--- title: "Nguni history is more than just ethnography — a curator of African art explains" description: "At Yale University Art Gallery, Johannesburg-born curator James Green frames Nguni art as living history by bringing together 150 works, contemporary photography and a rebuilt isibaya into a first-of-its-kind exhibition." type: "NewsArticle" publisher: "Daily Maverick" site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za" section: "MATTERS OF THE ART" author: "Kristen Harding" author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/kristen-harding/" canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-09-09-nguni-history-is-more-than-just-ethnography-a-curator-of-african-art-explains/" published: "2026-09-09T08:14:00" lang: "en-ZA" word_count: 1533 --- # Nguni history is more than just ethnography — a curator of African art explains > At Yale University Art Gallery, Johannesburg-born curator James Green frames Nguni art as living history by bringing together 150 works, contemporary photography and a rebuilt isibaya into a first-of-its-kind exhibition. By Kristen Harding · Published 9 September 2026, 10:14 SAST ## Key points - Johannesburg‑born curator James Green has opened Nguni: Migrant Nations of Southeast Africa at the Yale University Art Gallery, exhibiting 150 works that reframe the Nguni not as a single culture but as a mobile, multilingual network shaped by centuries of migration. - Close study reveals objects as portable, multifunctional art packed with encoded meanings – think a knobkerrie that doubles as a snuff container and a geometricised “herd” of amansumpa. - A rebuilt isibaya using 36 posts donated by the late Ngoni king Mpezeni IV anchors the installation, while Jabulani Dhlamini’s commissioned photographs show how these objects have living ancestors and descendants still in use today. - Green’s aim is direct: move objects out of ethnographic cabinets and into art‑historical conversation, acknowledge the fraught histories of collection, and create conditions for reconnection between these artworks and the communities that made them. ## Content From around the year 1000 CE, waves of movement led by Mnguni, the Nguni’s founding ancestor, carried communities southward from *enhla nezwe* (“the land of the north”) to eventually settle east of the Drakensberg escarpment – now KwaZulu-Natal. Since then Nguni communities have continued to be shaped by large-scale migrations, reconfigurations and consolidations, particularly in the 19th century, which saw upheaval across southeast Africa rooted in competition over resources, fuelled by colonial incursion and drought. It is this period of history that lays the groundwork for a groundbreaking exhibition at the [Yale University Art Gallery](https://artgallery.yale.edu/exhibitions/exhibition/nguni-migrant-nations-southeast-africa). Curated by Johannesburg-born James Green – the Frances and Benjamin Benenson Foundation associate curator of African art at the gallery – Nguni: Migrant Nations of Southeast Africa showcases 150 masterworks from the 19th and 20th centuries, including rare loans from South Africa as well as from other national and international institutions. What distinguishes this exhibition is a first-of-its-kind framing of the Nguni, which displays the region’s art through a cultural and geographic lens that acknowledges the Nguni’s multiplicity. ![Izintombi zoMhlanga (maidens of the Reed Dance) arriving from Eswatini to celebrate Umkhosi Womhlanga (Reed Dance). (Photo: Yale University Art Gallery)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/Wln6VrTJvi6dmZSOS5qPVN3oJz8=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/nguni-exhibition-yale8_IzintombizoMhlangamaidensoftheReedDancearrivingfromEswatinitocelebrateUmkhosiWomhlangaReedDance_YaleUniversityArtGallery_755869.jpg) *Izintombi zoMhlanga (maidens of the Reed Dance) arrive from Eswatini to celebrate Umkhosi Womhlanga (Reed Dance) at eMashobeni Royal Palace, Pongola, KwaZulu-Natal, on 13 September 2025. (Photo: Jabulani Dhlamini)* ![Broad Collar (ingqosha). Southern Nguni (Mfengu or Xhosa) Eastern Cape, South Africa, early 20th century. (Photo: Yale University Art Gallery)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/r3X8D8WxYyrhFb1j_N6TaOH1o30=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/nguni-exhibition-yale2_BroadCollaringqoshaSouthernNguniMfenguorXhosaEasternCapeSouthAfricaearly20thcentury_YaleUniversityArtGallery_526250.jpg) *Broad Collar (ingqosha). Southern Nguni (Mfengu or Xhosa); Eastern Cape, South Africa, early 20th century. Glass beads and plant-fibre string. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, Leonard C Hanna Jnr, Class of 1913, Fund. (Photo: Courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery)* “Nguni is not a single political entity or single culture,” Green says. “It began as a language designation (the branch of the Bantu language family that includes modern isiZulu, isiXhosa, siSwati and isiNdebele) spoken today by about 45% of South Africans. “But since the 1980s it has been employed as a term that connects communities right across southeast Africa who share a history: the consolidation of centralised kingdoms in the early 19th century, including the Zulu Kingdom under Shaka kaSenzangakhona, and the dispersals that followed, which carried Nguni groups from South Africa as far north as far as Malawi and Tanzania.” The exhibition grew out of Green’s research of historical and