Career advice
The chief curator of a major public gallery speaks to René Vollgraaff
When she was in matric, Antoinette Murdoch went on a date to the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG).
"I always tell people I fell in love that day. Not with the guy, but with the gallery," said Murdoch, who has been the chief curator of the JAG since 2009. "And today I am married to the gallery. We are in a full-on marriage!"
Murdoch, a contemporary artist, started her career in art more than 15 years ago.
After a diploma in fine art at the former Technikon Witwatersrand (now part of the University of Johannesburg), she took a job as a gallery manager at the art gallery of the former Civic Theatre (now Joburg Theatre).
There followed some years of raising children, teaching art at high schools and lecturing in textiles and drawing at Lisof (the London International School of Fashion) in Rosebank. Then she answered an advertisement for the post of CEO of the Art Bank.
There followed some years of raising children, teaching art at high schools and lecturing in textiles and drawing at Lisof (the London International School of Fashion) in Rosebank. Then she answered an advertisement for the post of CEO of the Art Bank.
"I thought 'fat chance', but I applied anyway and just told them this is MY job. They were actually looking for someone with business and art experience, but they could not find that in one package.
"Maybe I just looked the most trainable. I got the job and I had to jump in headfirst in the deep side to learn about the business side."
The Art Bank is a company which rents art to businesses. It was established in 2004 by the Economic Development Unit of the City of Johannesburg.
"I suddenly had to learn about budgets and sales," Murdoch said.
"After three years they advertised this job as chief curator of the JAG. This is a sought-after position and the kind of job that only becomes available every five or 10 years.
"I really could not have asked for anything better."
What does the chief curator of an art gallery do?
"It is many things in one," Murdoch said. "The most important is to decide about exhibitions: what should be exhibited, when it should be done. We obviously get a lot of applications for exhibitions and have to be very careful about what we allow."
The word curator means "to care for" and caring for the roughly 10000 artworks in the JAG is part of Murdoch's responsibility.
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