A seed filled silos with art -Africa's first contemporary art museum

This award-winning piece‚ with a buck skull and bloody ribbons trailing from its wings is‚ like many of the artworks in the museum‚ provocative and breathtaking.

The Zeitz museum‚ in the historic renovated grain silo at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town‚ opens to the public on Friday 22 September‚ with exhibitions from some 40 artists.

Curator-at-large of photography Azu Nwagbogu is hoping this would be the seed for contemporary art in Africa. “This is a watershed moment for art and its work on the continent‚” he said.

Artists‚ whose work is on exhibit‚ turned up in numbers at the press preview on Friday‚ and spoke about how much the exhibition space meant to them.

Artist Athi-Patra Ruga‚ 33‚ said that when chief curator Mark Coetzee first talked to him about the Zeitz he thought it was a preposterous‚ great idea but now it’s real.

“I have a canon. I’m in a museum. For me it’s going to be such a beautiful thing to have my nieces and nephew see their likeness and stories that relate to them being told in their country‚” said Ruga.

Roselee Goldberg‚ curator at large for the Centre for Performative Practice‚ said on Friday that Africa was “witnessing a revolution today. This is a real sensation. All the major museums are sending people here and this will continue.”

Their exhilaration was shared by architect Thomas Heatherwick‚ who‚ together with local architects‚ transformed the soaring concrete silo.

“The question was what to do with this gigantic building made from tubes and how to make a compelling inner space‚ which was unique and soulful. We felt strongly it needed a heart.”

He said they traced the shape of an original kernel of grain and multiplied it to the scale of a 10-storey building‚ and that’s what they carved out.

“Instead of the concrete being hard and brutal it was almost soft.”

The V&A Waterfront funded the R500-million project‚ which is expected to become one of Africa’s biggest tourist attractions.

V & A Waterfront chief executive Thomas Heatherwick said 72% of its visitors were South African and the museum aimed to be as accessible as possible.

Heatherwick said cities globally wanted museums of contemporary art. “But this is like the missing piece in the jigsaw. South Africa has incredible artists and private galleries but it had no major public institution‚” he said.

German businessman Jochen Zeitz is providing his vast collection to the museum.

Visit: zeitzmocaa.museum/art-artists/