The Centre for Curating the Archive (CCA), at the
University of Cape Town
The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...
, began life as LLAREC (The Lucy Lloyd Archive, Resource and Exhibition Centre) in 1996
as a space in which material, both original and reproduced, created and found, was collected from a variety of archives, museums, collections, storerooms, offices and junk heaps and used creatively to curate exhibitions by artist-staff at The
Michaelis School of Fine Art
The Michaelis School of Fine Art was founded in 1925, and is the Fine Arts department of the University of Cape Town. The school's current director is Associate Professor Kurt Campbell.
There are three research institutions associated with the sch ...
. In 2008 it expanded its activities to include a photographic unit, and it is now a centre which actively works 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.
The CCA is located in the Old Medical School Building on the Hiddingh Campus in the city of Cape Town. It neighbours the
Iziko South African Museum
The Iziko South African Museum is a South African national museum located in Cape Town. The museum was founded in 1825, the first in the country. It has been on its present site in the Company's Garden since 1897. The museum houses important A ...
and
South African National Gallery
The Iziko South African National Gallery is the national art gallery of South Africa located in Cape Town. It became part of the Iziko collection of museums – as managed by the Department of Arts and Culture – in 2001. It then became an agen ...
, the
Company Gardens of Cape Town, The
Labia Theatre
The Labia Theatre is one of the oldest independent movie theatres in Cape Town, South Africa.
History
The original building was an Italian Embassy ballroom opened by Princess Labia on 16 May 1949 as a theatre for the staging of live performance a ...
and the Drama Department of UCT. The CCA includes spaces for conservation, digital workstations, photographic reproduction, storage, documentation, the planning and constructing of exhibitions, research and teaching.
Fundamental to the work of the CCA is the recognised need to both conserve and make collections 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, as well as 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 both in South Africa and abroad.
References
External links
CCA Homepage* https://web.archive.org/web/20130203081738/http://www.humanities.uct.ac.za/research/groupings/llarec/
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University of Cape Town