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Nhlalwenhle Ngwenya, Sunday Life Correspondent
AFTER a long financial relationship with international sponsors which has proved hard to sustain owing to a myriad of economic challenges, the National Art Gallery in Bulawayo is looking for local corporate partners.
The unique partnership with the corporate world which the gallery seeks, comes at a time when most international sponsors have stopped funding the gallery.
Pegged at $50 a month for the corporate world, the partnership comes with a lot of benefits, which the chairperson of the fundraising committee of friends of the Gallery, Eloise Leher said created a win-win situation for both parties.
“We had international funding for a very long time, those were happy days. Now things are different. But in a way what could be a potential downfall can be an opportunity. If Bulawayo looked after Bulawayo art then we have a potential for growth and forming identity and showing who really we are.
“We spent some time just thinking, like you say when I go out and ask for a hand out I might get it for a moment but if it’s not benefiting both of us it’s not a sustainable relationship,” said Leher.
In as much as the art gallery seeks to push artworks to all boundaries, she said that it also had to adopt a business stunt in the process.
“This is a business, for a long time it has been an institutional collective art which was a good time in our history but now it has to be a business and the partners need to win as much as the gallery,” she said.
Leher added that art in Bulawayo was at a point of buoyancy for both business and the whole community, thus the need for a partnership.
“The important message for the business owner is that the art in this city also belongs to him, as much as it does to the community and the prosperity of art in the city benefits him as much as the art community,” she said.
She said artists were keen to work with the corporate world.
“They absolutely are, artists have to be in business too but it’s hard to be both, but ultimately they have to eat, they want to get their art out there and we feel we have a responsibility to get their art out there, to get their art seen and possibly sold,” she said.
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Bongani Ndlovu