contemporary beadwork in South Africa, as well as the Yale University Art Gallery’s acquisition of the African Bank collection of 19th- and early 20th-century beadwork. “In the 1980s and 90s, Michael Graham-Stewart, a London dealer, and Michael Stevenson, an art historian and dealer in Cape Town, bought southeast African beadwork in England – much of it collected by missionaries – and returned it to South Africa as art; among the first times this material had been published and exhibited as art rather than as ethnographic specimen.” At a later point, the collection was split between Wits and the African Bank. But when the bank was restructured, their half of the collection became at risk of dispersal, leading to Yale being able to acquire it. “Bringing that collection into a university art museum, digitising it, and working with the historian and beadwork specialist Hlengiwe Dube to understand what is actually encoded in the beadwork turned into a much bigger question about art from the region,” Green says. ![Snuff Containers (izishungu). Northern Nguni; KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, 19th century. Gourd with brass and copper wire. (Photo: Yale University Art Gallery)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/TX2W26FsFkc_9Bt3jH9-jPv4UVw=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/nguni-exhibition-yale4_SnuffContainersizishunguNorthernNguniKwaZulu-NatalSouthAfrica19thcenturyGourdwithbrassandcopperwire_YaleUniversityArtGallery_158511.jpg) *Snuff Containers (izishungu). Northern Nguni; KwaZulu-Natal, 19th century. Gourd with Brass and Copper Wire. Brenthurst Collection of Southern African Art, Brenthurst Library, Johannesburg. (Photo: Courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery)* ![ClubSnuff Container (Snuffkerrie). Northern Nguni (Zulu); uMnambithi (Ladysmith), KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, 19th century. (Photo: Yale University Art Gallery)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/ivv93Nf9TVgfj3sEBHhXlfDAqZI=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/nguni-exhibition-yale11_ClubSnuffContainerSnuffkerrieNorthernNguniZuluuMnambithiLadysmithKwaZulu-NatalSouthAfrica19thcentury_YaleUniversityArtGallery_780583.jpg) *Club/Snuff Container (snuffkerrie). Northern Nguni (Zulu); uMnambithi (Ladysmith), KwaZulu-Natal, 19th century. Wood, wire, resin, glass beads and cotton string. British Museum, London. (Photo: Courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery)* Like the manifold nature of the histories of the Nguni, their objects hold a similar multiplicity, and it’s the Nguni’s legacy of mobility, bound to the seasonal responsibilities of caring for cattle, that shape the objects’ functionalities. “What amazes me about these objects is imagining a world in which an individual might possess only six or seven significant personal objects,” Green says. “Things had to be portable, durable, and preferably good for more than one job,” he explains. “A comb that is also a snuff spoon. A club that is also a snuff container.” On display is a knobkerrie (a club), which, by being able to store snuff inside of its head, doubles as a snuff container. Its head being formed from the “natural node of a branch” maintains the tree’s innate shape and is an example of one of the aesthetic’s defining characteristics: “a desire to respond to forms already present in nature, combined with a delight in multifunctionality”. Green describes the knobkerrie’s stand as emulating the form of a human figure dressed in beadwork consisting of colours and patterns associated with the region of KwaZulu-Natal around Ladysmith. “Around the head of the club is the raised motif called *insumpa*(plural *amansumpa*), literally ‘warts’ or ‘nipple-like markings’ seen also on elite milk pails, on headrests, on the royal armlets. It has been read as visual shorthand for wealth in cattle, each protrusion standing for a single animal, turning the surface into a geometricised herd. “Others read the same texture as a reference to the female body, echoing patterns of scarification worn by Zulu women. So within a single object you have multifunctionality, metaphor, humour, and a playful layering of meanings. But you also have an object whose design emerges from a natural form rather than trying to overcome or outdo nature.” What becomes crucial in considering these objects, however, is recognising that they represent much more than their ethnographical value. ![Pipe with a Female Torso. Sotho or Southern Nguni; southeast Africa, early 20th century. Wood and iron. (Photo: Yale University Art Gallery)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/3Bonxtb_ACctwQ8SSqEi5tJ59Y4=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/nguni-exhibition-yale3_PipewithaFemaleTorsoSothoorSouthernNgunisoutheastAfricaearly20thcenturyWoodandiron_YaleUniversityArtGallery_423034.jpg) *Pipe with a Female Torso. Sotho or Southern Nguni; southeast Africa, early 20th century. Wood and iron. National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (Photo: Courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery)* ![Headrest. Nguni (Ngoni) or Tsonga; southeast Africa, late 19th–early 20th century. (Photo: Yale University Art Gallery)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/r2u6Lc8D1P2d1OP7dhzLQosDK40=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/nguni-exhibition-yale5_HeadrestNguniNgoniorTsongasoutheastAfricalate19thearly20thcentury_YaleUniversityArtGallery_706082.jpg) *Headrest. Nguni (Ngoni) or Tsonga; southeast Africa, late 19th to early 20th century. Wood and wire. