Zanele Muholi and the museum and collection presence worldwide

From the AD HOC NEWS Art Desk » Museum & Collection Desk - The editors cover exhibitions, auctions, collections, prizes and artistic positions. Published: August 19, 2026 · Last checked: August 19, 2026, 4:10 PM

Zanele Muholi has turned a practice of visual activism into a sustained presence in public museums from North America to Europe and the Global South. Their long-running bodies of work, from Faces and Phases to Somnyama Ngonyama and Courageous Beauty, anchor institutional shows and collection displays that continue to expand.

Museum surveys and touring shows

The touring exhibition Zanele Muholi: Courageous Beauty underlines how museums frame the artist's practice as a retrospective arc. The Instituto Moreira Salles describes the Rio de Janeiro chapter at Museu de Arte do Rio as a major survey running from June 12 to November 22, 2026, with a focus on photography as visual activism.

Earlier, the Seattle Art Museum presented Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, a focused exhibition on Muholi's self-portrait series. The museum notes that this show, developed with Autograph in London, brought the high-contrast black and white portraits into a North American institutional context and has since circulated widely.

Collection depth and institutional alliances

Institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum have integrated Muholi's work into their collections through exhibitions like Isibonelo/Evidence, which assembled eighty-seven works across several series. The museum emphasizes how Faces and Phases and newer projects such as Weddings document Black LGBTQIA+ lives within a constitutional democracy still marked by violence.

In Austria, Foto Arsenal Wien presents We Are Here, developed with the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and Sammlung Verbund, which demonstrates how European collections consolidate Muholi's early and recent works into a coherent narrative of Black queer visibility. This collaboration signals a long-term commitment by photography-focused collections to maintain and exhibit the artist's work.

The work core across series

Zanele Muholi describes themself as a visual activist rather than a traditional photographer, underscoring how series such as Faces and Phases, Somnyama Ngonyama and Brave Beauties function as long-term archives of Black queer lives. These projects combine portraiture, self-staging and community documentation to counter erasure and to reframe Black LGBTQIA+ subjectivity in the public sphere.

Where the artist stands now

Against this backdrop, Zanele Muholi's work maintains an active presence in international museum programs and collection displays, spanning institutions in South Africa, Europe, North America and Latin America.

This article was produced with a.i. support and editorially reviewed. All statements without guarantee; auction results, exhibition dates and awards may change at short notice.