A very fond farewell

To celebrate a career spanning 40 years, the outgoing director of the University of Cape Town (UCT) Irma Stern Museum, Christopher Peter, is being honoured with an exhibition featuring more than 40 artists.

The exhibition, A Splendid Summer Send Off, runs until 16 November 2019 at the museum on Cecil Road in Rosebank. The show has been coordinated by Jill Trappler and Lucinda Cullum.

Since arriving at the museum in 1979, Peter has seen a prodigious number of shows and exhibitions, but still recalls his first.

“The District Six exhibition and symposium in 1979 was the first thing I worked on here with Professor [Neville] Dubow,” he recalled, looking back over this time at the museum.

“There have been hundreds of exhibitions here since then, and thousands of events.”

It was stipulated in Stern’s will that her estate was to be placed in the care of trustees who established the museum in 1971. It currently houses more than 100 of the artist’s oil paintings, as well as numerous artefacts, letters and works on paper.

The profile of the museum has waxed and waned over time, but is currently at a high.

Museum profile

“With email and websites, and generally with technology, the museum profile has increased way beyond anything that could have been done in the past. People are very aware of what’s going on here,” Peter revealed.

“There is a great interest in this place. People are enjoying it and realising it’s here for them.”

“There is a great interest in this place. People are enjoying it and realising it’s here for them.”

Everyone, he added, is “reading about Irma – the way she lived, her extraordinary diversity of interests, her travelling, her collecting, her ceaseless energy, both intellectual and professional”.

Stern is a major 20th-century woman artist internationally.

“I would say that there are very few women of the mid-20th century who can hold a candle to Irma Stern in diversity and range.”

For the renewed interest in Stern, “we can thank the auction houses, from the early 2000s especially, when remarkable prices were being realised for Irma Stern’s works”, Peter explained.

Recently, her works have set records for South African artists at auction, with one piece, Still Life with African Woman, fetching more than R17 million in 2014.

Nadja Daehnke is taking over from Peter as interim director of the museum, and he is enthusiastic about his successor.

Transformation and art

“Nadja has been working for nearly two years on the transformation portfolio of the university’s artwork collection.

“Transformation touched [the Irma Stern Museum] very positively because we got Nadja on board to help us with the art collection on campus. She is particularly gifted in this direction,” he said.

The museum is closely linked to the Works of Art Committee and the pursuit of engagement with students.

“It’s not only for the public. We are also supposed to make students aware of [the museum], and use it for that purpose, and I think Nadja is definitely going to be going in for that.

“Her brief, and her gift, will be in bringing the contemporary art debate into the sphere of the museum.”

“[Daehnke’s] brief, and her gift, will be in bringing the contemporary art debate into the sphere of the museum.”

Anyone who has visited the museum will instantly recall the walls of bright orange, green, yellow and mauve.

“[The colour change] started when Professor Dubow was here,” said Peter.

“I said, ‘Can’t we break away from all this white and cream?’ and he said, ‘By all means’.

“And so, between us, we hatched new colours. Some of them, quite by coincidence, were based on early colours in the house. Some of the wall colours are original, some are a creation. So, it’s been a sort of progression and a celebration of her years.”

During Peter’s tenure the collection itself has also changed.

“The collection has grown in a modest way. When they have been able to afford to, the trustees have acquired works by Irma Stern, and works [by other artists]. And we have received choice donations.

Sociable space

“[The museum has] loosened up and become much more of a sociable space. And also the interpretation of the house and of Irma Stern’s life and her work is much more opulent and colourful than it would have been during the time that she was actually living here because she wouldn’t have lived with all these pictures up.”

He said his life had been enormously enriched by his association with “this wonderful house” and with Stern’s work, about which he is passionate and “shall never cease to be”.

“Some of the wall colours are original, some are a creation. So, it’s been a sort of progression and a celebration of her years.”

“There is nothing she did that I don’t like. Even the so-called ‘bad ones’. [She showed] attention to detail, on every level, all the time. She was a very high-profile, socially confident figure.”

What Peter will miss most about the museum is the house and the garden.

“The house is like my own house,” he said.

“I feel I know it so well. And even the tall trees in Cecil Road. The whole area is just loaded with atmosphere.”

In anticipation of his imminent retirement, he is most looking forward to having time for creative pursuits.

“I’m looking forward to entering into a disciplined, private pursuit of creativity of my own. I’ll continue to do flowers, which I love to do.

“It would be nice to try and write a bit more, creatively, and I always adored doing drawings. It will also be nice to visit friends in Europe. Just to have that kind of freedom; it will be nice to do that.”