Treasures of the Africana Museum by Africana Museum (Johannesburg, South Africa)
Treasures of the Africana Museum by Africana Museum (Johannesburg, South Africa) by Anna H Smith
Hardcover, ISBN 9780868430096
Publisher: Purnell, 1977
Used - Very Good. DJ has very slight wear. Book is beautiful, clean and the pages clear.
Treasures of the Africana Museum by Anna H Smith, published by Purnell, 1977. 80 pages , measures 11 ins. X 8 ins. This is one of those books, which since the reorganization of Johannesburg cultural life and the move of some but perhaps not all treasures of Johannesburg to Museum Africa in Newtown, has itself become a treasure. Perhaps museum upheavals are a casual by-product of political transformations and like the Rhodes statue at UCT, who really knows what to do with the now neglected and officially unappreciated object d'art of bygone colonial days. This book all embracingly captures the extraordinary richness and depth of the old Africana museum which was housed on the top floors of the Johannesburg City Library.
From the time of the Perry design of the early 1930s, it was an odd expectation that the city library should also be a theatre and several museums wrapped into one. Flo Bird and I and I am sure many other citizens fell in love with Johannesburg as children when we could see a stage coach, Frascati's bar, the mayoral chains, the model of an ocean liner, geological treasures and a grandfather clock all inside the halls of the Library. These treasures inspired dreams.
This book tells the story of the collection and in a series of excellent photographs visually presents medals, silver, furniture, ceramics, glass, old public transport, Johannesburg history, rock art and ethnography and much more besides. A city ought to have a sense of its past in a fine city museum (there are many good examples around the world) and Museum Africa and the Transport museum are promising successors but are too neglected, unvisited and short of resources. The Bernberg Costume collection seems to have disappeared. Avoid a nostalgia for past times but enjoy this book to recall what Johannesburg museum people thought important to acquire and collect forty and more years ago. Also use the book as a quirky guide to tour Museum Africa to see what has survived, how it is displayed and how these treasures are now interpreted. The endpapers show a beautiful sepia photograph of the Johannesburg City Library and the forecourt garden fountains.
