Bird Street Gallery - Nelson Mandela University

General information

The School of Music, Art and Design (SoMAD)'s roots can be traced back to the Port Elizabeth Art School which first opened its doors in 1852 – making SoMAD the oldest surviving school of arts in the country.

The original PE Art School was housed in the historical Athenaeum Building in Belmont Terrace. Many decades later in the 1950’s, when the University of Port Elizabeth (now NMMU) was established, it was housed in Bird Street. For the past decade or so, the campus was occupied by NMMU’S Business School (which has since moved to a new custom-designed, award-winning ‘’green’’ building in Summerstrand).

Now, the campus has been repurposed as an Arts Hub. The historic buildings on this campus are home to the School of Music, Art & Design’s postgraduate programmes, the Jazz Unit, a conservatoire, a culturally-focused “American Corner” to promote cultural engagement, the SoMAD Propella, a visual arts incubator, providing technical and business support to selected “incubates” as they start up their own creative businesses and finally the Eendrag Building (formerly the historic Fleming House) which houses the Bird Street Art Gallery. This beautiful building provides wonderful fine art gallery spaces for exhibitions as well as drawing studios for NMMU art & design students