The biggest coup of today was getting into the South African National Gallery for free with our newly minted Press Cards. I can feel doors all over the world opening up. I missed out on the opening of Second to None on Saturday being incapacitated, but rumour is that other than the high quality of the snacks it was a pretty drab affair. Two hours of speeches and performances! Why do they do these thing on Saturday mornings, when most stomachs are too sensitive to recourse to slamdunking wine? Here's my petition to the SANG: besides allowing people other than the hallowed press in for free (like the artists), can we please please have openings in the evening? Having it in the day doesn't make it seem more official, I promise. No surprises in the actual show. The premise of it was noble, taking its starting point as the 50th anniversary of the 1956 women's march on parliament. I wish the show could have had the same nobility and unity of purpose. As it stood I found it a bit of a hodgepodge collection, without a clear curatorial drive. But this often happens on shows which try to encompass an ideal that is too broad. Some of the individual works were amazing though... I enjoyed Karina Turok's collection Life and Soul, solid, moving portraiture, and Bridget Baker is awesome. Dan Halter (the sole little dutch boy) had a great video work, which was unfortunately mistitled (bad curator). It was the only work on an otherwise serious show that had me laughing. Zanele Muholi's work would have been interesting if I hadn't seen it before so recently. Her particular style of photography, old school, documentary, B&W, summed up the show for me: all the work on the show had an aesthetic thoroughly rooted in the past, a mix of 70's didactic feminism, 80's protest, and a little 90's identity crisis. Oh, and if anyone could please throw caustic soda on that ugly Gavin Jantjes painting (half the stars?) we'll give you a R100 and a free massage from Linda Stupart.