The National Gallery of Zimbabwe (NGZ) will next Friday host the Harare Visual Arts Sector Seminar for all artists in Harare metropolitan and surrounding areas.
The meeting will be made possible by the Harare Visual Arts Sector Steering Committee supported by the Culture Fund of Zimbabwe and the NGZ.
“The purpose of the meeting is to record artists’ views towards the formation of a strong representative visual art body that will come up with proposals of sustainable policies that can legally protect artists and their work from abuse and exploitation while addressing various artists’ concerns,” stated an NGZ statement.
The gallery said if formed, the registered art body, in collaboration with other representative bodies from various regions of the country, would speak with one voice when lobbying for formulation of sustainable policies that would address the current grey areas in the country’s copyright legislation.
“Currently, Zimbabwe’s fine art practitioners are miles behind their counterparts in music, film, theatre and literature in terms of having strong representative bodies that assist them during crisis times and bridging information gaps.”
It said the visual arts seminar would be the second in a series of intended meetings in the near future and the first meeting was held in July 2011 at the NGZ after the Gallery’s Harare Conversations art forum.
Visual artists are encouraged to spread the word and attend in their numbers to give their own contributions towards the noble cause.
The statement also noted that the steering committee still needed manpower and knowledgeable leadership that would come out of these meeting.
