Orchard of the Imagination: Selections from The Brenthurst Collection of Southern African Art

Much of Southern African material culture entered museum and private collections, primarily during the colonial era, often separated from the social, cultural, and spiritual contexts that gave these artefacts life. In many cases, limited records, unknown creators, and rigid classification systems reframed cultural material as exotic curiosities rather than as part of living knowledge systems and cultural practices.

Framed through an African Humanist perspective, Orchard of The Imagination: Selections from The Brenthurst Collection of Southern African Art, approaches material culture not as static evidence of the past, but as an expression of lived experience and living knowledge that is shaped by skill, belief, memory, and imagination. 

The Brenthurst Collection of Southern African Art began with the personal commitment of collector Jonathan Lowen in the 1960s in Johannesburg and continued when he relocated to London. Guided by a deep conviction, the collection focused on the diversity, ingenuity, and aesthetic richness of Southern African cultural material from the 18th and early 19th centuries. Lowen continued collecting over a period of three decades, until the collection was acquired by Harry Oppenheimer in the mid-1980s, and returned from London to South Africa. On loan to the Johannesburg Art Gallery until 2023, the collection is currently housed at The Brenthurst Library, Johannesburg.

A significant exhibition based on the collection, ‘Art and Ambiguity: Perspectives on The Brenthurst Collection of Southern African Art’ was held at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 1991 and marked the first time that such material culture was exhibited in an art museum context in South Africa. The title of this exhibition is derived from a text by the author and philosopher Es’kia Mphahlele (1919 - 2008), considered the father of African Humanism.

Orchard of The Imagination is realised through vital partnerships with the University of Pretoria's Heritage Conservation Programme and The Brenthurst Library. Students in heritage, museum and conservation studies worked hands-on with the collection, focusing on careful cleaning, stabilisation, and beadwork conservation over two years, 2023- 2025. Overseen by senior lecturers from the department, masters student interns in the programme conducted the preventative conservation work. Guided by care and respect, the conservation process prioritised preserving signs of use and age as part of each artefact's story, rather than erasing them. 

Beyond preservation, this project opened new pathways for research, learning, and access to Southern African material culture. Orchard of the Imagination invites viewers to reconsider how cultural material holds memory, value, and ways of being that continue to resonate in the present. 

The exhibition is supported by the Australian High Commission.