Messages and Meaning: The MTN Art Collection
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the publication of Messages and Meaning: The MTN Art Collection In September 1997 MTN, one of the leading cell phone companies in South Africa, made a modest purchase of artworks by South African artists. This marked the beginning of what was to become a major corporate collection of South African art. Now eight years old, and comprising some 1400 African and South African works, the collection has been energetically researched, published, traveled, exhibited, discussed, debated and admired. With this new book, the MTN Art Collection has come of age. The writers who have contributed essays to Messages and Meaning: The MTN Art Collection are renowned South African critics, art historians, anthropologists, and curators. Andries Oliphant, Emile Maurice, Nessa Leibhammer, Khwezi Gule, Pattabi Ganapathi Raman, Philippa Hobbs, Ronel Kellner, Colin Richards, Clive Kellner, Wilma Cruise, Judy Seidman, and Elizabeth Rankin share their insights on the artworks in the collection, the messages they embody, the stories they tell, the ideas they communicate and the spaces – both architectural and psychological – that they occupy. The essays explore a variety of topics: the ceramics, beadwork, and textiles in the collection; the problems and challenges of curatorship in South Africa; MTN’s extensive holdings of Resistance posters; sculpture and mixed-media works in the collection; the architecture of MTN’s new corporate headquarters; and MTN’s place in discussions on contemporary South African art. Messages and Meaning, edited by MTN’s current resident art curator, Philippa Hobbs, with the assistance of two former curators, aims to be an informative, diverse, and sumptuous read for years to come. The book has been launched simultaneously with the first national touring exhibition of the MTN Art Collection. Price (ZA) R580 |
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