Staff

Ms Joni Brenner Principal Tutor Joni Brenner is an active visual arts practitioner with a longstanding interest in portraiture, mortality, transience and the fragmentary nature of knowing. She teaches Art History courses in the area of portraiture, including Renaissance portraiture and postmodern/ contemporary practices focusing on photographic portraiture and new subjectivities. She also teaches a course on African photography at third year level, a course on visual analysis and art methodologies at second year level, and runs reading and writing study groups at first and second year levels. She has a strong interest in the development of innovative teaching methodologies and course design and it is her dual focus on teaching and learning and on creative practice that shapes her approach to the teaching and research that she does at Wits. She works on the materials development team for the first year FVPA course. Emerging out of her 2008 African photography course is an article on African identity and what is means to be African that was written with five of the 3rd year students in the group and published in the journal Visual Communication in 2010. Brenner was the recipient of the Vice Chancellors Award for Individual Teaching in 2008. Tel: 011 717 4602 Email: joni.brenner.@wits.ac.za Mr Rory Bester Lecturer Rory Bester is an art historian and critic, as well as an occasional curator and documentary filmmaker. His teaching and research areas include archive and museum practice, curatorial studies, exhibition histories, migration and diaspora studies, photographic histories, postcolonialism, and post-war South African art. He regularly writes art criticism for the Mail and Guardian newspaper, as well as for Art South Africa, Camera Austria and Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. Bester’s catalogue essays on contemporary artists have been commissioned museums in Australia, France, Germany, South Africa, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States. Bester is the art advisor at the South African Reserve Bank, where he is involved in project focusing on the reframing and transformation of an important historical collection of South Africa art. He edited a volume on the South African Reserve Bank Art Collection and a monograph on the artist Ephraim Ngatane. Bester’s most recent television project was a 6-part documentary series on artistic processes entitled Right Through the Arts (SABC2, 2008). He has curated and co-curated a number of exhibitions in Denmark, Germany, South Africa, Sweden and the United States. He is currently working with Okwui Enwezor on Rise and Fall of Apartheid, a major exhibition of South African photography produced between 1948 and 1994. The exhibition will open at the Center of International Photography (ICP) in New York in September 2012. Tel: 011 717 4612 Email: rory.bester@wits.ac.za Professor Federico Freschi Associate Professor Federico Freschi has taught at the University of Cape Town, the University of Stellenbosch, the Cape Technikon and the University of the Witwatersrand, where he completed his PhD. His research interests centre on South African modern art and architecture, with a particular interest in the decorative programmes of public buildings, and the ways in which these are imbricated in the construction of imaginaries of national belonging.Professor Freschi has published widely on this subject, and has presented papers at numerous international and local conferences. He is on the editorial board of De Arte, is the Ex-officio President of SAVAH, the South African national association of art historians, and is an Associate Member of the Board of the Comité Internationale d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA). His undergraduate teaching courses include modernism, public art and architecture, Renaissance painting and architecture, and photography. Postgraduate teaching includes courses in postcolonial art, architecture and heritage and the relationship between art museums and the writing of art history. In addition to his teaching and research commitments, Federico is an accomplished baritone, and appears regularly on opera and concert stages throughout South Africa. Tel: 011 717 4611 Email: federico.freschi@wits.ac.za Professor Anitra Nettleton Chair and Director, Centre for the Creative Arts of Africa, Wits Art Museum Anitra Nettleton is an art historian. Her main field of interest is historical and contemporary African art, with a specialist focus on Southern Africa. She is the author of many articles on both historical and contemporary arts of Africa, and of the book African Dream Machines: Style, Identity and Meaning of African Headrests (Wits University Press, 2007). Together with other Wits staff members she was instrumental in the establishment the Standard Bank Collection of African Art at the Wits Art Museum, of which she has been the academic head since 2005. She has edited and co-authored catalogues for the Wits Art Museum, including Voice-Overs: Wits writing on African Art and Engaging Modernities. She is an NRF rated researcher (B2) and is currently working on the ways in which South African modernists accessed and used African sources. She is also researching historical forms of art made by Africans at the interface of colonial settlement and the creation of new traditions. Professor Nettleton has presented papers at numerous international and local conferences, is on the boards of two academic journals, and has contributed to major encyclopaedias of art and of Africa on aspects of her field. She is acknowledged as an expert on Southern African art and has, in this, capacity been an invited speaker at a number of international conferences and colloquia in London, Japan, New York and Baltimore. Tel: 011 717 1367 Email:> anitra.nettleton@wits.ac.za

Publications, 2011 to present

- Bester, R. 2011. Review: Border War brought home [Jo Ractliffe]. Mail and Guardian, 11-17 March: 11.

