The museum of racism. (International).

The experience of institutionalized racism begins right away at the new Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa. Visitors receive a card arbitrarily assigning them a racial classification: white or nonwhite. They enter through two revolving doors, one for blacks, one for whites. "With the entrance, we immediately cut to the chase of what the apartheid did," says museum director Christopher Till, "which is to classify and divide people."

In the passage for blacks, walls are covered with faded photos of people barred from voting or owning homes because of their skin. That is a world the "white" visitors never see as they pass through a separate hallway. The two groups do not mix until the museum's main exhibits, which include hundreds of nooses hanging from the ceiling to represent executed political prisoners.

It has been seven years since South Africa officially ended apartheid and elected its first black President, Nelson Mandela. "We want to give a sense of what really took place in a country that is still finding its soul," Till says.