A South African Showcase for Cutting-Edge Art
The continent’s first major museum dedicated to contemporary art.
Africa’s first major museum dedicated to contemporary art opened September 23 in Cape Town, South Africa. Called the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, it occupies an historic grain-silo complex at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, which attracts more than 20 million visitors annually. The complex has been ambitiously reimagined by designer Thomas Heatherwick to include 80 galleries and a cathedral-like, glass-roofed central atrium.
In 2013, the V&A Waterfront partnered with German businessman and art collector Jochen Zeitz to create the nine-story museum, which includes 65,000 square feet of exhibition space plus a sculpture garden, bookshop, restaurant, research labs, reading rooms, a Costume Institute, and centers for photography, film, and art education.