The Art Newspaper announces Jochen Zeitz’s new museum in Cape Town, South Africa. With African art continuing to grow in global prominence, the museum may provide the essential underpinning for the broad and broadly defined category.
Here are the details on the museum, expected to open in 2016, from The Art Newspaper
The 102,000 sq. ft, non-profit institution, named the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), will be located in the historic Grain Silo in the city’s V&A Waterfront area. Mark Coetzee, the curator of the Zeitz collection and the former director of the Miami-based Rubell Family Collection, has been appointed as the executive director and chief curator of the new museum.
In a story run by the Financial Times earlier this year, Coetzee seems to foreshadow the recent announcement:
“The market is always interested in the next big thing and is quick to look elsewhere once the fashion passes,” Coetzee says. But a serious museum investment in contemporary art from the continent should ensure that it will continue to be seen and studied far into the future even if the market loses interest, he says.
Former Puma chairman behind contemporary African art museum in Cape Town (The Art Newspaper)
Visions of a Fast Moving Continent (Financial Times)