Reflections on the Irma Stern Museum: When a Museum Closes, What Else Dies With It?

by Richard Mudariki

We Are Closed: Image from the Irma Stern Museum website

I have been following the closure of the Irma Stern Museum in Cape Town with a growing sense of unease. The official statement promises “new life” for the collection and the home, but the public reaction - from shock to suspicion - tells a deeper story about trust, transparency, and the fragility of cultural stewardship in South Africa.

Media reports have captured this moment well. The Weekend Argus broke the news of the closure and reframing of the museum’s future. The South African Jewish Report highlighted community outrage and a sense of cultural loss. Moneyweb raised the most urgent question of all: what does this mean for heritage protection? In the same discussion, friend and art collector Frank Kilbourn weighed in, underscoring the significance of institutional responsibility and public accountability.

But as I watch this unfold, my thoughts cannot remain in Cape Town alone. I am from Zimbabwe. And I have seen this before.

When an institution closes, the building becomes a ghost. The collection becomes a question mark. And the legacy becomes a negotiation.

I think of the old Robert Paul House at 110 Livingstone Avenue in Harare - named after the colonial painter once celebrated across the region. That house later became Gallery Delta, under the visionary stewardship of Derek Huggins and Helen Lieros, who transformed it from a colonial residence into a foundation of contemporary Zimbabwean art. Many of Zimbabwe’s now internationally recognised artists - myself included - passed through its doors.

It was a place where art survived dictatorship, inflation, state collapse, and isolation. Ironically, it was foreign embassies - not local institutions - that funded exhibitions, publications, and cultural projects. The building itself became a haven. A cultural lung. A site of resistance, imagination, and continuity.

And then Derek and Helen died.

What followed was confusion. Silence. Rumours. And eventually, a transformation: the birth of Nhaka Gallery (Nhaka meaning “Legacy”), overseen by Helen Matsvisi, daughter of a longtime member of staff.

But questions remain unanswered. What happened to the collection? Who holds legal custodianship over the works left behind? Are they being preserved or sold quietly into private hands? Where is the state in all of this? Where are the institutions that speak of heritage, but not of responsibility?

Richard Mudariki (2001), 110 Livingstone Avenue, acrylic on paper. Painted on site in the lawns of Gallery Delta

Zimbabwe - unlike South Africa - has no banks, no trusts, no foundations willing to invest in cultural memory. Our heritage sites deteriorate. Our archives disperse. Our artists’ estates become contested battlegrounds. And our cultural houses - whether colonial or post-colonial in origin - are left to collapse under the weight of neglect.

Livingstone Avenue is not just a street. It is a metaphor. Named for David Livingstone, the missionary-explorer, it represents a colonial archive, repurposed into a post-colonial cultural engine. Now it is uncertain again - held in suspension between history and myth, legacy and loss.

And so, as I watch what is happening to the Irma Stern Museum, I cannot pretend this is only a South African problem. It is continental. It is global. And it is urgent.

Closure statement of Gallery Delta in 2022 on its website

Because across the world, artist estates - whether homes, archives, collections, or intellectual property - play a vital role in shaping art history, scholarship, and cultural memory. Yet their management is often fraught, and the warning signs are always the same:

lack of clarity in governance, conflicts between heirs, institutions, or trustees, insufficient funding, weak heritage frameworks, unclear accountability, market pressures overshadowing cultural value, museum closures or restructuring presented as “strategic renewals”

If this is the future of the Irma Stern Museum, it must be challenged now - not later, when the damage is already irreversible.

The question we must all face is this 'How do we safeguard artistic legacy in a time of institutional instability and shifting cultural economies?'

Because when a museum closes, it’s not just a building that goes silent.

An archive dims.

A history loosens.

A cultural lineage becomes a ghost.

And if we do nothing, what is lost will not come back.

Richard Mudariki is an artist and cultural producer. He holds a BA Honours in Cultural Heritage Management and Museology from the Midlands State University.