On 25 November 2025, I gave a talk for members of the Jacob Gitlin Library. We discussed the books written about Irma Stern and, inevitably, we segued into the persistent lack of transparency surrounding the questions we’re all asking: how and why the Museum was closed, and how the legacy of South Africa’s most successful twentieth-century modernist has come to rest in the hands of Nedbank. This financial institution refers to her as a brand, something to be commodified and shaped to suit its corporate identity.
I recorded the talk, realising that these conversations need to be preserved and, in time, added to Irma’s archive. You can listen to the recording here.
