I&M’s GED SARIT SHAH A MAJOR COLLECTOR OF KENYAN ART

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 8.23.23) Sarit Raja-Shah’s journey to becoming one of the leading collectors of contemporary Kenyan art is a fascinating story. “I’ve had a passion of art since I was young, but I didn’t become a serious collector until after my return from the University of London where I studied Business and Finance, not art,” he told BDLife several months after I&M bank’s glossy coffee-table sized book entitled ‘The I&M Art Experience’ was launched. A book whose back jacket rightly notes that ‘It’s a feast of Artistic Excellence’ as it contains nearly 30 of Kenya’s finest artists including everyone from Peter Elungat, Beatrice Wanjiku, and Paul Onditi, to Anthony Okello, Kamal Shah, Michael Musyoka, and many more. The book was actually curated by the bank’s Group Executive Director, Mr Shah, who collected all the art himself. But these are only a fraction of what the bank has subsequently acquired, coincidentally during its own expansion in the early 2000s. New branches of I&M were opening up all over Nairobi and around the country. “I saw all those empty walls and felt our people deserved to see beautiful art,” Mr Shah explains when we meet at the bank’s Parklands Branch which is also a place where the walls are filled with exquisite works of art, nearly 200 paintings and 14 sculptures in this branch alone. Son of a banker who used his creativity to think of ways he could grow Kenya’s financial sector, starting by establishing the Investments and Mortgages Company which subsequently became I&M, so his son, Sarit has given much thought and attention to what ways he could grow the arts sector in Kenya. In that way, both father and son have mutually expressed their commitment to the country which is laudable. Fortunately, Sarit’s father is fully supportive of his son’s passion for art and for what he has done to beautify the bank’s branches. Sarit sites 1997 as the pivotal year when he got serious about collecting Kenyan art. “That was the year the Upper Hill branch of the bank was opened and I commissioned Nani Croze to create her [Kitengela] glass art to hang on our walls,” he recalled. He had already collected works by the late Robin Anderson, who, with Yony Waite and David Hart, has established Gallery Watatu, one of Nairobi’s first commercial art galleries in 1969. He had also acquired a major collection from Sarang Gallery. Then came RaMoMa in 2000, and he got to know Carol Lees and Mary Collis, its founders. “The first art I bought at RaMoMa was by Peter Elungat,” he said as he showed it to me in the book. After that, Sarit says he found his passion for art become “infectious.” Then when the bank put up the 14 floored I&M Tower on Kenyatta Avenue where African Heritage Pan African Art Gallery had once stood, his collecting skills accelerated. The bank even established a foundation to assist Maasai and Samburu women bead artists to develop new designs and make their art more sustainable. Then in 2015 when he heard the Art Auction East Africa would be launched that year by Circle Art, the bank became its sponsoring institution. “I had actually attended my first art auction at RaMoMa and acquired several pieces that night, so I know how important art auctions can be,” he added, noting the following year, Stanbic Bank took up sponsoring Circle’s Art Auction. Sarit didn’t mention the influence his bank may have had in illustrating for other corporates the value of sponsoring art events. But we asked him what more he felt his bank could do to encourage other corporates to act as he has done? Certainly, some are picking up the idea of buying more Kenyan art and growing the potentially lucrative local art world with funding and other means of promotion. Interestingly, Sarit never referred to art as an investment, but he was clear that Kenya’s creative economy can grow faster with corporate support. He referred to Coca Cola as one corporate that already has an impressive collection of African art. As for Sarit Shah, he will continue going around to assorted art spaces to see what artists are doing. That was clear from my walk around just one floor of the 1 Park branch of I&M and seeing lots of excellent art which didn’t appear in the book. According to I&M’s Karanja Nzisa, “In all, the bank owns over 300 artworks,” which are displayed in all the bank’s East African branches, from Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda to Tanzania and Mauritius.