The Centre for Curating the Archive is based at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, at the University of Cape Town‘s Hiddingh Campus. The CCA works actively with many different kinds of collections, developing curatorship as a creative site of knowledge. Projects, publications and courses aim, through practice, to open up novel combinations of the historically separated domains of the creative arts and the truth-claiming discourses of history and the social and natural sciences.

Space

The CCA is located in the Old Medical School Building on the Hiddingh Campus in the city of Cape Town. It neighbours the national museums of Iziko, the Company Gardens of Cape Town, the Labia Cinema and the Drama Department of UCT. The CCA includes spaces for conservation, digital workstations, photographic reproduction, storage, documentation, research, teaching and the planning and construction of exhibitions.

Activities

Fundamental to the work of the CCA is the recognised need to both conserve collections and make them accessible to artists, scholars and students. This is achieved through careful curatorship and high-quality digital documentation of collections; developing web access, publications and the staging of exhibitions and public events. At the heart of the Centre is the understanding of collections and archives as important sites of knowledge, as products of traditions of art, ideas and values, and of the social and political circumstances of both their making and reception. The CCA works with several institutions in the realisation of its projects and curates exhibitions in South Africa and abroad.

Donors

Many of the projects undertaken at the CCA would not have been possible without generous donor funding and support in kind.

Donors to the CCA have included: