OBAMA GIFTED
AFRICAN HERITAGE HOUSE
By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted Septembr 6, 2017)
Barack Obama
wasn’t born in Kenya, contrary to the fake news story circulated by members of
the American ‘Birther’ movement, reportedly founded by the now US President
Donald Trump.
But the
senior Obama was born here in Kogelo, Siaya County as practically every Kenyan
knows well. That was sufficient grounds for the American designer and architect
of the African Heritage House, Alan Donovan to ‘gift’ his home (which doubles
for a Pan-African art museum) to Obama Junior and his wife, Michelle.
Mr Donovan
is not selling African Heritage House to the Obamas, he told Saturday Nation
soon after his return from the US. He admits he’d thought long and hard how to
ensure the preservation of both his house and all its priceless Pan-African art
and artifacts, textiles and jewelry. So when he heard the Obamas were looking
for the appropriate place to establish the Obama Library, he recalled the
‘dream’ the former Kenyan Vice President Joseph Murumbi had shared with him
shortly before the two men co-founded the African Heritage Pan-African Gallery
in 1972.
Alan Donovan with two African Heritage models
“Joe told me
he’d dreamed of establishing a Pan-African research institute and gallery where
artists from all around the region could come to exhibit as well as study,
create and research the arts of Africa,” Donovan said.
The African
Heritage House covers the gallery side of Murumbi’s dream, given it contains
art and artifacts that Donovan personally picked up while traveling multiple
times around the region for AH Gallery. But if anyone could understand the need
to establish a Pan-African art institution, it would be the former US President
who’d also been the first African American to attain that high office.
So while he
was recently in the US, he stopped off in Washington, DC and met with members
of the Obama Foundation who confirmed Barack was delighted with Donovan’s
‘gift’.
“They said
[Obama] had read everything he could find about African Heritage House and
plans to come to Kenya with Michelle next June especially to see the house,”
said Donovan whose home has been described as “the most photographed house in
Africa.”
The house,
both the edifice and the interior, are unique as they reflect the past 50 years
of Donovan’s life in Africa. He will officially be celebrating that
half-century milestone from October 1st (coincidentally Nigeria’s
National Day) when he will not only launch his second Nigerian Festival (the
first in 1972), an event anticipated to be a cultural extravaganza the kind for
which African Heritage has historically been recognized, not only in Kenya but also
in Europe, the US and South Africa.
He will also
be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Nigeria’s renowned Oshogbo artists’
community which was founded back in 1967 by the German Africanists Ulli and
Georgina Beier and Austrian artist Suzanne Wenger, together with Nigerian
artists like the late Twins Seven Seven, Jimoh Buraimoh and Nike Seven Seven Davies
Okundaye who at the time was Twins’ third wife.
Oshogbo has
been recognized globally as one of the central seats of Nigerian (and
specifically Yoruba) culture ever since then. It’s a place that’s spawned not
only visual artists but poets, playwrights, dancers, acrobats and Adire cloth
quilt-makers.
Oshogbo is
also where Nike has a workshop where artisans are busy reviving cultural
traditions which were otherwise threatened by Western culturally homogenizing
trends that have destroyed so many other rich African traditions.
It is from
her workshop as well as from her vast Centre for Arts and Culture in Lagos that
Nike sent Mr Donovan more than 100 works of art from Oshogbo artists, all of
which will be on display during the Festival, which will be held across the
city, at Nairobi National Museum, Nairobi Gallery and at the Alliance
Francaise.
Nike herself
will also be on hand for the Festival opening and to give talks on Oshogbo and
her own artistic work. Her exquisite batik art (which is largely inspired by
Yoruba religion and folklore) as well as her Centre have made her one of
Africa’s most internationally acclaimed female artists.
Nike will be
accompanied by one other Oshogbo artist, Jimoh Buraimoh who took part in
Donovan’s first Nigeria Festival. His art will be exhibited together with works
by Twins Seven Seven, Bisi Fabumni, Jacob Afolabi, Folorunsha Olatunde and his
deceased father Asiru Olatunde, the late Rufus Ogundule, and Nike of course.
At the same
time, the other award - winning Nigerian artist (possibly the best known of
all), Bruce Onobrakpeya will also be present for the Festival opening together
with his art. Bruce is acclaimed for his printmaking, painting and sculpture
and has exhibited everywhere from the Tate Modern in London and the National
Museum of African Art in Washington, DC to the 44th Venice Biennale
and the National Gallery of Modern Art in Lagos.
But all of
those shows may well have taken place after Bruce first came to Kenya in 1972
when che and Jimoh were the only Nigerians exhibiting in Nairobi.
Donovan has
kept in close touch with all of these artists whose works he got to know well
while working in the late Sixties for the USAID in Biafra during that terrible
secessionist war. Having studied African art and journalism at UCLA, he’s
played an unsung yet pioneering role in appreciating and promoting contemporary
African art.
Joseph
Murumbi recognized that talent back in 1969 when he first met the man who was
exhibiting his collection of Turkana material culture at the now defunct Studio
Arts 68. Murumbi had left politics by that time and had become an avid African
art collector. For that reason, he requested that Donovan return to northern
Kenya where he’d personally collected the Turkana artifacts that he’d brought
down to Nairobi for his first exhibition.
Murumbi sent
him to collect a duplicate collection of Turkana artifacts, knowing they would
one day be precious and important works of indigenous Kenyan culture.
The bond
between the two men grew from that point on, up until Murumbi’s death in 1990.
But their mutual appreciation and vision enabled them to expose the beauty of
contemporary African art, of the kind that the Nairobi public will have the
opportunity to see throughout October.
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