Alan Donovan with one of his African Heritage models
By Margaretta wa Gacheru (composed October 23, 2017)
Having just celebrated his 50th
anniversary since he first came to Africa in 1967, it’s about time to appraise
the impact of Alan Donovan on the region, or at least on Nairobi and Kenya’s contemporary
art scene.
Initially, the American designer and CEO of
African Heritage House came to the continent not intending to plunge into the
depths or even the shallows of a fledgling African art scene. Donovan came to
work in Nigeria as a USAID relief worker in Biafra. At the time, Biafra was a
war zone from which Donovan himself found relief once he traveled around the
country and made his way to the amazing village of Oshogbo. It was a haven filled
with artists of all types, including musicians, poets, painters and above all,
followers of a deep and diverse cosmology including gods celebrated by local
people with ceremonies largely unknown in the West.
Before Nigeria, Donovan had landed in Ghana
where he had readily found indigenous art forms existing side by side of
cosmopolitan characters who had just gained the country’s independence the
decade before.
But it was the dynamism of Nigerian culture
and art that convinced Donovan he wasn’t in a hurry to leave the region;
neither was he willing to work much longer for the US government. So he took
off and made his way to Kenya across the Sahara desert and through the semi-arid
region of northern Kenya. That was where he was again charmed by the indigenous
African arts and crafts of the local people.
Turkana-land is where Donovan began his
collecting of African material culture, not as a scholar or social researcher
but as an exhibitor whose first showing of Turkana artifacts became the
occasion for his meeting former Vice President Joseph Murumbi and his wife
Sheila. Their friendship blossomed from the first day they met. Murumbi
initially wanted Alan to go back to Turkana and collect a second set of their
artifacts for him. From there Murumbi shared his vision with Alan, of wanting
to build a beautiful Pan-African gallery and research centre where Africans
could come from all across the region and the diaspora to do their own research
on Pan-African art and culture.
From that moment on, Donovan was dedicated to
fulfilling the Murumbi dream. Together they built African Heritage Pan-African
Gallery starting in 1972. Over the years, the gallery exhibited African artists
who were Murumbi’s favorites, such as sculptors like Elkana Ong’esa, John Odoch
Ameny, Expedito Mwebe and painters like Theresa Musoke and Jak Katarikawe.
Plus one of Donovan’s specialties was fusing
indigenous materials with Western ideas of fashion, design, utility and functionality
to create new styles of contemporary African culture. They were hybrid styles
which critics would disparage for being too commercial and simply aiming to
cultivate markets among Kenya’s burgeoning tourist economy.
But even as his designs were ridiculed by a
cynical few for being just another form of curio, they were also being copied
by ambitious Africans who could see that Donovan’s designs sold readily to
foreigners.
What’s more, he was creating employment
opportunities for hundreds of young men and women at a time when rural to urban
migration was heating up and joblessness had already become a serious social
problem.
Setting up a series of workshops for making
everything from jewelry and Kisii stone crafts to tailoring, Donovan frankly
worked like a maniac once he and Murumbi created their pan African gallery.
At one stage, he was even supplying
fashionable shops in the States like Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale’s and the Banana
Republic with original African Heritage designs. But that was in between his
traveling for the Gallery to over 20 African countries to collect artifacts,
artworks and especially textiles to bring home to Nairobi.
The impact of Donovan’s and African Heritage’s
initiatives to advance what was and continues to be a decidedly hybridized
African culture is yet to be measured in full.
But after colonial powers played such a
profound and detrimental role in destroying indigenous cultures, traditions and
religions, Donovan’s determination to reconstruct African fashion, beauty,
business and culture was a blessing in ways that are not yet fully recognized.
But Donovan also did his part to promote local
talents, doing his own form of ‘capacity building’ by, for instance, training
artisans like Johnson Njenga in replicating elements of indigenous culture
which had already been lost.
Yet there is little doubt that Mr Donovan’s
role in reviving those African cultures that were crippled under colonialism is
yet to be fully appreciated. At his 50th anniversary celebration
which coincidentally was the African Heritage Night at Alliance Francaise, the
former AH model and designer Emma Too observed that his role in developing
Kenyan culture and the arts has been misunderstood, undervalued and the man was
yet to receive the full recognition he deserved.
In part that may be because he’s never given
up his American citizenship and never tried to be anyone other than himself.
It could also be as his detractors (like Sidney...
have argued) his role has been more commercial than cultural, more Eurocentric
than Afro-centric.
