Lily van Rensburg holds a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Media Production and an Honours degree in Curatorship from the University of Cape Town, the latter for which she was awarded a MacIver Scholarship on the basis of creative research at the Michaelis School of Fine Art.

Since graduating, Lily has worked as a writer and producer for a not-for-profit laboratory for the arts in Cape Town and as a programme coordinator for UCT’s Honours in Curatorship course, convened in collaboration with the Centre for Curating the Archive and Iziko Museums. Lily has also acted as a researcher for the Connect South Africa Residency by Arts at CERN, facilitated by –defunct context and Pro Helvetia, and as a sessional lecturer in Art History and the Discourse of Art.

In her academic research, Lily engages with colonial and apartheid-era art, investigating ways of interacting with complex collections in the political climate of today. Lily is particularly interested in issues of transparency in arts institutions, urging for privately held information to be made publicly accessible. Passionate about conserving tangible heritage, she volunteered for the salvage efforts of UCT’s Jagger Library and later interned in the conservation field.

During her tenure with the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, Lily aims to contribute to the development of new heritage landscapes that, through dialogue and community engagement, foster justice as a means to reconciliation.