National Gallery reaches out

“Harare Conversations” was initiated in 2010 by Mr Raphael Chikukwa, the National Gallery of Zimbabwe’s chief curator and deputy director. His vision for these conversations was such that it was a space for people to be able to interrogate and create non-stop dialogue on art-related topics.

A forum for artists and art professionals to continuously challenge themselves and their practice in terms of where they are going and how they can improve if need be.

Not only are the conversations targeted at those well versed in the arts but they are meant reach out to a broader audience. It is an educational platform, such that if anyone off the street walked in they would leave the conversations having learnt something new about the subject at hand.

Today, three years later “Harare Conversations” has become an integral part of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe’s monthly activities.
The conversations are held at least once a month with both local and international guests.

It is the Gallery’s way of providing an interesting space in which the public is welcome to come and discuss debate and learn about a variety of art-related topics.
Though the focus is primarily on visual art-related issues, “Harare Conversations” explores other forms of art as well.

Previously, those who have presented at the conversations include curators and visiting artists from all over the world. Our topics have diversified, we have talked about numerous issues ranging from performance art in Africa; Craft versus fine art in the context of stone sculpture as well as the restoration process of the Chris Ofili paintings that were donated to the National Gallery of Zimbabwe amongst many other topics.

For example, when Bisi Silva – an independent curator from Nigeria, founder and director of the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos – attended a conversation where the guests were people on polar ends; the artist and the curator.

This conversation sparked discussions between the “artist” and the “curator” and how there is a need for both to appreciate the other. For instance, important issue which called for artists to try and understand some general terms and activities in the industry, many artists do not try to understand what biennales, festivals or contemporary art is all about.

The relationship between the artist and the curator was magnified and it proved to be important in order to move forward.
On Wednesday, the National Gallery will be hosting a conversation in the form of a discussion and lecture by Professor Kathleen Coleman.

Prof Coleman was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She studied at the University of Cape Town (BA, 1973), the University of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) (BA Hons, 1975), and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (DPhil, 1979). Prof Coleman will be talking and discussing “Mosaics of the Roman Empire” their durability, colourfulness and whimsical nature.

Prof Coleman is an academic and writer, and the James Loeb Professor of the Classics at Harvard University. Before joining the Harvard faculty in 1998, she taught at the University of Cape Town (1979-1993) and held the chair of Latin at Trinity College, Dublin (1993-1998). She is a former Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung.

In 2002 she delivered the 15th Todd Memorial Lecture at the University of Sydney and in 2003 the opening lecture in the 2003 series of Wolfson Lectures at Oxford to honour the centenary of Sir Ronald Syme.

In the same year she was appointed Harvard College professor, a five-year appointment in recognition of contributions to teaching, and in 2005 she was the recipient of the Joseph R. Levenson Teaching Prize for Senior Faculty, awarded by the Undergraduate Council of Harvard College.

In 2007 she was awarded a Walter Channing Cabot Fellowship, an annual award given to Harvard faculty members in recognition of achievements in literature, history or art. In 2008 she received the Ausonius-Preis from the University of Trier, and delivered the Syme Lecture at Victoria University, Wellington, in New Zealand. She has been elected an honorary member of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.

Professor Coleman is the author of “Statius, Silvae IV: Text, Translation”, and “Commentary” (Oxford University Press, 1988, re-issued in paperback by Bristol Classical Press/Duckworth, 1998) and “Martial, Liber Spectaculorum: Text, Translation”, and “Commentary” (Oxford University Press, 2006), and co-editor, with J. Diggle, J. B. Hall, and H. D. Jocelyn, of FRD Goodyear.

Her current book-length projects are a monograph on Roman public executions for Oxford University Press, and a study of arena spectacles for Yale University Press. She is also preparing the manuscript of her 2010 Jerome Lectures for the University of Michigan Press, entitled “Q. Sulpicius Maximus, Poet, Eleven Years Old.”

“Harare Conversations” is free for all to attend, come and join us on Wednesday March 20 for a wonderful discussion on such ancient history that still lives with us today.