In the wake of growing concerns, stakeholders of private and public museums converged on Freedom Park, Lagos to chart proactive ways of promoting museums in Nigeria, Jane Chijioke reports.
ThE functionality of museums is the goal that private and public museums should achieve.
This was the summary of the discourse at a symposium, tagged: Public Museums vs Private Collections: Synergy or Competition, organised by Goethe Institut, Lagos in collaboration with SMO Contemporary Art.
The event, held at the Freedom Park, Lagos, had as speakers the Obi of Onitsha, Nnaemeka Alfred Achebe; Director, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Arts, South Africa, Azu Nwagbogu; the pioneer Managing Director, Dangote Foundation, Dr Adhiambo Odaga, and Acting Director of Museums, National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria (NCMMN), Edith Ekunke.
Owners and managers of private and public museums were urged to leverage each other’s experiences in developing museums.
Museums are difficult entities to run, it was observed. While the private ones rely on individual effort or source for funds, the public ones are funded by the government and are faced with underfunding, unfavourable policy regulation, poor access to exhibitions and others. She, however, called for collaboration between private and public museums, saying it would provide sufficient skills and expertise in managing exhibitions to attract attention, locally and globally.
Although both entities have overlapping functions to co-exist, she was of the view that there are enormous opportunities to be derived from each partnering with the other.
While observing that 95 percent of the African antiquities lie outside the country – majorly in private collections, she raised concerns over the fact that those collections may not be presented to the public for years. She, therefore, stressed that the aforementioned trend can be taken care of if private museums partner with public ones.
“How come many years ago we were so meticulous, we produced such beautiful pieces of work. These are fundamental questions we need to ask ourselves because no country can go forward without looking back and appreciate where it is coming from. We need to decide that we love our heritage and will preserve it as best as we can,” Odaga asserted.
Odaga, who is a former member of the Ford Foundation, commended the success of The Kingdom of Ife: Sculptures from West Africa exhibition in 2010, which saw the collaboration of the British Museum with Nigeria’s National Commission for Museum and Monuments (NCMM).
Noting that the African artifacts were the biggest assets of that exhibition, she said the partnership would enhance the capacity of workers to conceptualise and curate exhibitions to attract local audience and also sell anywhere.
Odaga decried the attitude of African governments towards preserving cultures and heritage, urging Museums should borrow a leaf British Museum that has led to its success.
She said: “To what extent do we take our culture seriously? In Africa, we underfund to our detriment in preserving our heritage. The government has a greater role to play in ensuring there are well-drawn out policies to move the sector foreward. We need to be clear on what kind of museum we want? How much can be spent in building the capacity to put together exhibitions and to preserve the artefacts?”
On his part, Achebe, who is a private collector in Onitsha, said historically, most public museums started as private museums and 90 percent of the antiquities in public museums were donated by private collectors.
The monarch wondered if this could be the reason for the increase of private museums as the public ones were mostly established to oversee, manage curators and display what has been donated. He said though public museums were accessible, sometimes private collectors were dismayed about how their collections were stored without being exhibited for years.
“If you donate to museums, you have to give them money to manage it. You have to create that space for them to manage it. So many collectors won’t want to subject their collections to such treatment, rather they create their own museum” he noted. Achebe called for a better synergy to occur, public museums must respond to change and adaptation to modern realities to respond to audience demands with support from the private.
Promoting audience interest, the discussants argued that the museum still holds its place in the technological age. It preserves history and serves as a link between the past, present and future. It is an epistemology for the next generation and also a place of reorientation.
The panel’s moderator, Nneoma Ilogu, said the number of museums globally was on the rise. While the United State has 35,000 museums, the United Kingdom boasts of 16,000. Nigeria has less than 20.
According to the Private Art Museum report, 53 percent of the world private contemporary museums were established between 2001 and 2010, with South Korea having the world’s largest concentration of private museums. Despite this increase, Africa still records a low audience interest.
The Director of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art, South Africa, Nwagbogu ascribed the low patronage to the inability of people to relate to what they see in museums, noting that there is a disconnect the museum and the people.
He compared the museum’s worth to a university where opportunities are created to provide knowledge, noting that a museum should be accessible.
Meanwhile, to make the museum accessible, NCMM Acting Director, Ekunke said a token of N50 was required for entry, which has since been increased to N100. She added that efforts were in place to revive the museums. “These include building museum kitchen where traditional cuisines, spices, traditional drinks and entertainment in traditional music are available.
“Others are craft villages where craft works would be done for the delights of visitors. These side attractions, she said, were parts of museums in the past. Evaluating the benefits of museums to boost tourism, she called on the private collectors to collaborate.”
She blamed lack of awareness of the average Nigerian which makes Nigerians to classify objects in the museums as “juju” that should be discarded, stating that museum pieces were not only displayed for beauty purpose but to tell a story.
“My appeal is that we are asking the private museum to form a lobby group that will impress on the government the importance of museum. Most of them do not know how important a museum is and that is why when they are budgeting for a certain aspect of the society, they view culture as last part. Let us partner to form a pressure group on the government to let them know that we can do something from these museums,” she said.
On the repatriation of stolen objects, Nwagbogu suggested that stolen artifacts should be returned with interest. He said it was painful to see stolen artcrafts abroad; while NCMM Acting Director, explained that returning them was a diplomatic and political matter.
However, it was stated that a group has been established with some European countries to reason together as curators in making these objects accessible to the public. Ekunke stated that in the next two years, a museum would be built in Benin in partnershipwith NCMM to house returned objects.
She said it was voted in the 2018 appropriation bill when repatriation was still ongoing.