This article examines the consequences of expanding classificatory boundaries. Since the end of apartheid in 1994, objects formerly known as ethnographica are now largely found in art galleries and treated like objects of aesthetic rather than cultural historical value. I highlight how a number of contemporary South African
curators reject this assumed valorisation that the objects supposedly gain when they are exhibited in the realm of the aesthetics. However, in arguing that contemporary South African artists are just as contemporary, experimental, conceptual and non-traditional as their counterparts from the Global North, the curators let go of an important part of the artistic history of Africa. If so-called traditional African objects are not to be displayed in art galleries, where then, is there room for art forms that are rooted in traditions from Africa before European contact? This article argues that colonial distinctions between art and artefact might be challenged, if curators and museum professionals start highlighting that all objects, no matter who made
them, possess both aesthetic and cultural historical value. In this way museums might be able to look beyond colonial classificatory practices and let go of the hierarchy between objects that the material culture of Africa has endured during the past century.