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MOHOA considering the curious case of the Satyagraha House, Johannesburg: a curatorial critique

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McKay, Harriet (2022) MOHOA considering the curious case of the Satyagraha House, Johannesburg: a curatorial critique. Curator: The Museum Journal, 65 (3). pp. 663-672. ISSN 2151-6952

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Abstract

What can the case of Satyagraha House, the luxury guesthouse and museum complex established on the site of a domestic building briefly inhabited by Mohandas Gandhi from 1908 to 1909, suggest about the complexities attached to heritage and preservation in the contemporary South African context? What can this hybrid museum and guesthouse space offer to advance dialogue around the heritage of modern Africa, which will allow alternatives to the ‘traditional’ museum to emerge? Equally, when innovative modes of presenting heritage arise as a result of initiatives from outside the country, the need to pay due diligence to local memory and understanding is considered here as being of paramount importance. Failure to do this, as, I argue, has inadvertently taken place at Satyagraha House, will place modern museum practice in South Africa as belonging to the past rather than to the present and future of modern African heritage.

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