Review of 100 Years, 100 Objects, Michaelis School of Fine Art centenary exhibition, 5 September – 8 October 2025

A new exhibition, curated by printmaker Fritha Langerman, charts the centenary of Michaelis, the University of Cape Town’s school of fine art. The institution was named after the German financier and mining magnate Max Michaelis, who – with the wealth from South African mining – in the early 1920s pledged funds to establish a Chair of Fine Art within the university. An entire art school soon grew from this single academic appointment, bolstered by the amalgamation with the pre-existing Cape Town School of Art. The first university-based art school in South Africa, Michaelis was instrumental in moving South African tertiary art-training away from technical colleges and thus giving it a new status.

As the title of this commemorative exhibition suggests, Langerman chose to structure it by inviting those with past or present connections with the school (largely staff members) to submit an object or photograph of personal significance, and to accompany it with a brief text. But inevitably, for an institution dating back to 1925, there are no witnesses to the early years, so Langerman herself has filled the gaps as much as possible with photographs and texts from the archives. 

The archival material and the individual submissions offer a fascinating record of the history of Michaelis. But Langerman has opted to avoid a chronological arrangement of the material, so objects and commentary from, say, the 1930s might be found hard up against those from decades later. This seems to have been done in a spirit of avoiding ‘dry academicism’ but it might be argued that a survey of an institution’s first one hundred years would benefit from some attention to chronology. 

Given its absence, what can’t be explored are thematic issues that have been important in the life of the art school since its founding. There are many of these, and they are interesting for what they reveal about the past but also as live issues concerning the future direction of the institution: where its staff have been recruited from, how they have related both to the South African and the international art worlds, how successive directors have conceived of the curriculum, and specifically how they have responded to the possibility of a broadened curriculum including, for instance, the teaching of design as well as of fine art.

Some of these are issues are touched on in the objects and texts on show, but rarely directly. The curator has adopted a non-authoritative position in relation to the material, allowing the very diverse range of submitted objects and texts to generate a sense of myriad avenues and possibilities rather than a few core leitmotifs. This will frustrate some, and excite others. But even those who might long for greater curatorial direction will be able to find plenty to ponder in this exhibition. It might serve as a starting-point for further research into the school’s history, and in particular to its as-yet under-explored post-1990 period.* Meanwhile, for those with a personal memory of its past, it offers a Proustian look back to people, events and issues that were once live and compelling and that are now ‘history’. 

* The following articles have explored aspects of the school’s history to 1990, but much more remains to be done:

Tietze, A. 2014. ‘The Attainment of a True Eye and a Correct Hand’: Drawing, Art Training Institutions and Theories of Art Education in Cape Town, 1860-1926, de arte, 89.

Tietze, A. 2015. The Art of Design: Curriculum Policy and the Fine Art vs Design Debate at Michaelis School of Fine Art, 1925-1972, de arte, 91.

Tietze, A. 2017. Freedom through art: educational policy and practice at Michaelis School of Fine Art, 1971-89, de arte, 54, 2-3.