This thesis provides an analysis of Shirley Plantation’s operation as a historic house museum from 1894 to the present period, and the Carter family’s dedication to keeping the estate within the family. The first chapter examines Shirley Plantation’s beginnings as a historic house museum as operated by two Carter women, Alice Carter Bransford and Marion Carter Oliver, who inherited the property in the late nineteenth century. The second chapter explores Shirley Plantation’s development as a popular historic site during the mid-twentieth century to the early part of the twenty-first century, and compares the site’s development to the interpretative changes that had been occurring at Colonial Williamsburg. The third chapter analyzes and critiques Shirley Plantation’s present interpretative focus as a historic site, with the fourth chapter offering suggestions for developing an exhibition that interprets the history of slavery at the plantation.

Feminist art historians reassessed French Impressionist Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, a period in which her work coincidentally received steady exposure in major museum exhibitions. This thesis examines how the feminist art historical project intersects with exhibitions that give prominence to Morisot’s work. Critical reviews by Morisot scholars argue that more frequent display of the artist’s work has not correlated to nuanced interpretation. Moreover, prominent feminist scholars and museum theorists maintain that curators virtually exclude their contributions. Attending to these recurrent concerns, this thesis charts shifts in emphases and inquiry in writing centered on Morisot to survey the extent to which curators convey new constructions of her artistic, social, and historical identities. This analysis will observe how distinct exhibition forms—the retrospective, the Impressionism blockbuster, and the gendered “women Impressionists” show—may frame Morisot’s work differently according to their organizing principles.

The MICE-industry is a relatively new phenomenon that is currently in a strong growth period, fairs are included in this industry. There is a great deal of interest and a variety of motives for people to visit fairs for various reasons. The exhibitors' and visitors' motives differ according to several studies, which shows the problems that exists about what the visitors' actual motives are. This study investigates why visitors in private, educational and business purposes choose to participate in fairs, and identifies what the influencing motive is behind the visitor's decision to participate in a fair. This is examined through a quantitative and qualitative research method. The result shows that there are similarities, but also significant differences between the three visitor purposes. / MICE-industrin är en relativt ung företeelse som är i en kraftig tillväxtperiod, i denna industri ingår bland annat mässor. Det finns ett stort intresse och en rad olika motiv för människor att i olika syften besöka mässor. Utställarnas och besökarnas motiv skiljer sig enligt flera studier åt, vilket visar på den problematik som finns kring vilka besökarnas egentliga motiv är. I denna studie undersöks varför besökare i privat, utbildnings- och företagssyfte väljer att delta i mässor, samt identifiera vad som är det påverkande motivet bakom besökares beslut att delta i en mässa. Detta studeras genom en kvantitativ och kvalitativ undersökningsmetod. Resultatet visar på att det finns likheter, men också betydande skillnader mellan de olika besökssyftena.

Cotemporary museum theory calls for dialogue as a means of making museums multi-­‐ vocal and representative of larger audiences. Dialogue is seen to be a break with prior modernist practices and epistemology. However, in most cases what is meant by dialogue and how to implement it is not made clear. I proposed using the Community of Enquiry Approach to dialogue in the development of the Travelling Museum. The Travelling Museum is a community museum based at ‘The Centre’ on the land of the Swazi chief in Emjindini. I was concerned that labelling the community and associating the museum with the chief could perpetuate essentialised ideas of what it meant to be Swazi. I was also conscious of not wanting to be the ‘outsider expert’ and for the museum to be developed by the community it was intended for. It was for these reasons that I decided to employ the ideas of dialogue. While implementing dialogue through the Community of Enquiry, I started to question whether this method of dialogue could become normative, and whether it excluded or silenced certain members. I wanted to locate this approach to dialogue on a larger theoretical base, in order to understand how dialogue challenges and departs from modernism and moves into postmodernism. In order to do this in the Report I explore postmodern and modern theories of knowledge and difference. My research method is to use critical incidents. These are moments of noticing or jarring in my practice, which when interpreted allow me to interrogate theory and practice. The first incident questions my openness to the other where I raise concerns of relativism. The second and third incidents address issues of power and access in museums. I conclude by recommending a new role for the museum. No longer in a role of cultural authority, museums can take on the new role of artist. As an artist the museum can be multi-­‐partial and act as social commentator, provocateur and catalyst for change (Gogan, 2005, p.60 ).

