There is a particular quality shared by Joburgers who have made an active choice to call this city home — we all share a quixotic worldliness.
We all know the city is crazy and wearying, but we also know it is magic and wonderful and brimming with potential, which is why I meet Ngaire Blankenberg (a proper representative of the chosen city category) at Nine Yards in Rosebank.
The new development is still under construction, but some things, like the newly opened and instantly insanely popular Zuney Burger, are setting the tone.
Named after the Zuney Valley in the Eastern Cape, where the family has been farming beef for years, the provenance of the terrifically tasty wagyu is assured down to the cow. It first opened in Cape Town, but Joburg is showing them what scaling really looks like. As it happens, Ngaire is vegetarian.
Thankfully, there is a vegetarian burger on the menu, and she is suitably delighted with the Patrick Watson gardens that are starting to come into their own in the small urban oasis in the middle of town.
The daughter of the South African diaspora — her father in Canada, her mother in New Zealand (they met in London) — spent two formative years of her youth in Zimbabwe, where her father was on sabbatical. As a mixed-race couple, they were barred from South Africa in 1986. But Ngaire returned to these parts to study for her master’s in cultural and media studies at UKZN.
A42 is about a larger vision of taking existing museums and transforming them, with the help of young artists, designers and storytellers, into relevant, sustainable spaces that don’t just store artefacts but foster repair, produce knowledge and liberate imagination for an inclusive future
— Ngaire Blankenberg
Two children later and her roots are firmly entrenched here, but her career in museum design and management has had a remarkable global trajectory, including a two-year stint as director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (NMAfA) in Washington, which houses the largest collection of African art in the US.
She ran the museum for two years, repatriating its Benin bronzes in a signature act during a particularly fraught cultural moment post Covid and George Floyd’s murder. It can’t have been easy, and I can’t help but wonder how that museum must be faring under the current US administration. She politely shifts the topic.
We are, after all, here to discuss the launch of her new project in a neighbouring street in Parktown North — A42 House’s inaugural, co-created exhibition. “Inviting young people in Joburg to define, explore and reclaim what belonging means in a place shaped by displacement, segregation and layered histories, the exhibition transforms a domestic space into a site of listening, healing, repair and imagination.”
She named A42 House to reflect the fact that 42% of the world’s youth are projected to be in Africa by 2030. But even though Africa represents the future and is home to 17%–18% of the world’s population, it hosts less than 2% of the world’s museums.
“The Institute for Creative Repair offers a solution to preserve African heritage while supporting a new generation to appreciate, learn and create from the continent’s rich heritage,” she explains.
“A42 is about a larger vision of taking existing museums and transforming them, with the help of young artists, designers and storytellers, into relevant, sustainable spaces that don’t just store artefacts but foster repair, produce knowledge and liberate imagination for an inclusive future.”
Her focus is granular, local and sustainable.
“I was amazed to see Vilakazi Street a couple of weeks ago, compared to when I was last there. I think there are pockets of excellence and the Mandela factor. So when it comes to international tourists, we splash out on our big cultural soft power icons, but it’s not for ourselves.
“What I’m trying to develop is for regional, local and domestic tourists, because ... more than ever before, millennial and Gen Z Africans of all races are travelling. More are interested in heritage. More are interested in culture.
By focusing on the small museums, we can keep our cultural heritage alive and sustainable and fun. It is a kind of reframing of African heritage for a new generation, which is our mission
— Blankenberg
“It’s a shame that people don’t recognise their value. We’ve got really great interest in what we’re doing now, but the institutional framework is not there, and because museums and heritage tend to be non-commercial, you require funders, which is why I’ve changed the model now, and I am trying to make a self-sustaining model.”
Ngaire is passionate about the small, local, marginal museums across our country and Africa.
“The continent is in dire straits when it comes to our cultural institutions and our museums. I am really interested in institutional development and the need for institutions; not projects, not performing arts, not gigs, but actual institutions that can provide proper jobs and proper institutional memory. I realised here that it just was really more dysfunctional than when I left.“
Which is why she is creating A42, a cross between a members’ club and a residency that is built around local cultural hubs.
“It’s a pilot for a brand like a hotel group, Marriott or Southern Sun, but instead of them all being the same, they’re all different. We will partner with small museums, cultural villages and artist-run centres all around Africa and make the experience better and create sustained commercial options, which will all then be marketed under a single brand.
“So there’s brand recognition and a membership programme, so you can come and then you get points here, and then you can exchange them for a stay in Zambia or Pondoland. A lot of it is rural or small town, where there’s nothing else going on, and that’s why you need to have a tourism thing and build in the locals. I’m hoping that it’s a totally new model around the world.
“By focusing on the small museums, we can keep our cultural heritage alive and sustainable and fun. It is a kind of reframing of African heritage for a new generation, which is our mission.”
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