Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town

A silo turned into a museum

The building was once the tallest in Cape Town: a grain silo of the 1920s on the harbour, disused since 1990. Heatherwick Studio, the London designers, kept its 42 concrete tubes and cut into them. At the centre they carved an atrium about 27 metres high out of the packed cylinders, its oval shape taken from a single grain of corn, scanned and scaled up; the old grading tower above, pierced with faceted, pillow-like glass windows, now holds a hotel. The museum covers about 9,500 square metres on nine floors, with 80 galleries and some 6,000 square metres of exhibition space. The project cost about 500 million rand.

A private museum with a public mission

Zeitz MOCAA was founded as a partnership between the V&A Waterfront, the harbour development that owns the building, and the German businessman and collector Jochen Zeitz, whose collection of contemporary African art forms part of its permanent holdings. Its early years were rocky: its founding director, Mark Coetzee, left in May 2018 after an inquiry into his professional conduct, and a comment in The Art Newspaper argued that "Africa's private Tate Modern" had to do more for its public.

In 2019 the Cameroonian-born curator Koyo Kouoh became executive director and chief curator, and she is credited with turning the museum around — its collection, its governance and its funding — through the pandemic years. Kouoh died in May 2025, aged 57, shortly after being named artistic director of the 2026 Venice Biennale. In August 2026 the museum appointed Elvira Dyangani Ose, formerly director of MACBA in Barcelona, as its artistic director.

Exhibitions and artists

The opening show, All Things Being Equal, included El Anatsui, whose work is in the collection and whose large hanging piece TSIATSIA – searching for connection was installed in the atrium. Since then the museum has given large solo exhibitions to artists from the continent and its diaspora, among them:

• William Kentridge: Why Should I Hesitate: Putting Drawings to Work, 2019–20, more than forty years of drawings, prints, animated films and tapestries — billed as the largest exhibition of his work in Africa, with a second part, on sculpture, at the Norval Foundation.
• Tracey Rose: Shooting Down Babylon, 2022, the first major solo exhibition of the South African artist, with work from 1996 to 2019.
• Zanele Muholi: works from the self-portrait series Somnyama Ngonyama were the subject of gallery tours in 2017 and 2018, and Muholi launched the series' book at the museum.

The museum also lists Chéri Samba among its artists. Exhibitions change several times a year; see contemporary African art for the wider scene.

Visiting

The museum is in the Silo District of the V&A Waterfront, Cape Town's harbour quarter. Tickets, opening hours and current shows are on its website. The Norval Foundation, the Iziko South African National Gallery and the city's commercial galleries make Cape Town a good week of looking; see our list of South African artists and the Southern Africa page.