April 19, 2023 - July 31, 2023
artology, n.
[a:t/ ol-uh-jee]
... The study of art or an object as art. A branch of knowledge or research strategy applied to curatorship in a university museum context, including practical and theoretical perspectives. A variety of responses and methods to art-making, physical or visceral experiences. The innovative ability to transform information into a thing, ideas, processes and new knowledge into the visual or art. A specialised fusion of mutually creative, research and a transdisciplinary approach to objects in collections and archives.
Artology: select works from the University of Pretoria Museums is an exhibition inspired by a definition not yet defined in any dictionary. The term Artology is a curatorial perspective and an investigative tool that probes into the University of Pretoria’s collections by actively researching its archives, conserving and restoring its collections and interacting with audiences within the framework of a university museum setting. It is through this tool of Artology that the UP Museums will continue to curate and collect in order to build and reimagine the future of the University of Pretoria’s art collection.
The University of Pretoria’s art collection is curated and cared for by the University of Pretoria Museums. It comprises an extensive list of works created by prominent South African artists dating as far back as 1922 when a 1915 lino-cut of a portrait of Paul Kruger (1825–1904) created by Hendrik Pierneef (1886-1957) was donated by the artist to the former Transvaal University College which in 1930 became the independent University of Pretoria. Artology brings together a number of works that reflect on the contentious timeline of making art within South Africa. The works selected for this exhibition reveal complex historical narratives that are articulated from collective and personal experiences of both yesterday and today. The artworks within Artology, not only speak to the audiences of this exhibition, they are also in conversation with each other. These intended and sometimes ‘accidental’ moments of adjacency open up avenues for extended readings that may go beyond the intended.
The UP Museums curate a remarkable collection of nearly 10 000 artworks. An institutional collection of this magnitude and spanning a time frame of more than a century of collecting in South Africa can never be ‘perfect’ or concise. There are obvious gaps and omissions given the shifting social, economic and political histories and as a result of divergent and even contentious histories. The permanent collection is regularly expanded through new additions made through purchases, donations, bequests, gifts, fieldwork, or long-term loans. Artology aims to rethink and reframe how university museums actively work to fill narrative, identity, and representational gaps while simultaneously capturing an institution’s memory of the past and present. Gathering data and conducting active curatorial research further reveals numerous shortcomings, flaws, blemishes, and deficiencies as seen through the prism of shifting times that span the institution's lifetime.