Stevenson was founded in 2003 and has spaces in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Amsterdam. Since its inception, the gallery’s exhibition programme has connected local artists to the global art world and introduced international practitioners to South African audiences. In 2012, the gallery initiated its current partnership structure, and it is currently owned and operated as a collective by its 11 directors.

Initially located in Cape Town’s Green Point district, the gallery was opened by founding directors Michael Stevenson and Andrew da Conceicao, after a visit to documenta 11, curated by Okwui Enwezor. Moved by Enwezor’s ethos, they decided to create a new platform for contemporary art in South Africa, which was short on dedicated spaces at the time

The gallery represents 34 artists, with recent solo exhibitions by Simphiwe Ndzube, Zander Blom, Robin Rhode, Paulo Nazareth, and Georgina Gratrix. Since the early 1990s, the gallery has placed many works by South African artists in public collections, including the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the South African National Gallery, Wits Art Museum, Guggenheim Museum , the Tate, Stedelijk Museum and the Smithsonian’s Museum for African Art

Publishing is a key element of Stevenson’s programming, and the gallery routinely produces artist monographs, exhibition catalogues and compilations of artist interviews. The gallery routinely publishes .info ,a small, printed newsletter that gets posted to its global network of supporters.