- Bester, R. 2011. Review: Exploitation as Art Form [Michael macGarry]. Mail and Guardian, 3-9 June: 4.

- Bester, R. 2011. Review: The many faces of King Ferd [Walter battiss]. Mail and Guardian, 8-14 July: 8.

- Bester, R. 2011. Review: Out of step with march of time [William Kentridge]. Mail and Guardian, 26 Aug – 1 Sep. III.

- Bester, R. 2011. Review: A mystic’s hard words [Willem Boshoff]. Mail and Guardian, 9-15 Sep. 8.

- Bester, R. 2011. Review: Disturbing discontent [Michael MacGarry]. Mail and Guardian, 4-10 Nov. 12.

- Bester, R. 2011. Three Spaces. In R Bester (ed). Sue Pam-Grant: Fugitive Lines. Stellenbosch: SMAC Gallery: 11-20.

- Bester, R. 2011. Claudette Schreuders and the Autobiography of Complexity. In S Perryer (ed). Claudette Schreuders. Munich: Prestel, pp.11-27.

- Bester, R. 2011. Holy Crap! In T Mentoor (ed). Danielle Wepener: Phenomenological Explorations of Painting and Space. Johannesburg: DW. 6-11.

- Bester, R. 2012. Cedric Nunn in the Context of South African Photography in the 1980s. In Ralf Seippel (ed) Cedric Nunn: Call and Response. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz.

- Brenner, J, E Burroughs and K Nel (eds). 2011. Life of Bone: Art meets Science. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.

- Freschi, F. 2011.  Self and Other.  Art South Africa 10(2): 26-29.

- Freschi, F. 2011. Review: Life of Bone: Art Meets Science.  Wits Review 17: 56-58.

- Freschi, F. 2011. ‘Unity in Diversity’:  The Representation of White Nationalisms in the Decorative Programmes of Public Buildings, 1930-1940. In J Carman (ed.) The Visual Century, Vol. 1.  Johannesburg: Wits University Press. 156-173. 

- Freschi, F. 2011.  Afrikaner Nationalism, Modernity and the Changing Canon of ‘High Art’, 1948-1976. In L. van Robbroeck (ed.) The Visual Century, Vol. 2.  Johannesburg: Wits University Press. 9-25. 

- Freschi, F. 2011. ‘Dancing in Chains’: The Imaginary of Global South Africanism in World Cup Stadium Architecture.  African Arts 43(3): 42-55.

- Freschi, F. 2011.  Alan Crump: A Fearless Vision – Curator’s Foreword.  In F Freschi (ed). Alan Crump: A Fearless Vision. Johannesburg: Johannesburg Art Gallery. 9-11.

- Freschi, F. 2011. A Great Seduction: The UCT Irma Stern Museum, Rosebank, Cape Town.  De Arte 84: 92-101.

- Nettleton, A. 2011. Sensing and Making Sense: Art-things in a small part of the world. World Art Journal 1(1): 59-66.

- Nettleton, A. 2011. Writing Artists into History: Dumile Feni and the South African Canon. African Arts 44(4): 8-25.

Conferences, Symposia and other Public Events, 2011 to present

- Bester, R. 2011. Between Seeing and Believing: Documentary and Archival Practices in the Global South. Panel convenor, Other Views: Art History in (South) Africa and the Global South, SAVAH/CIHA Colloquium, Wits University, 12-15 January.

