Johannesburg restores historical artworks and plaques

The Johannesburg Development Agency recently completed work restoring public artworks, replacing heritage plaques, and installing new signage across the city.

For the last several years, the City’s Directorate: Arts, Culture and Heritage has maintained and enhanced Johannesburg’s public heritage through a long-term program. This year’s efforts focused on the Newtown Cultural Precinct and surrounding historic areas, with specialist team Sticky Situations leading the physical work in consultation with original artists.

The restorations included four principal artworks, the Kippie Moeketsi sculpture, the Margaret Mcingana tribute, the Mahatma Gandhi Pass-Burning Monument, and Paper Pigeons, along with 15 refurbished or replaced blue heritage plaques. In some cases, artists were asked to reinterpret their original work, as with Dbongz’s new portrait of Margaret Singana, which replaced a worn canvas with a fresh image mounted on a jazz restaurant. Beyond physical repair, the city also corrected historical inaccuracies and expanded access to information.

Researchers challenged a description of jazz musician Kippie Moeketsi’s clan name as a nickname, leading to a revised inscription on his sculpture and a QR code linking to his biography. The City also installed new storyboards at Mary Fitzgerald Square, detailing the history of the square and the labor activist it is named after, as well as at Johannesburg’s historic First Chinatown.

Johannesburg currently has over 230 blue heritage plaques spread across the city, and plans to create an online catalogue of them.