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Jane Alexander: National Endowment
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Frequently referred to as South Africa's most difficult and least definable artist, Jane Alexander's sculpting career began early in 1982. While still an undergraduate student at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, she won the National Fine Arts Student Competition and the Martienssen Student Prize. Since then she has received several major awards including, the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 1995, and the FNB Vita Art Now Award in 1996. Most recently, in 2002 she was chosen by an international jury for the prestigious and highly coveted DaimlerChrysler Award, which aims to enhance the recipient's international reputation and artistic development.
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Outside of acting, Jane Alexander assumed an important advocacy role in 1992 when she became chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts. She took the reins of the agency at a difficult time—by the mid-1990s there was political pressure to cut funding to the organization. Leaving the NEA in 1997, Alexander wrote about her experience in the book Command Performance: An Actress in the Theater of Politics (2000).
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Jane Alexander, winner of the 2002 DaimlerChrysler Award for South African sculpture, was put on the map by her powerful 1985 masterpiece, Butcher Boys, produced as part of her masters thesis. Today Butcher Boys occupies pride of place at the S A National Gallery where her solo exhibition, funded by DaimlerChrysler, runs until 27 July.
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For Jane Alexander, life may imitate art moreso than for most actors. As a doyenne of the American stage and cinema, in the 1990s, Alexander parlayed her distinguished acting career into politics, serving as head of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1993 to 1997.
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Alexander, for her part, warmed to her new opportunity. As reported by The Boston Globe she told a Senate committee during her confirmation hearings that "the life I have led in theater, in the world of art, has given me so much personally - particularly from Endowment-supported work - that I wish at this time to give something back." Confirmed overwhelmingly in late 1992, Alexander pledged to maintain the agency's independence from political interference. "We have to," she told Interview. "We're upholding a democratic principle here. This is the federal government, and federal agencies do not discriminate.
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In October this year, Alexander will show at the National Museum in Accra, Ghana, on 'South Meets West', which moves in April 2000 to the Kunsthalle Bern and Historisches Museum Bern, Switzerland. Future possibilities include appearances on a show curated by Monique Stupa in Rouille with the working title of 'Crossbreed Arts: Messengers of the Future' and the Lyons Biennale of 2000.
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