Cape Town Rises: CAPE 09

In a 2005 survey, many black residents of Cape Town misidentified the National Gallery, a grand, starkly white, semi-beaux-arts building, for a courthouse. This mix-up speaks volumes about the current lack of art education and, more ominously, about the not so distant past; during the Apartheid regime, only whites were permitted to enter museums or galleries. Sixteen years have passed since South Africa became a democratic nation, yet many instances of grave inequality and segregation remain. One facet of this is found in a particular domain of the very privileged, and in this country, the almost exclusively white: contemporary art. Cape Town's biennial, now in its second incarnation, is attempting to address some of these local deficiencies and disparities.
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