Art and UCT: an opportunity to encourage debate

GroundUp | Nathan Geffen

We need more art, not less.  These are tough times for art at UCT. Paintings were burnt in a protest in January. An exhibition in Molly Blackburn Hall of events in 2015 was taken down when some students disapproved of it….  Artworks are put up, taken down, replaced, refurbished and removed all the time. For the most part, few people, notice or wonder about the process by which this is done. The art displayed at UCT, much like the curricula of, say, philosophy or computer science, is determined by experts. Usually this makes sense. Most of us, including me, don’t know enough about art to make sensible decisions… Read more 

Image: Breyten Breytenbach’s Hovering Dog (detail shown here) has been removed from the library. He is a bit cross about it. What can be more galling to racists than a picture of love across the colour line?