Butholezwe Kgosi Nyathi
BY SHARON SIBINDI
THE newly-appointed National Gallery of Zimbabwe Bulawayo regional director, Butholezwe Kgosi Nyathi, has vowed to transform the entity into a vibrant nucleus for art in the country.
His appointment follows the recent retirement of long-serving director Voti Thebe.
The 33-year-old Nyathi told NewsDay Life & Style that in the next few years, the NGZ in Bulawayo should demonstrate that Bulawayo is, indeed, the country’s cultural hub.
“I know expectations are high that probably when the director is a young person, you expect to see vibrancy, (itself) a fair and legitimate expectation if I may say,” he said.
“In that regard, the idea which I have always harboured for a long time is that Bulawayo is the real and imagined cultural hub of Zimbabwe, then certainly the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo should be the nucleus in terms of radiating that cultural vibrancy.”
Nyathi said the gallery would invest in talent identification and nurturing, while creating opportunities for artistic exchanges.
“When you invest in that human resource, you are guaranteed that the quality of the exhibitions will also improve. Again if they improve, the expectation is that we diversify and increase audience base — we want to see schools coming in their numbers. We want the gallery to be a multi-racial space where anyone and everyone feels comfortable,” he said.
Nyathi said he was keen to see rural communities patronising the gallery.
“We even want to see our rural communities patronising the space, even those people who ordinarily consider themselves to have nothing to do with the gallery. We want to see how best the gallery can be of service to them,” he said.
