Greenwood, “Watchful Witness”
Abstract: This paper examines the exhibition practice of the Crypt Memory and Witness Centre of St George’s Anglican Cathedral in a post-apartheid, democratic South Africa. Being neither a museum nor a gallery, the Centre’s practice is informed by a particular, significant historic relationship between Christianity and exhibiting. The paper examines how the Crypt Centre engages with selective events from South Africa’s sociopolitical past through exhibition practice, and to what ends. In particular, it examines the theme of bearing witness that surfaces at multiple levels in the exhibition content and process, considering its relationship with contemporary sociality.