A successful exhibition was held at the Bergtheil Museum, Westville, in 2001, in association with the University of Natal’s Department of Cultural and Media Studies. This inspired further exhibitions, culminating in the University of Pretoria’s purchasing the remainder of the 2001 collection. Furthermore, the purchase of Vetkat’s artwork by the Natal Museum Services is a heartening indication of the growing appreciation of its importance as a national living heritage.
Artworks considered by Vetkat to be ‘sacred’ have been kept aside, however. Plans are underway to raise funds to frame the pieces in this ‘sacred’ collection, and to house them in a gallery in the Kalahari, where they could be protected and enjoyed by the people of the Kalahari and any visitors who may journey to see them. The originals will never be sold, but, should the necessary funding become available, a book featuring the ‘sacred’ collection will be published.

A Bushman painting on modern medium, using modern tools, whose work has the following responses:

QUOTES
(Keyan Tomaselli: Opening Address of the Exhibition by the Kalahari ‘Blinkwater’ Artist. 16 October 2001 pp 1,3)
Durban
Now that the myths constructed by Laurens van der Post around himself via his writing, lectures and interviews are unraveling, we more than ever need to question received wisdom. One of these, Van der Post claims, is that his grandfather was complicit for the killing of the last known San rock artist. Hence Laurens’ need to atone for all white Afrikaners for this dastardly deed. It is on this myth, amongst others, that Van der Post legitimized his writing on the Bushmen, built his career, and became world famous. But, as is totally evident here, San art never disappeared or died. It was reinvented by a new generation of artists, who, working from popular memory, incorporated new influences, and developed new and different surfaces. This art is made and sold all over the Kalahari. (p. 1)
One of the struggles that the art of Vetkat … inaugurates … is to recover agency, to popularize the San heritage, and to challenge prevailing myths. His art is unique, it is of the Kalahari, of the wind, and of the sand dunes. It is of the rain, the fauna and the flora; it is at one with his environment. It is spiritual, material, and speaks histories of the San people and their interactions with all those with whom they have interacted over the millennia. (p. 3)

(Sven Ouzman: Opening address for the Vetkat Kruiper And A Few Others Art Exhibition. 7 Februay 2002. pp 3,4) Pretoria.
Vetkat is part of an artistic lineage [whose works] sold for very little, with the non-Bushman buyer usually also buying handicrafts such as ostrich eggshell beads, leatherwork and such like. Though this perception of Bushman ‘art- as-craft’ is changing to the more balanced ‘art- as-art’, we must also ask what is wrong with ‘art-as-craft’?. Does this not imply work that is thought out, well-made and enmeshed directly with our day to day living? Many people are still surprised and even offended at the ‘high’ prices they have to pay for work like Vetkat’s, perhaps because they are so obviously crafted. Some people also do not consider this you see before you as ‘real’ Bushman Art – obviously with what they think to be the more authentic 30 000 year old Bushman engraving and rock painting tradition in mind. But no art tradition is static. (p. 3)
[although Vetkat] is heir to the ancient Bushman rock art tradition, [he] is also one of the inventors of the today’s contemporary Bushman Art Tradition. Though Vetkat’s work does utilize rock art elements, it is nevertheless part of a new and dynamic art tradition that is grounded in ‘ his own surroundings and own soil’ (p. 4)