Norval Foundation in Cape Town opened Irma Stern: Looking Closer to Home to the public on 2 October 2026, deliberately timed to the 132nd anniversary of the artist's birth. The exhibition is the second in a four-part series developed from Stern's personal archive and presented in partnership with the Irma Stern Trust and Nedbank. It follows the opening chapter, The Berlin Years, which traced her formation as a student in Germany and her encounters with the Expressionist avant-garde. This instalment turns to the period after Stern's return to southern Africa. As anti-Semitism rose through the 1930s and Germany became increasingly closed to her, she redirected her attention to travelling and painting across rural South Africa, producing the work that would define her reputation. The hang brings together paintings made in KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and Eswatini, alongside related charcoal drawings and sculptures. Many of the pieces have been shown rarely or never, offering visitors an encounter with a less familiar side of a much-mythologised career. The framing matters for the institution's larger stewardship role. The Irma Stern Museum at The Firs in Rosebank, the house where Stern lived and worked for nearly four decades, closed in 2025 after the University of Cape Town ended its custodianship, leaving the Trust to secure a new home for the collection. The Norval series, planned over four exhibitions through 2027, is presented as a way to keep Stern's legacy publicly accessible while that storage and display solution is built, with chapters on the Congo and Zanzibar journeys still to come. The opening weekend was programmed with a curator walkabout led by Karel Nel on 3 and 4 October and an acrylic painting workshop for visitors on 3 October inspired by Stern's still lifes. The exhibition runs at the museum's Tokai campus until 10 January 2027, with day passes required and members admitted free.