The Standard Bank Art Gallery opened its doors on Thursday for an early preview of Homecoming: The Return of the Johannesburg Art Gallery Collection, offering the first glimpse of a milestone collaboration — aimed at revitalising the city’s cultural landscape.
Hosted in partnership with Standard Bank and the City of Johannesburg, the preview points towards a new chapter for the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG).
Backing of City mayor
With the backing of the Executive Mayor Dada Morero, the initiative aims to reinforce the city’s commitment to preserving and promoting its artistic heritage.
Morero said he has gone around the world and realised the importance of art.
“Our critics now know that when we say we are going to do something, we do it. That is why we decided to invest the necessary resources in supporting the arts in Johannesburg. Because there is a lot of people, especially young people who need to be exposed to the arts,” Morero said.
He said they are grateful to Standard Bank for seeing their vision.
The preview showcased selected works from the JAG collection. Many of them have spent the past several years touring internationally. The pieces travelled to museums in Hungary, Italy and South Korea, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors abroad before finally returning to South Africa.
Affirmation for artists
One of the art curators, Khwezi Gule from Pietermaritzburg, said through this collaboration a lot of artists will be affirmed as they refurbish the JAG.
“The collaboration with Standard Bank has been happening for years. We would loan our art pieces to them. So when they vacated these premises we saw it as an opportune moment to use this as a satellite space for the JAG collection while we are preparing for the refurbishment of the JAG. And the people at Standard Bank had a similar thought.”
“Just being able to walk into the Johannesburg art gallery will affirm a lot of talented people. The presence of art can be a powerful, life changing experience,” he said.
According to Gule, art is a language that transcends time and locations.
Exhibition set for April 2026
“It is a whole language, the same way you would attend a mathematics classroom. They use language, but it has its own vocabulary and grammar. Artists speak to each other across times.
Their full public exhibition is scheduled for April 2026, when the entire collection will go on display in Johannesburg. Organisers say the works reunited on home soil tell a powerful story of return. That of reclamation and cultural memory.
