Heidi Erdmann was not looking to open a gallery again, but Muratie Wine Estate, with its long and rich history, felt like the perfect site for the Legacy Gallery.
After completing an MA degree in Visual Studies in 2020 Erdmann decided not to return to the commercial-gallery sector, where she had been active for more than two decades.
Instead, she founded the curatorial agency Legacy, which specialises in legacy and heritage projects, an underserved niche in the art world.
The space that will house the gallery, erected in 1699, was originally the home of Laurens Campher, his wife Ansela van de Caab and their three children. In 1685 Campher, a soldier of Germanic origins from Mohrow, Poland, was the first person to farm on De Driesprong, as Muratie was then known. He was instructed to bezaayen, beplanten, bepoten, betimmeren the land.
Ansela was born in the slave quarters of the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, the daughter of an enslaved woman. She was emancipated on 28 June 1695.
After a 14-year-long courtship with Campher she was finally able to settle on Muratie. The oak tree that Campher planted for her still towers over the original homestead.
The Legacy Gallery’s debut exhibition, Reflections and Refractions, is largely a mini-review of photography, a medium that freezes the moment and reveals just how rich reality truly is.
Works by Bobby Bobson, Ruvan Bosho, Muzi Kuzwayo, Bettie Coetzee Lambrecht, Martine Margoles, Obie Oberholzer, Lindeka Qampi, Guy Tillim and Jurgen Schadeberg will be on display.
The exhibition opens at 11:00 on Saturday 6 July and runs until Saturday 31 August.
Another slice of Muratie history is the inspiration for In Conversation, a dialogue centred on the development of painting – from the typical renderings of the South African landscape as painted by George Paul Canitz (1874-1959) to topical themes as explored by Rory Emmett, Clare Menck, Walter Meyer and Willem Pretorius.
Canitz was born in Leipzig, Germany, and studied painting in Dresden. In 1909, on the advice of a doctor, he moved to South West Africa (now Namibia) and later settled in South Africa. He bought Muratie in 1925 and lived there until his death.
He was a successful painter and regularly entertained local and international collectors in his kneipzimmer, where he displayed his paintings.
He also taught art and was the first part-time lecturer in painting at Stellenbosch University.
Additionally, he achieved success in viticulture as the first grower of the Pinot Noir grape in the Cape.
In Conversation opens at the gallery on Saturday 7 September at 11:00, and ends its run on Wednesday 30 October.
Furthermore, Thomas Rhebok will present an illustrated talk on the fine art of restoring historical paintings at the Legacy Gallery on Saturday 14 September at 11:00.
In summer The Art of Emancipation takes the gallery/dwelling and Ansela’s life story and her emancipation as its central focus, and aims to explore the intersection of art, the history of slavery and its abolition.
The exhibition, which opens at 11:00 on Saturday 9 November, runs until Thursday 30 January 2025.
- For more information on the exhibitions and the gallery, contact Erdmann on LegacyGallery@outlook.com, or visit their website.