- Bester, R. 2011. Audiences: How Much Do We Really Care? Panel moderator, Joburg Art Fair, 23-25 September. Panellists included Chris Dircon (Tate Modern, London), Raison Naidoo (South African National Gallery), Gaby Ngcobo (Centre for Historical Re-enactments), and Bisi Silva (CCA, Lagos)

- Bester, R. 2011. Photography and Independent Curation. Panel moderator, Joburg Art Dialogues, 26 September. Panellists included Koyo Kouoh (Raw Materials Company, Dakar) and Ralf Seippel (Bailey Seippel Gallery).

- Brenner, J. 2011. Life of bone: art meets science – a reflection. Paper presented at Exploring multimodal approaches to research and pedagogy in South African educational contexts, South African Multimodality in Education (SAME) Colloquium, Stellenbosch, 9 – 11 September.

- Brenner, J. 2011. Between Seeing and Believing: Documentary and Archival Practices in the Global South. Paper presented at Other Views: Art History in (South) Africa and the Global South, SAVAH/CIHA Colloquium, Wits University, 12-15 January.

- Brenner, J. 2011. Alumni address at Origins Centre, Wits University. Life of bone: art meets science, 20 August.

- Freschi, F. & Nathan, J. 2011. Cultural Clearings: The Object Transformed by the Art Market. Paper presented at the CIHA 2012 Pre-conference, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, 15-16 May.

- Freschi, F. 2011. An “African Journey of Hope”? The Imaginary of Global South Africanism in World Cup Stadium Architecture. Paper presented at the Fifteenth Triennial Symposium on African Art, Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA), University of California, Los Angeles, 23-26 March.

- Freschi, F. 2011. From Volksargitektuur to Pretoria Regionalism: The Imagined Landscape of the Nation in Afrikaner Nationalist Architecture, 1936-1976.  Paper presented at Other Views: Art History in (South) Africa and the Global South, SAVAH/CIHA Colloquium, University of the Witwatersrand, 12-15 January.

- Freschi, F. 2011. Romancing the Empire: The Politics of Imperialism and Nationalism in the Decorative Programme of South Africa House, London.  Paper presented at the conference, Empire State of Mind: Articulations of British Culture in the Empire, 1707-1997,  Lignan University, Hong Kong, 25-27 May.

- Freschi, F. 2011. ‘Unity in Diversity: Articulations of Identity in South African Architecture, 1930-2010’, a public lecture presented as part of the Clarence Ward Seminar Series, Oberlin College, Ohio, 17 March 2011.

- Freschi, F. 2011. ‘Poetry in Pidgin: Classicism in the Architecture of Johannesburg’, a public lecture presented at the Brenthurst Library, Johannesburg, 2 March 2011.

- Nettleton, A. 2011. In the Era of a Democratic South Africa: How can we Teach History of Art? Paper presented at the Triennial Symposium of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association, Los Angeles, March 23-26.

- Nettleton, A. 2011. Indigenous Modernisms. Invited paper presented at Indigenous Modernisms, Clark/Mellon colloquium, Stirling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts, 5th & 6th May.

- Nettleton, A. 2011. Indigenous Modernisms. Paper presented as respondent on the triple panel, ‘Indigenous Modernisms’, Other Views: Art History in (South) Africa and the Global South, SAVAH/CIHA Colloquium, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. January 13-15.

Curating and Exhibitions, 2011 to present

- Other Views, curated by Anitra Nettleton, Federico Freschi, Julia Charlton, Karel Nel and Fiona Rankin-Smith. Origins Centre, University of the Witwatersrand, 12 January 12 – 30 March 2011.

- Life of Bone, curated by Joni Brenner, Karel Nel and Gerhard Marx. Origins Centre, University of the Witwatersrand 5-31 May 2011.

- Alan Crump: A Fearless Vision, a retrospective exhibition celebrating the work of Alan Crump (1949-2009) curated by Federico Freschi. Johannesburg Art Gallery, 8 May-12 June 2011, and the National Festival of the Arts, Grahamstown, 30 June-14 July 2011.

- Unavoidable, solo exhibition by Joni Brenner. ArtFirst London,  29 June – 19 August, 2011

- Joni Brenner, Alexandra Makhlouf, Ansuya Blom, curated by Fred London Gallery, London. Johannesburg Art Fair, 23-25 September 2011.