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Fine Arts by Dissertation. Johannesburg, 2014. / This practice based research project engages with the theme of safety and security through the conceptualisation and production of sculptures and drawings. The exhibition takes the form of an installation which is the primary source of interrogation into the broad topic of increasing securitisation in the contemporary urban environment. The components of this research project include 1) a body of practical artwork which explores the theme of safety and security in Johannesburg and 2) a dissertation which locates this exploration in theoretical, critical, historical perspectives. There is a particular focus on two other securitised cities namely São Paulo and London in relationship to the work of artists Marcelo Cidade and Mona Hatoum respectively, specifically sculpture/installation, which engages thematically and materially with notions of power, surveillance and security that responds to their immediate surroundings. The Johannesburg security context and works by the design team Dokter and Misses are analysed and finally a documentation and critical reflection of my own creative work produced in the context of this study.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (History of Art), 2017 / This research was instigated by a collection of uncollected portraits (completed and incomplete), photographs, letters, papers, documents, passbooks, and other materials, left behind when an airbrush portraiture studio, The Aqua Portrait Studio, closed in about 1998 after fifty years of continuous business. The portraits were created by enlarging small original photos – sometimes from two separate sources – and then colouring them with an airbrush and other materials. Because of the nature of the airbrush technique, it was possible to change the original image completely: to clothe the sitters in completely imaginary attire, for example, and pose them together with someone they had possibly never been photographed with. This process gave rise to a genre in which people could re-imagine themselves, enact other personas. Because the fifty years of existence of this studio almost coincided with the years of apartheid (the studio was open from about 1950 to about 1998), it seemed that the collection of uncollected images and notes left behind could be a source of rich information about the people who were the studio's clients, the process of acquiring airbrushed portraits, and the social and historical context in which those involved lived. I start with three fundamental questions: Since this portraiture form grew so exponentially in popularity, especially during the apartheid years, what specific significance and meaning had it taken on for the communities who were buying the portraits? What need was it meeting? What can we learn about these lives from this collection? The research takes two forms. First, it closely interrogates the material objects in the collection; and second, it tracks the routes of clients and salesmen to what were some of the former homelands of the northern part of South Africa. Both these investigations attempt to understand the possible roles and contribution of these pictures to the construction and reconstruction of self-identity under apartheid. / XL2018

A Research Report submitted to the Department of History of Art, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts, 2016 / Statistics indicate that over the past 16 years (since the year 2000), there have been over 30 black lesbians in South Africa, who have been victims of rape (and in some cases, brutal murder as well) as a result of homophobic violence, which is aimed at “curing” lesbians of their homosexuality. The aim of this research report is to examine how activist methods, such as art exhibitions and public performances, are challenging homophobic violence. The report explores the effectiveness of activist artworks (which include public performances and works by South African artists Zanele Mutholi and Gabrielle Le Roux) in raising awareness and educating South Africans about homophobic violence, which is a daily reality for many members of the South African LGBTQ community. For the purpose of this report, the Queer and Trans Art-iculations exhibition, which was held at the Wits Art Museum (WAM) in 2014, is compared to the annual Johannesburg Pride parade of 2012. These events are analysed in terms of their effectiveness in creating awareness about homophobic violence and how they can improve on being more informative and effective in the future. The importance of this research is to add to the existing body of work around art activism as it explores the ways in which activist artists attempt to make social and political change regarding the South African LGBTQ community. / MT2017

Submitted in fulfilment of the Degree of Master of Arts (Fine Arts) Johannesburg, March 2017 / This dissertation uses David Goldblatt’s seminal photobook, On the Mines (1973, revised 2012) to mediate a biographical conversation with Raymond Zavala, a migrant mineworker who left Mozambique in 1962 to live and work in Johannesburg. On the Mines was used as a vehicle to examine intimate details of one man’s life in the mines, focusing particularly on a mine in Roodepoort known as Durban Deep, where Raymond worked for 38 years. During my visits with Raymond, On the Mines was kept in hand as he and I walked through what once was a prosperous mining town. We would discuss his day-to-day life as a migrant, mineworker, husband and father, and began layering and inserting our own stories and photographs over and into On the Mines in an attempt to portray a more personal account of one person’s life on the mines. Goldblatt’s photographic archive is crucial to this process in that it enabled me to initiate conversations with Raymond about his personal history, memory and identity. This research, encompassed in the visual biography presented here, was created in collaboration with Raymond. He guided me through this process by directing the narrative of his own story, recommending specific landscapes and people for me to meet and photograph.  I have chosen to present this practice in the form of a photobook, so that its concept and content can be shared as a critical resolution of my visual and narrative engagement. / XL2018

