the amount of space that is open to the public.
Many of the gallery’s structural complications can be traced back to the Meyer Pienaar extensions of the 1980s, where the additions were poorly integrated with the original building. Over time, neglect and insufficient maintenance compounded these issues. Flooding and mould became recurring problems, forcing the gallery to close temporarily in 2017. The situation deteriorated further after a widely criticised repair job in 2021, which left large sections of the gallery inaccessible and allowed water leaks to damage parts of the collection and archive. (For detailed accounts of JAG's condition, see Ferial Haffajee's 2024 Daily Maverick article and reporting by Mariapaola McGurk and Natanya Meyer for Mail & Guardian.)
Taken together, these failures have reshaped how the institution is viewed, putting JAG's role and relevance within Johannesburg’s cultural landscape into question.
Restoration plans
This is what the City seeks to address through its restoration programme. The process began in early 2025 under the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA), with the R500 million renovation budget approved in November 2025. Central to the work is repairing and waterproofing the roof of the Meyer Pienaar extensions, alongside long-overdue upgrades to the gallery’s electrical, fire safety, and water management systems. The project invites comparison with other major civic restorations such as the Johannesburg City Library – a benchmark to watch closely.
Early developments have been encouraging, notably the appointment of Mayat Hart Architects and Heritage Consultants. Yet the project has not been without controversy.
Recent objections have centred on the planned relocation of JAG’s collection during construction. The JHF, FoJ, and the Democratic Alliance have all raised concerns about the feasibility of the proposed timeline and the City’s decision to use Museum Africa in Newtown as a temporary storage site.
For the JHF and FOJ – two civic bodies long involved in advocating for the gallery – the dispute has been compounded by what they describe as insufficient engagement, as requests for consultation have repeatedly gone unanswered.
In a statement from February 2026, the City has committed to ensuring Museum Africa is fit for purpose and compliant with international museum standards. Pre-relocation upgrades are said to include "state-of-the-art climate and humidity control and advanced security features". The City further justifies its use of state-owned facilities on insurance and legislative grounds, arguing that the upgrades will deliver value beyond the temporary relocation.
There's no doubt that proper storage of JAG’s collection is imperative. But while the City should steer this process, stakeholder confidence will depend increasingly on transparency and consultation. Formal approval from the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) and JAG’s Art Gallery Committee will be critical to maintaining democratic oversight.
These tensions are emblematic of wider distrust between the public and private sectors in South Africa. Yet, if the restoration is to succeed, co-operation will be essential. Leadership in this context cannot come at the expense of rigorous debate – a point FOJ emphasise in arguing that only a genuinely multi-stakeholder partnership can secure the gallery’s long-term future.
Reimagining the Johannesburg Art Gallery
Photo: Johannesburg in Your Pocket.
For FOJ, the key is not just restoring the gallery, but answering a larger question: "What role can an art collection play in unlocking the potential of the cultural and creative industries for current and future generations of citizens of the city?" Glimpses of this possibility can be found in JAG’s recent history, in its efforts to redress the gallery’s past, and in the work of institutions long excluded from it under Apartheid.
The task of reimagining, however, is bound up in the tensions between what should be preserved and what should change. These surface clearly in Thembeka Heidi Sincuba’s article, In the Shadow of the Gallery, which looks at JAG and its potential future as a struggle for the identity of Joburg – one that could either reproduce the past or, as JAG curator Khwezi Gule says, "[construct] something that truly reflects and serves the people who’ve always been left behind”.
An early example of this thinking was the Joubert Park Public Art Project of the early 2000s, which attempted to bridge the disconnect between JAG and its immediate surroundings. The initiative sought to "turn the gallery inside out", using performances, workshops, and exhibitions that extended into the park and actively engaged the surrounding community. While short lived, it pointed towards the sort of approach needed to position JAG not as a static repository of the past, but as an active force in the making of art and history.
Institutions such as the Federated Union of Black Artists (FUBA), the Thupelo Art Workshops, Mofolo Art Centre, and the Johannesburg Art Foundation offer alternative visions of the role of art outside the gallery. Central to these initiatives was an understanding of art as social infrastructure – something that connects communities, nurtures artists, and embeds creative practice within everyday life.
Those involved in JAG’s restoration are aware of these possibilities. In One Hundred Years of Collecting: The Johannesburg Art Gallery, released to mark the centenary of the Johannesburg Art Collection, contributors reflect on the institution’s past while envisioning a future that moves beyond the constraints of its colonial architecture and history. They picture JAG’s role shifting from a custodial space to an active participant in civic life. The argument is compelling: in present-day Johannesburg, the city’s primary gallery should not be a storehouse of relics, but a steward of vital, evolving heritage.
The restoration of the Johannesburg Art Gallery is essential, and it is gratifying to see this process under way. But restoration is only the first step. JAG’s history demands something more: a reckoning with what the gallery is for, and for whom. The tensions surrounding the current process reflect the conversations that need to take place. If the City can hold that space open, and if stakeholders can move beyond entrenched positions towards a shared vision, JAG may yet become a public institution that genuinely faces – and serves – the city it was built to exclude.
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