Nicolaas Vergunst

Nicolaas Maartin Vergunst (Cape Town, 1 September 1958) has been an artist, teacher, designer, curator and journalist. He is best known as the author of Knot of Stone: the day that changed South Africa’s history.

Nicolaas Vergunst

Biography

Born in Cape Town of Dutch parents who emigrated to South Africa after the Second World War, Nicolaas Vergunst grew up in a post-Commonwealth environment that became increasingly divided by apartheid. The tension between Afrikaner nationalism and English liberalism has had a lasting influence on him.

Vergunst studied art and cultural history in Stellenbosch and KwaZulu-Natal, focusing on the underlying dualism in Western culture - such as Platonic vs Aristotelian philosophy, classicism vs romanticism and reform vs revolution in modern politics.^[1] Following the Soweto uprising in 1976, he became an active artist and journalist^[2] linked to the anti-apartheid movement (UDF and ECC).

His working life was initially devoted to art,^[3] cultural history, journalism and teaching in Grahamstown^[4] and Gugulethu, a township near Cape Town.

In 1988 he joined the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, later transformed into the Iziko South African Museum. In his capacity as Head of Publications he made Hoerikwaggo: Images of Table Mountain, an exhibition about the ever-shifting European perceptions of the South African landscape.^[5] The book produced for this exhibition^[6] has had several reprints.

Hoerikwaggo: Images of Table Mountain

His promotion to Head of Exhibitions at Iziko provided broader working relationships with artists, historians, archeologists and anthropologists. This experience contributed to the next phase in his life.

Nicolaas Vergunst resigned in 2005 to write Knot of Stone, leaving South Africa in the same year. Knot of Stone has been published by Arena Books in the United Kingdom and the United States in 2011.

Vergunst is married to Ellen Berends, a Dutch diplomat with whom he has lived in Cape Town, Kiev and Kinshasa. They currently live in Strasbourg where she is ambassador of the Netherlands to the Council of Europe.^[7] Vergunst has two sons, Thomas and Francis, and a daughter Andrea.

References

1. ^ http://ccms.ukzn.ac.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=41&Itemid=26. Retrieved 22 February 2011.
2. ^ Including Weekly Mail (now Mail & Guardian), Vrye Weekblad, Die Suid-Afrikaan, New Nation (South African Newspaper) and Tribute. See select references to Vergunst's articles in [1] and [2]. Retrieved 22 February 2011.
3. ^ Several solo and group exhibitions, including the South African National Gallery's Cape Town Biennial (1979), the End Conscription Campaign People's Culture Exhibition (1987), and the District Six Public Sculpture Project (1998).
4. ^ Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University; Painting and Art History at the Carinus Art Centre.
5. ^ Reviews: [3]; [4]. Retrieved 22 February 2011.
6. ^ http://www.iziko.org.za/sang/exhib/2001/hoerikwaggo/index.htm. Retrieved 22 February 2011.
7. ^ Website Permanent Representation of the Netherlands [5]. Retrieved 22 February 2011.

External links

• Iziko Museums of Cape Town
• Arena Books Publishers
• Knot of Stone

Persondata
Name	Vergunst, Nicolaas
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Date of birth	1 September 1958
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