05 May 2009 Artist and educator, Professor Alan Crump passed away on May 1, 2009, just after his sixtieth Birthday. He was born in Durban, Natal. He had attended the Michaelis School of Art for BA and MA Fine Arts degrees and he received a Fulbright Scholarship for an MFA at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Before studying in America, he taught at Michaelis for a year. Returning from Los Angeles, he became a lecturer and then senior lecturer in art history at UNISA. Joining the University of the Witwatersrand in 1980, he became Professor and Head of the Department of Fine Arts at a remarkably young age. Alan Crump had a well-earned reputation for intensity and exuberance as an educator. One student fondly recalled Crump entering her class on the first day of lectures, surveying his new students, and then striding away from the lecture hall, wearing red leather, bell-bottomed trousers. He was equally enthusiastic in his commitment to emerging young artists, championing artists like Willliam Kentridge and Penny Siopis, early on in their careers. He was a passionate advocate for arts awards that came with real benefits, saying ‘Artists should get an incentive for their work’.

Beyond his role as a University Professor, Alan Crump was active in the larger public dimensions of arts and culture education. He was an arts advisor to the Standard Bank, serving as curator or consultant for numerous exhibitions at the bank’s gallery, as well as in his role developing the bank’s own corporate collection. He had an exceptional eye not only for emerging talent but also for collecting objects and Alan had a passionate interest in African Art. Alan Crump was the guiding force behind the widely heralded Chagall and Miro exhibitions.

His public lectures on art and society were eagerly anticipated because of their power to educate, uplift and entertain.

In 1984, Alan Crump joined the Grahamstown National Arts Festival’s Governing Committee, recognizing the responsibility of educators to engage with society beyond the academy. He became Festival Committee chair during a particularly contentious decade, helping steer the festival to address the revolutionary changes taking place in South Africa. Among many important moments, the festival provided ANC Arts and Culture Spokesperson, Barbara Masekela with her first major public opportunity after returning from exile to address a new artistic and cultural vision for South Africa.

Beyond his role as an educator, Crump was a sculptor and a consummate watercolour artist and his works are in private and corporate collections around the country – and beyond. He was fascinated by diverse sujects such as a mine dump or cast off industrial artifacts and Linda Givon once called him South Africa’s first real conceptual artist.

Crump was a legendary convivial host and guest who loved a great story, a sharp, well-argued discussion about art, sports (he had been an avid rugby player and runner as a student) or politics – just as he loved to share a good glass of South African wine with friends.

A capstone of his career would have been the opening of an exhibition at the 2009 Grahamstown Festival, marking a quarter century of Standard Bank Young Artist Award winners. Sadly, while he will not be present at the opening, his influence most assuredly will. As he, himself, had said a half decade earlier at the opening of the Bonnie Ntshalinshali Museum, ‘When someone dies, it is what they leave behind that counts, the objects and the residue of their thoughts’.

The funeral of Professor Alan Crump will take place on Wednesday, 6 May 2009 at 14:30 at St Martin’s in the Veld, Corner of Eastwood Road and Cradock Avenue, Rosebank. The University extends its deepest sympathy to the family and friends of Professor Crump.