Butho’s first day at work …New National Art Gallery director outlines his vision

05 May, 2019 - 00:05 0 Views
Butho’s first day at work …New National Art Gallery director outlines his vision Butholezwe Kgosi Nyathi

The Sunday News

Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter

BUTHOLEZWE Kgosi Nyathi, the new director of the National Art Gallery is worried about the walls at the National Art Gallery. 

He fears that these walls, housing some of Zimbabwe’s most exquisite art, will one day cave in and bring about the ruin of both priceless life and art. If his office is anything to go by, his fears are certainly grounded in reality. 

There are cracks on the upper walls of the youthful office that the 33-year-old has just taken over from the recently retired Voti Thebe. Like snakes descending from the roof, the cracks slide downwards, slithering around the artwork that decorates the office’s walls. 

Outside, even a casual passerby can see that the gallery’s roof, which has begun peeling, has seen better days. Those who remember the collapse of a fast food outlet’s roof three years ago must cast more than a worrying look at the gallery’s roof. 

The art gallery, with its Victorian architecture looks like a building that belongs to a different time, a different age. It looks like it was lifted directly from the bygone Victorian age and fitted right onto the corner of Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Street and Leopold Takawira Avenue.   

Like many buildings around the city, the Victorian look adds to the gallery’s charm. It is a tourist attraction and the envy of many but on the first day at work, for Nyathi, it is a concern. 

“Major issue that needs urgent attention right now, for which I invite stakeholders to support the gallery, is the building. It needs a serious revamp in terms of renovations. You may appreciate that this is a very historical building. This is one of the historic buildings in Bulawayo,” he reveals to Sunday Life in an interview. 

“Look at the walls, they’re now cracking and if you do a tour you’ll see the extent of the damage. It needs serious and urgent attention so for me that’s one of the most important calls out there. Even if you walk outside and look around you can see that it’s giving in and needs a major overhaul. 

“This is one of the major messages that should go out there. The gallery is a historic building and if you look at the reviews online of people who have visited this place they appreciate its Victorian outlook and that’s what makes it an exceptional piece of architectural work.” 

But on his first day at work Nyathi, a holder of the National University of Science and Technology (Nust) undergraduate degree in Library and Information and a Master of Science Degree in Developmental Studies from the same institution, is concerned about more than the potential danger that the walls pose. 

He has stepped into big shoes and many will be wondering if he can walk in them with comfort. The man he has replaced, Thebe, was a pure artiste and after years of his reign, some might have been expecting the man that succeeds him to be cut from the same cloth. 

Nyathi, at his tender age, is already a seasoned administrator after steering Amagugu International Heritage Centre with much success. While some might see the 2016 Mandela Washington Fellow as a man more comfortable in an office rather than a studio dripping with paint, Nyathi, the son of historian and cultural activist Pathisa Nyathi, points out that he grew up among art and artistes.        

“Many will find it intriguing that my first degree is Library and Information Science which I got from Nust in 2008. Why and how I got to do librarianship is a different story altogether but the fact of the matter is that for the past 11 years I have not worked in a library space. Most of that time has been dedicated towards arts, culture and heritage. 

“Why the arts? I think it’s because of my upbringing. Even if I didn’t want to bring up his (Pathisa) name I think it will eventually come out whether I like it or not. I grew up in that kind of setup you know, visiting musicians, this very gallery, ZIBF, anything and everything artistic. That was my upbringing and I think by default I was oriented in that regard,” he says. 

His skill as an administrator, a skill he horned working alongside Pathisa at Amagugu, is what will help him scale new heights at the gallery, he believes. 

“Running a cultural institution requires some certain soft skills in terms of fundraising, setting up systems, networking . . . he is a historian and cultural practitioner and we would complement each other. While he concentrates on his cultural expertise, I do the admin side of things so I think that was a fantastic combination. For me it remains an example of the kind of balance that you need in a cultural enterprise that even if you’re an artist talented it’s not enough and that is why prominent musicians have managers.” 

Although he has already achieved a lot, Nyathi says the gallery presents an altogether different challenge for him. 

“Coming to the gallery for me was responding to a bigger calling to say I’ve had these kinds of opportunities and I’ve done this kind of schooling what is the next big step? And so it so happened that immediately after I finished my masters degree the incumbent retired and the vacancy was advertised and I said let me just explore this and see.  

“Being in Bulawayo and Matabeleland in general, the gallery is that foremost institution in terms of artistic expression. If you talk of cultural institutions there’s none that is bigger than the gallery. This is a reference point for all artistes, not just the visual artistes. Beyond the studios here we have musicians that launch albums here and some artistes hold their meetings here,” he says. 

While he is happy to see artistes at the gallery prosper, Nyathi said he would be pleased to see them have more of an impact outside the gallery’s walls. 

“There’s art for art’s sake, I’m sure you follow debates on social media, to say we just do drawing to celebrate the aesthetic value of the artwork . . . That definitely will happen because that’s what the gallery exists to do. But the gallery again is not an island, it operates in a certain context and so to what extent can we use art to address broader developmental issue. 

“To what extent art be used in hospitals. So we can work together and strike partnerships that will see our artistes go to certain public health institutions. This can happen even in distressed communities. I saw this during Cyclone Idai where an NGO brought visual artists who brought together children to draw their homes before and after the cyclone as part of post traumatic therapy,” he says.

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