The management of Museum of West African Arts (MOWAA) located in Benin City, Edo State, has clarified that the place is a cultural centre for education and research, and not a museum for holding artefacts and other art works.
Philip Ihenacho, MOWAA’s executive director made the clarifications during a press conference ahead of a media tour of the MOWAA Institute and Campus, in the state capital.
According to Ihenacho, MOWAA is designed to aid cultural professionals achieve their creative potentials, and not to showcase old objects where people pay to see them as it is basically a facility for research, education, career development and job creation in the area of arts.
“We are not just a traditional museum, at all… We have shifted away from that experience that was a legacy of colonialism to something that is more relevant to Nigerians and Africans”, Ihenacho told journalists.
Director of the institute, Ore Disu, who took journalists on a tour of the 15-hectare complex, said the centre provide for trainings for young professionals from across Africa and other parts of the world, as well as possess physical and digital base knowledge for curators, artists and other cultural experts interested in conducting research on objects.
Disu noted that, MOWAA collaborates with national archives, private collectors and libraries that have works that are of interest to the institute which offers trainings through partner cultural specialists from top Nigerian universities and other parts of the world.
“We have started the journey by developing a campus right here in the heart of Benin City which will cater for all range of professionals, artists in a 15 hectare complex that will house various buildings designed to be a complementary and constellation of infrastructure or display for research, for production, for creative enterprise and for performance”, Disu said
The single-storey building established in 2020 is still under construction.
The building houses a 4,000 square meters (43,000 square feet) sustainable building with archeological collections, state-of-the-art archival facilities and conservation laboratories.
Others are exhibition spaces, seminars and lecture rooms, conservation area for indigenous trees, as well as rooms for the campus research, education, and public outreach programs, amongst others.
It also serves as a model for the care and preservation of the many Benin City mud wall structures to meet global standards.
The Consul General, of Germany, Weert Boerner described the institute building as modern, with a feature of unique African architecture and design, as well as cutting-edge technology.
The Consul General revealed this during a recent preview event to spark critical conversations about the future of museum practice in West Africa with the first purpose-built building, the MOWAA Institute in Benin City.
“I am pleased to say that we are proud to be a part of this project, through financial support from the German Foreign Office for the construction and operation of this ‘museum in the making’ over the last two years”, Boerner said.
The two-day event brought together MOWAA’s current donors and partners, which included the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), the German Foreign Office, US-based Mellon Foundation, and other corporate leaders, international artists, and local cultural practitioners.
