Above: Kendall Geers’ “Hanging Piece” (1993) at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa

It is a strange but inescapable fact that a single building can transform a city. Sydney has never felt remotely the same since the opening of the Opera House, nor has Bilbao after the debut of Frank Gehry’s titanium-clad masterpiece, the Guggenheim Museum. Both places were suddenly perceived to be more important, more cultivated, more complex. Even London, scarcely a cultural desert, gained a new aspect to its multifaceted personality with the inauguration of Tate Modern in 2000. The city of Shakespeare and Dickens and Sherlock Holmes acquired a new veneer of cool when augmented by one of the world’s preeminent museums of contemporary art. And now it’s Cape Town’s turn.

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Above: Kendall Geers’ “Hanging Piece” (1993) at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa

Read More from Our Trip:

Indelible Memory: A Poignant Visit to Cape Town’s Robben Island The Silo: Cape Town’s Modern Masterpiece