It’s remarkable how many Joburgers don’t know it’s there. Despite being just off one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares, and despite having built a loyal, growing following over the past few years, the Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation (JCAF) remains something of a well-kept secret. A quietly glowing gem in the chaotic City of Gold.
The JCAF has been operating in Forest Town for five years now, and in that time has cemented itself as one of the continent’s most compelling cultural institutions.
Directed from its start by acclaimed local curator Clive Kellner, who was head of the Johannesburg Art Gallery and the Joburg Biennale many moons ago, the foundation occupies an unusual position in Joburg’s arts landscape: private yet open to the public, with free guided tours; academic in rigour but refreshingly human in experience.
“There’s a lot of jargon in the art world, and that can be alienating,” says Kellner. “We wanted to create a space where people feel embraced. Where there’s meaning, but also warmth.”
A space for big ideas
Housed in a heritage building – once a city tram shed – sensitively reimagined by architect Pierre Swanepoel, JCAF offers museum-quality exhibitions without the baggage of transactional gallery culture. It doesn’t buy, sell or collect. Instead, it curates – deeply and thoughtfully.
From the start, JCAF’s curatorial mandate has been to focus exclusively on the Global South, and showcase artistic and creative voices from across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. The aim? To offer a broader, more resonant lens through which we can understand ourselves and our place in the world.
“In Joburg, we don’t always get to see work from places like Tunisia or Brazil,” says Kellner. “We wanted to open that up.”
To that end, each exhibition is part of a larger three-year thematic arc. The current series, titled Worldmaking, asks big questions about the world we live in, the one we want and the legacy we leave behind. The first instalment, Ecospheres, explored environmental relationships. The current show, Structures, turns its gaze to the built environment. The final show in the series, themed around Futures, will explore ideas of technology and the imagined world to come – and it’s set to open in mid-2026.
Despite the space being relatively modest in size, JCAF manages to present an impressively diverse and high-impact collection of works, both inside and out. Visitors are currently greeted by Stephen Hobbs’s towering scaffolding commission, which anchors the entrance.
Inside, the exhibition includes Kader Attia’s Untitled (Ghardaïa), a reconstruction of the ancient Algerian city rendered entirely in expired couscous, and Madeyoulook’s evocative installation from the 2024 Venice Biennale. Works by South African luminaries David Goldblatt and Igshaan Adams also feature, as do those by Brazilian Hélio Oiticica and Angolan Kiluanji Kia Henda. Overall, it’s thought-provoking and often surprisingly moving.
As the exhibition blurb notes: “Structures brings together artists and architects from the [Global] South who explore how space, place, and race intersect in both tangible and intangible ways.” From the tactility of couscous to the shimmer of sequins, the show underscores how materials and space carry memory, and how people, too, become infrastructure. Buildings and the man-made world are a lot more emotive than we may sometimes think.
Importantly, this wider conceptual approach is paired with an insistence on quality. “We wanted something high-level,” Kellner says. “Accessible, yes – but also intellectually and aesthetically serious.”
Academic, but not intimidating
Kellner is well aware that for some, the word “foundation”, especially one with an academic bent, may seem off-putting. “There’s a perception that ‘academic’ means inaccessible,” he says. “But that’s not what we’re doing. We’re thinking deeply, yes. But we’re also telling human stories.”
The human element is clear the moment you walk in. Visitors are welcomed at the gate, greeted by name, and taken on small, considered tours with knowledgeable guides. The space is contemplative, but also kind.
“We measure success not by numbers, but by resonance,” says Kellner. “Even if one person comes and has a meaningful experience, that’s enough.” It’s a sound principle but it helps that their exhibitions are actually well-supported too. 5,000 or so visitors enjoyed Ecosphere last year, and even more flocked to see Kahlo, Sher-Gil, Stern: Modernist Identities in the Global South when it took place in 2022–23 (yes, it featured an actual, sumptuous Frida Kahlo painting).
A different model
The foundation is funded privately by its three trustees – businessmen Gordon Schachat, Adi Enthoven and Phuthuma Nhleko – who, as Kellner notes, have made a conscious and courageous investment in South Africa’s cultural future.
It’s a model that may feel unfamiliar to many South Africans, who are accustomed to thinking of museums and galleries as state-run institutions (albeit ones that often falter through neglect or underfunding). But in fact, most major cultural institutions in the USA, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, and the Getty museum, are also privately funded, operating with endowments, fundraising and donor support.
In the Cape, the Norval Foundation and Zeitz MOCAA are private too, and all things considered, it seems practical and productive that other parts of the country embrace a similar path. “We’ve gone from a European model to something more American,” Kellner says. “The difference [at JCAF] is, ours is open, accessible and entirely free.”
JCAF exists, then, not just as a space to see beautiful things, but as a glimpse of what a future-facing, inclusive, high-calibre arts institution in Africa might look like. There’s a low-key audacity in what it’s doing. And for those of us lucky enough to live in its orbit, it is an audacity with which it’s well worth engaging.
Cover image: Stephen Hobbs, Mnara (Tower) (2025), in the JCAF courtyard. Photo Graham De Lacy
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