The Johannesburg Art Gallery’s contemporary, furniture and ceramic collections are under threat from the building complex’s blocked sewerage system, an insider has told ArtThrob.

The storerooms housing the threatened collections, which are estimated to be worth around R500 million, could be flooded with sewerage and water from the gallery’s blocked drains if the problem is not urgently resolved. However, the City Council has frozen any and all expenditure by all City Of Joburg departments, including the gallery.

Furthermore,...

The Johannesburg Art Gallery’s contemporary, furniture and ceramic collections are under threat from the building complex’s blocked sewerage system, an insider has told ArtThrob.

The storerooms housing the threatened collections, which are estimated to be worth around R500 million, could be flooded with sewerage and water from the gallery’s blocked drains if the problem is not urgently resolved. However, the City Council has frozen any and all expenditure by all City Of Joburg departments, including the gallery.

Furthermore, an urgent email from the City’s treasurers last week informed all institution heads that no expenditures would be authorised until further notice, not even, it seems, hiring plumbers to unblock drains.

This comes in the wake of a prolonged shortage of resources to run the gallery. For months, staff members have been complaining about the lack of funding to buy basic items like paint and nails, despite a busy programme of exhibitions. The new freeze on expenditure means that not even toilet paper is covered by the day-to-day running budget, and the lack of cash for cleaning materials has resulted in infestations of cockroaches in sections of the gallery. The gallery has also had problems with its telephone lines for over five months.

With Johannesburg’s rainy season in full swing, the leaky roofs in the JAG’s contemporary exhibition venues have begun to threaten the physical integrity of work in the collection. ArtThrob News Editor M Blackman reported after a recent visit that he witnessed work damaged and warping as a result of damp. Blackman reported that, ‘there were several leaks in the ceiling of the basement. One had seemingly been leaking onto one of the paintings, another created a shower effect leaving one of the rooms of the "Pinky Promise" exhibition inaccessible.’  He also reported that there were dozens of dead cockroaches lying in several corners of Stephen Hobbs’s exhibition.

JAG’s structural and maintenance woes are just the latest in a series of high-profile scandals to befall this institution. Last year ArtThrob reported on the numerous thefts of art works from the gallery’s collection.

These incidents garnered widespread attention, and raised the issue of whether the JAG was a soft target for international networks of art thieves. As a result of the thefts, the gallery was promised R1 million by the Executive Director of Community Development to upgrade its security system, but the funding never materialised. ‘With the proposed budget cuts, this money is essentially gone,’ said ArtThrob’s source.

Speculation is rife that the City’s billing and collections crisis could be the reason for the Council's sudden bearishness. The billing situation came to a head in December last year as ratepayers’ associations brought a successful interdict against the City to prevent services cut-offs.

If the City of Johannesburg does not step in soon the staff members of the JAG say they will be forced to close the doors due to a public health threat. The gallery is calling for public assistance through the Friends of the Johannesburg Art Gallery foundation.

Johannesburg City Manager Trevor Fowler was contacted twice last week for comment on this article, once by fax because his office’s email system was down, but he had not responded by time of going to publication.