The Wits Museum of Ethnology Collection comprises important material assembled from the late 1920s onwards. Artworks from many parts of Africa, as well as small numbers from other parts of the world such as Papua New Guinea, is included. Particularly notable is the collection assembled by Rev. William F.P. Burton in the Mwanza region of the then Belgian Congo. This collection was exhibited in 1992, accompanied by a major catalogue The Collection of Rev. W.F.P. Burton: Of course you would not want a canoe…
An extensive archive of over 400 historical African photographs by Burton as well as anthropologists such as Eileen Jensen Krige and Jacob Daniel Krige, Edmund Hugh Ashton, Percival Kirby, Hilda Kuper and Audrey Richards also forms part of this collection.
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The Wits Museum of Ethnology Collection was established by Winifred Hoernle, lecturer in Ethnology and developed further by Audrey Richards, senior lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology. Since 2001, these collections have been housed at and administered by WAM.
Objects collected as specimens of African material culture by famous South African anthropologists such as Isaac Schapera, and Monica Wilson (Hunter) were added before World War II.
A collection of beadwork assembled by H. S. Schoeman in the 1960’s corresponds to beadwork worn by Zulu speakers in KwaZulu Natal in the late 1950’s, and documented by acclaimed photographer Alice Mertens. The collection also includes a substantial number of Ovambo (Kwanyama) objects which were obtained from C. Hahn, which was purchased in 1935 in Windhoek.
The Barnard Collection of objects from the Pedi in Sekhukuneland is notable for its size and for the fact that it provided some of the earliest examples of southern African figurative sculpture in the collection.
Other famous contributors were anthropologist Max Gluckman (material from Zulu-speakers), Percival Kirby, first Professor of Music at Wits and John Blacking one-time Wits Professor of Anthropology. Both Kirby and Blacking were interested in indigenous African music and their collections reflect this.
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