Iziko South African Museum

Iziko South African Museum: Reflections on 200 years provides an historical overview of southern Africa’s oldest conventional museum, the Iziko South African Museum (ISAM). Established in 1825, the museum has, over the past 200 years, collected, researched, exhibited, conserved and preserved various specimens, objects and artworks in the fields of natural history, social history and arts. Reflections on 200 years gives space to a wide variety of voices reflecting on how, through different disciplines, the museum has contributed to the understanding and preservation of heritage in the country and abroad. As will be seen in some of the chapters, these voices take contrasting positions in terms of assessment and reflection. But they also show how, over time, conventional museum categories have been subjected to revision. Through the contributors’ analyses, the publication looks at the future of museum making and at how museum spaces can be reimagined.