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, Charles B Benenson, B.A. 1933, Collection. (Photo: Courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery)* For Green, museums play a fundamental role in acknowledging “the difficult history by which an object arrived” while also being a space where objects can be safely cared for, preserving them for long periods. “Being in a museum does not have to mean being inaccessible to the community an object came from,” Green says. “A museum can be both a storehouse – a treasury of culture – and a place where meaningful encounters between people and objects continue to take place.” The Nguni: Migrant Nations of Southeast Africa curation opens up the question of where the people behind these deeply personal objects are: Who made these objects? Who used them? In this way, the exhibition signals a shift in the frame through which these objects are presented. “The original intention was to bring work that had been consigned to natural history and ethnography into the middle of an art museum and ask what you would ask of any art: Why does it look like this, what did it do, whose life was it part of, what is its art history?” ![Amahawu (shields) for sale at Thembalethu Temple, De Deur. (Photo: Yale University Art Gallery)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/zvFvcLUVPNwxP3gNeD1IEdtC4t0=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/AmahawushieldsforsaleatThembalethuTempleDeDeur_YaleUniversityArtGallery_249606.png) *Amahawu (shields) for sale at Thembalethu Temple, De Deur, South Africa, 2 November, 2025. (Photo: Jabulani Dhlamini)* ![Beauty Ngxongo holding one of her baskets at the Ngxongo family home, KwaSeme village, kwaHlabisa, KwaZulu-Natal. (Photo: Yale University Art Gallery)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/d40VtaaO0ND-T_kx-jrdfvpkyU8=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/nguni-exhibition-yale10_BeautyNgxongoholdingoneofherbasketsattheNgxongofamilyhomeKwaSemevillagekwaHlabisaKwaZulu-Natal_YaleUniversityArtGallery_515348.jpg) *Beauty Ngxongo holding one of her baskets at the Ngxongo family home, KwaSeme village, kwaHlabisa, KwaZulu-Natal, on 13 June, 2024. (Photo: Jabulani Dhlamini)* Alongside the objects on display are specially commissioned pieces by South African photographer Jabulani Dhlamini, bringing histories into dialogue with the contemporary – an embodiment of how Nguni practices, artworks and knowledge live on today. “His photographs make the point that the objects we meet in museum cases have ancestors and descendants, and the descendants are still in use,” Green explains. “Beauty Ngxongo holding one of her baskets at the family home in kwaHlabisa. A warrior carrying a hand-carved, monkey-shaped headrest on his shoulder during Ncwala at Ephendukeni Palace in eFeni. ‘Objects carry messages from the past,’ as \[Dhlamini\] puts it. His series is the contemporary counterpoint to everything historic on the walls.” ![The reconstructed isibaya (cattle enclosure) at the centre of the exhibition. (Photo: Yale University Art Gallery)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/b_qK5yQOElVkiFbmKUHe88QxAt8=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/nguni-exhibition-yale6_Thereconstructedisibayacattleenclosureatthecentreoftheexhibition_YaleUniversityArtGallery_994448.jpg) *The recreation of an isibaya (cattle enclosure) at the centre of the exhibition. (Photo: Yale University Art Gallery)* ![36 wooden posts from working izibayas in eFeni village and neighbouring communities near Chipata. (Photo: Yale University Art Gallery)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/mIJZcRmQ-D-ls--isUCz8S--s7c=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/nguni-exhibition-yale12_36woodenpostsfromworkingizibayasineFenivillageandneighbouringcommunitiesnearChipata_YaleUniversityArtGallery_252611.jpg) *The exhibition’s isibaya is constructed from 36 wooden posts from working izibayas in eFeni village and neighbouring communities near Chipata, Zambia. (Photo: Yale University Art Gallery)* At the exhibition’s heart is a reconstructed *isibaya*(cattle enclosure) – the physical, ritual and spiritual centre of the Nguni homestead. In the Yale University Art Gallery, it also represents the exhibition’s collaborative origins. “The late Ngoni king Mpezeni IV requested that \[an *isibaya*\] be built \[in the gallery\], and provided 36 wooden posts collected from working *izibaya*in eFeni village and neighbouring communities near Chipata, in Zambia’s Eastern Province,” Green explains. “He died in May 2026, which gives the gesture a weight none of us anticipated.” Nguni: Migrant Nations of Southeast Africa not only advocates for a more holistic representation and understanding of Nguni cultures, but also makes room for remembrance and reconnection. “Most of these works were made by artists whose names were never recorded, for people whose identities are lost,” Green says. “We can’t undo that. What we can do is create the conditions in which these objects are reconnected with the people whose histories produced them.” **DM** [*Nguni: Migrant Nations of Southeast Africa*](https://artgallery.yale.edu/exhibitions/exhibition/nguni-migrant-nations-southeast-africa)*opens at Yale University Art Gallery on 11 September and runs until 20 June 2027.*