Marilyn Martin

In May 2001, after eleven years as director of the South African National Gallery, Martin was appointed director of Art Collections for Iziko Museums. Prior to her career in the museum sector she was senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture at Wits. Since her retirement from Iziko Museums in 2008 she has been working as an independent writer, curator and lecturer and is currently a senior scholar at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, lecturing in Visual and Art History.

Martin has curated numerous exhibitions of South African art around the world, and has served on many panels for art and architecture, including the Dakar Biennale (2000, 2010). She was co-curator for the exhibition Picasso and Africa (2006); curator of the Louis Maqhubela retrospective (2010); Thinking, Feeling, Head, Heart at The New Church Museum (2014); The Thinking Eye – photographs by Neville Dubow at the Irma Stern Museum, with Paul Weinberg; (In) the Nature of Things for Hermanus FynArts, with Melvyn Minnaar and art/out of the ordinary at the AVA Gallery, all in 2015.

Martin has written many articles on art, architecture and culture in national and international publications. Her biographical listings include Who’s Who of Southern Africa and The International Who’s Who of Women.

In 2002 Martin was admitted to the Legion of Honour of the Republic of France at the rank of Officer and in 2013 she received the medal of the Fondation Alliance française in Paris.

Martin edited the catalogue for the exhibition A vigil of departure : Louis Khehla Maqhubela, a retrospective, 1960-2010. She is the author of the peer-reviewed book Between Dreams and Realities - A History of the South African National Gallery, 1871-2017.