University of the Witwatersrand Masters Research Report History of Art 31 March 2015 / Landscape representations in Western art have long stood as metaphors for power relations inscribed on the earth, encoding imperial aspirations, national identity, poetic and aesthetic experiences about humankind, nature and the environment. However, contemporary landscape imagery of large-scale industrial, and particularly mining sites, have come to signify, pre-dominantly through the medium of photography, meta-narratives that go beyond the political, economic, and environmental power relations historically endemic to landscape representation. Indeed, I suggest they constitute the formation of a sub-genre within the category of Landscape. Mining activities characterise extensive landscape interventions, often with catastrophic results both above and below ground. Perhaps a mined landscape more than any other, exemplifies not only the interwoven political and economic power relations inscribed upon the land, but also testifies to the underlying pathology of the land. Contemporary landscape studies cut across disciplines and go beyond the apprehension of surface, taking into account the geological as well social histories of land, and thus signal a shift in the aesthetic experience of land, both emotionally and intellectually, and consequently the way in which land is made visible. The visualisation of these land sites through imagery has precipitated an interface of aesthetic experience that simultaneously makes visible the politics symbolically encoded in the landscape itself, and the politics that impact viewership and reception. Nevertheless, accompanying the need to make visible those land sites hugely modified by mineral extraction, from both a historical and current perspective, is an unprecedented urgency that is weighted by a political anxiety over future implications of such land interventions. This anxiety is driven by the spectral nature of mined landscapes. Although monumental in scale, mined landscapes are often ‘not seen’, partly because they exist in restricted zones or are located underground, but often they are rendered invisible through a process of assimilation and naturalisation. A case in point has been the collective presence of mine dumps along Johannesburg’s southern periphery, and which, now in the process of being re-cycled, form the focus of my selected case study, an image by British photographer, Jason Larkin and titled Re-Mining Dump 20 (2012). By seeking to bring sites of mining activity into public consciousness, contemporary representations of mined landscapes also mediate current relations between humankind and the natural environment. As an agent of mediation, I propose that an image of a mined landscape functions as an interface. By situating Larkin’s image within a theoretical framework motivated by Jacques Rancière’s politics of aesthetics and Malcolm Andrews and W.J.T. Mitchell’s landscape theory, I proceed with my investigation in the form of a two-part interrogation: one that places emphasis on theory followed by a practical, creative response to Larkin’s image by way of repeat photography of Dump 20 and its surrounds. To demonstrate the concept of interface, I ‘excavate’ the aesthetic experience of Dump 20 as both sensory apprehension and through Rancière’s lens of emancipated viewership. There is an aesthetic quality of the sublime that appears to pervade visual representations of mined landscapes. Described as industrial sublime, toxic sublime or even apocalyptic sublime, the attention-holding quality these images exercise, through a strategy of aesthetic appeal, contribute to a politics of visibility by subversively implicating the viewer as a member of the human race. Global citizenship overrides national identity in these landscape representations, disrupting a sense of belonging with one of complicit participation in the formation of mined landscapes through reliance on mineral extraction for manufacturing consumer goods. Not only do representations of mined landscapes demand a rethink about aesthetic appreciation of landscape imagery and the endemic political connotations implicated in an understanding of landscape. They actively seek to penetrate surface visibility of land by taking into account the very pathology of land as an on going narrative of human and environmental interaction and life continually in process.

A research report submitted to the Wits School of Arts in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements for the Masters Degree in Coursework and Research in Arts, Culture and Heritage studies. Johannesburg, 2015 / One of the principal purposes of the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG), one of Johannesburg’s public institutions, is to educate the public through the arts. The many changes, including political changes, in South Africa that caused the movement of people from one area to another have affected the audience participation at this museum. The Johannesburg Art Gallery is located in Joubert Park, the southern part of Hillbrow, which has been affected by the changes that have taken place from the time of the museum’s inception to the present day, when the area is inhabited by black people from all over Africa. The concern is therefore to understand the relationship between these two. I plan to interrogate the mission of JAG, to find out if it is relevant to the community that it is located in, and if the community is aware and supportive of JAG’s activities. The purpose of this investigation is to challenge the methods that are used by JAG to obtain and maintain visitors to the museum, and to expand the target market group by shifting focus from the people that used to live within this community to the present-day inhabitants. This is done by finding out from the Joubert Park community what is it that they wish to see in this museum. By observing their everyday life and interviewing them, I explore why or how much the people of Joubert Park are involved in the Johannesburg Art Gallery today. To reach the conclusion of this research, observing the area and interviewing the community will be followed by interviewing the co-ordinators of the Joubert Park Project (started in 2000) that was designed for the purpose of involving this community in the public spaces and institutions around them, and finally the employees of the Johannesburg Art Gallery. In addition, studying recent successful exhibitions would possibly reveal the explanation of what people want to see. In this world of ever-changing technology and culture of cyber space, can a museum attract new audiences by using methods that are contemporary and interactive?