The La Motte Museum not only offers displays depicting aspects of the Rupert family, focusing on Dr. Anton and Mrs. Huberte Rupert and the musical career of their daughter Hanneli Rupert, but also features the history of La Motte and its magnificently renovated buildings, with a brief review of Cape Dutch architecture.
The Rupert Museum and artist Ras Silas Motse taught 48 learners from five local schools how to use COLOUR, LINE and SHAPE in graffiti design. The learners created panels with elements of South African heritage and diversity, expressing their pride and joy. The panels are a message to celebrate our country, its people and the youth.
In a celebration of sculpture, this exhibition brings together a selection of figurative works in mostly bronze created by sculptors continents and more than a century apart. The selection features a European Master, Old South African Master as well as two contemporary South African Greats and casts a view on shared influences, style, execution, and approach to their practice.
The retrospective of Albert Adams’ oeuvre spanned more than fifty years and highlighted his contribution as an exceptional artist and humanist. His remarkable, monumental triptychs, South Africa 1959, dubbed his “Guernica”, along with South Africa 1958-59 (Deposition), which features a crucified black Christ, was central to this exhibition. His self-portraits, a recurring theme in his work, displayed an agitated urgency and multi-levelled self-reflection.
The second Open Call of the Rupert Museum was launched in February - inviting all creatives from any platform to respond to iconic and ground-breaking inventions created in the eye of 1960s popular futuristic trends. As a result, over 200 entries were received with the judging panel reaching a conclusion of 39 successful applicants whose responsive artworks are now the IN-RESPONSE exhibition. In summary, the pieces you are about to encounter provide a contemporary take and material-based approach to the icons that served as its inspiration. The artists sought symbolic meaning while exploring the possibilities of their chosen subject, material and its execution. Mediums include painting, printmaking, ceramics, textiles and digital displays with various materials from recycled plastic, wood and steel to the more traditional.
Continuing the CASTED series of exhibitions, several pieces of Italian Modern Sculpture from the Huberte Goote permanent collection are featured. In appreciation of this expressive artistic period that transformed, and even transfigured anthropomorphic representation, we bring you CASTED - Scultura italiana.
Have you ever wondered what happens behind the scenes managing an art collection? Well this exhibition will present a view into Collection Management and Archiving of a private art collection. Various aspects, disciplines and general practice will be explored, by using artworks from the permanent collection as examples to illustrate, demonstrate and physically engage with.
The anonymous and random public artistic interventions that comprised Any Given Sunday—which originally took place in the city of Cape Town and its townships from 15 May – 24 July 2016— were intended to reflect on the social, economic and political tensions of Cape Town, set against its histories and relevant sites. This covert approach underscored the central intention of the series: as a gentle and submerged way of foregrounding contested notions of visibility and acceptance in the city’s racially segregated spaces.
The latest exhibition, entitled Rembrandt in the Karoo opened on 25 May 2023 in the Jan Rupert Art Centre. Graaff-Reinet. The exhibition focuses on the main categories of printmaking, illustrated by a very special selection and inclusion of Rembrandt van Rijn etchings as well as works by relevant South African artists and printmakers.
In celebration of figurative sculpture, this exhibition interrogates representational sculpture and the monumental as produced in bronze and stone. The pieces were created by sculptors, continents and more than a century apart, and essentially driven by the human form and state of being. The selection features a European Master, Old South African Master, as well as two contemporary South African greats and casts a view on their influences and styles from the traditional to the unconventional.
04 October: The Library will be closed for a private event. We apologise for any inconvenience.