120 Years in 120 Objects
Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museumโs 120th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight to the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!
Todayโs Object is from 1935
Rock art rendering by Mary Young by Ghilraen Laue, Curator of Special Collections
The above copy from Game Pass shelter is one of many copies, made by Mary Young, housed in the KwaZulu-Natal Museumโs collections. The copies were only accessioned into the collections in the 1980s, but there is evidence that there were donated to the museum in the early 1970s or before. The only information that was originally included with the tracings and copies is that they were made in the 1930s by John and Mary Young. Through some detective work we have managed to find out more information. Comparisons with handwriting on the tracings and old letters confirms that the copies were the work of Mary Young.
Mary Margaret Young (nรฉe Gay) was born in London in 1898. When she was a young woman a doctor found a spot on her lung and recommended a change in climate. She moved to Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and loved it. In the 1930s she married John Young. They both had an interest in archaeology and a love of nature. They spent many weekends hiking in the Drakensberg, where it seems Mary Young traced rock art images at various sites while her husband collected and recorded stone artefacts. Mary Youngโs work is an early example of direct tracing of rock art, rather than free hand copies, which were more common at the time. She strove for accuracy in both the shape and the colours of the images. She died in Pietermaritzburg in 1971.
