I have had the privilege of knowing Marco Cianfanelli since he was a Fine Arts and Art History student at Wits many years back and have followed his career with great interest.  I was of course well aware of his monumental sculpture of Mandela constructed at the site of Mandela’s capture near Howick on that [...]

The Johannesburg Heritage Foundation runs weekly tours usually on Saturday afternoons. What makes them special is that they explore interesting parts of Johannesburg, often include unusual places and spaces that are off-the-tourist-route, and they are often walking tours. They also sometimes do bus tours (like the Parktown Garden Tour on Sun 17th Feb and the [...]

Cycling is becoming an increasingly popular way of seeing local Joburg sites and sights.  Lebo of  Sowetobicycle tours has for many years offered cycling tours.  There are various options on offer starting from a 2 hour tour which includes a visit to a worker’s hostel, the Hector Pieterson Museum as well as the route of [...]

Coming up on the 20th October is a tour of the Wits campus. Apart from seeing a range of architectural styles from different decades of the 20th Century, the east campus offers insight into the original planning and layout of the core early buildings  while the west campus offers interesting examples of adaptive re-use  in [...]

Amazing show of significant objects from Wits’ collections. On at WAM (Wits Art Museum) until 14th October. Included diverse range such as world-renowned fossils, 13th century manuscripts, 16th century musical instruments, amazing San rock paintings, Mandela’s handwritten notes from the Rivonia treason trial, Sol Plaatjie’s diary, original Herbert Baker drawings [...]

In 2011 the old potato sheds behind the Market Theatre in Newtown, Johannesburg were demolished to make way for the first major retail and leisure investment in the city for a while.  Planned as a mixed-use node it is being developed by  Atterbury Property,  facilitated by the Johannesburg Property Company and the Johannesburg [...]

 
 
 
Just discovered a great website on Joburg (bit embarrassed I didn’t know of it before).    It’s  www. jhbwtc.blogspot.com and it’s the website of  the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism.   Based at Wits University, their work (as their name indicates) is academic and inter-disciplinary, focusing on critical social analysis.  I found an interesting article [...]

Many guests who  have stayed at Liz at Lancaster over the years have been fascinated with the idea of traditional medicine. Some of the more intrepid ones have made their way down to Diagonal Street in western downtown central Joburg where you can find The Museum of Man and Science.   This part of town is vibrant [...]

Over ten years ago the concept of a Cultural Arc was mooted by Prof Carolyn Hamilton, then Head of the Humanities Postgraduate School at Wits. Envisioned as a metaphorical sweeping link between three powerful cultural institutions across the geography of the city, it would connect the Johannesburg Art Gallery on the east, to Wits in [...]

Boekehuis has been an institution in Jozi in terms of providing a public space allowing for informed, engaged and intelligent public debate. It is a sad inditement that the holding company, the large profitable corporate Media 24, seemed to look only at the bottom of  line of profit,  rather than seeing Boekehuis and what it offered in [...]