Or it could be there’s an issue of mistaken
identity since historically, the art scene in Kenya has been controlled by
expatriate Europeans or Asians in the business of selling curios. Donovan could
have easily been mistaken for yet another exploitative European who made sales
off Africans’ achievements but hands over a small percentage to the African
workers.
Either way, Donovan is no doubt a clever
businessman who knows how to create extravaganzas using basic elements of
African culture and re-shaping them into works of unprecedented beauty,
utility, elegance and art.
Those works have also earned Africans
themselves both opportunities and riches. For instance, the African Heritage
Bands that he has supported and helped to build have often gone on to soaring
heights. Members of his bands, like Job Seda, now known as Ayub Ogada, have
written and performed music that’s featured in Hollywood films like The
Constant Gardener. And his models have also moved on, some to stay abroad and
cultivate careers out there. The best example of that is the Somali model Iman
who he first put on a catwalk having recognized her ineffable beauty. But she
was readily whisked off to Europe where she rapidly forget to credit Donovan
for helping her start off her career.
Currently, he’s been assisting a young
musician and musical instrument maker, Martin Murimi, who reinvented himself
with Donovan’s help as Papillon. The night of Alan’s 50th anniversary
celebration was when Papillon launched his first album entitled ‘Heart of
Africa.’
There are countless other artists that Alan
Donovan has assisted. There have been refugee artists who he’s help get back on
their feet, like John Odoch Ameny. He even helped one of Kenya’s most esteemed
and widely recognized sculptors, Gakunju Kaigwa who’d wanted to intern with
Odoch Ameny at AH Kisii stone workshop, which is where Gakunju learned (under
Odoch) to work with that special soap stone.
Donovan’s role in publishing Joseph Murumbi’s
autobiography is also large. Indeed, it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t taken
the initiative to ensure Mr Murumbi’s legacy and historical contribution to
Kenya does not die.
And having acquired the task from a former
Managing Director of the National Museums of Kenya to manage the Nairobi
Gallery, Donovan has given over most of the Gallery to creating permanent
exhibitions of the Murumbi’s extensive collections of indigenous African jewelry,
first edition books and stamps and other rare cultural artifacts. The rest of
the Murumbi’s art collections are on permanent display at Kenya’s National
Archives, thanks to Donovan’s tireless efforts.
But perhaps the least appreciated work that
Donovan did on behalf of the Murumbi’s is to see that Joe’s wishes were fulfilling
by ensuring that he and his wife Sheila were buried right near his best friend,
Pio Gama Pinto.
African Heritage was also one of the few
places in Nairobi that paid special attention to the 1985 United Nations
International Decade on Women by bringing together outstanding women artists
from all over the world to celebrate the Women’s Conference at African Heritage
Gallery.
The women included the celebrated Kenyan woman
ceramicist and O.B.E. Magdalene Odondo, Nigerian woman batik artist Nike Seven
Seven Okundaye and Australian photographer Angela Fisher who with her American
counterpart Carol Beckwith have created a whole series of beautiful photography
books starting with ‘Africa Adorned’. It was Donovan who introduced these two
women who have been prolific partners ever since.
But one of the most obvious reasons that Alan
Donovan is not as well known locally as he is internationally is because the
man himself is reserved by nature (some would say shy) and a workaholic who
rarely has had time to promote himself other than by producing works that might
or might not be attributed to his creativity and masterful design ideas.
Donovan was not able to attend his own 50th
anniversary celebration, which was a big disappointment to many who had come to
the event especially to congratulate him for his immense life work. But even
before his ill became an issue, he had contacted the Obama Foundation and
offered to gift his African Heritage House including all the art and artifacts
contained therein to Barack and Michelle. He’s been informed via email and
through the PA to the former American President (who’s got Kenyan blood running
through his veins) that the Obamas would be delighted to accept his gift.
Whether they would ever actually come and live
in the African Heritage House (which Donovan designed and constructed based on
indigenous West African architectural designs) is subject to speculation. But
certainly, if they settled here, they would elevate the global status of
country. Their presence would probably even transform a commuter town like
Mlolologo into a metropolis. But even if they only came visiting occasionally,
their arrival would create scads of traffic jams but put Kenya in the world
media limelight. It would also amplify the value of African culture and
probably even contemporary Kenyan art.
So Kenyans will look forward to the Obamas’
arrival. We also look forward to Mr Donovan’s quick recovery since we’d like to
let him know how much he is recognized by some as an international treasure who
has blessed the country and giving Kenyans a more bountiful sense of their own
beauty, creativity and capacity to make culture a central feature in the
country’s creative economy.
