National Museum of Ghana - December 2011
THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF GHANA
Photo: Rachel Srella Jenkins
of
BLUEPRINTS PA R A D I S E the winners
[Left] Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his wife visiting the National Museum of Ghana on 23 August 2011 [Top] Mr Annan being interviewed for Ghana television TV3
Editorial
by Berend van der Lans In 2012, ArchiAfrika will focus on Ghana. There is a compelling reason for this: the core of the organization is preparing a shift from the Netherlands to Accra. This move will fulfil the original vision of the founders, to create a firm base for the organization on the African continent while also allowing the new Board to reshape its original mandate to include culture and creativity as a blueprint for describing the African built space.
also devastate. Joe Osae-Addo notes that ‘a new Ghana is emerging, with air-conditioned shopping malls and medium to high rise condominiums. The development is going in such a speed, that we tend to forget where we are coming from. Development needs to be grounded in something, founded in our own culture. Otherwise we will not be able to call it our own. Accra is changing very quickly, we need to give this change a voice. Our voice.’
We believe our move is timely; ArchiAfrika is not the only one arriving in Ghana. The country is undergoing a tremendous economic growth, reporting over 10% growth in 2011. The recent discovery of oil is a strong stimulator, ushering in major investments in building, infrastructure and telecommunication. Accra today looks like a building site, with construction banners lining the major boulevards and trucks moving around the city. Ghana is attracting people from all over the world, from the East, the West, from elsewhere in Africa and not the least from the Diaspora.
Should development be firmly rooted in a national vision? If so, where can one find this voice better than at the nucleus of national heritage, the National Museum of Ghana? The museum remains the depository of Ghana’s rich and vivid past, housing the most extensive and intriguing art collection in the country. The museum should be able to attract more visitors and be in a position to restore and exhibit more of their amazing stored collections of paintings and artifacts. Indeed, some people insist that the museum has a central role to play in giving context to the rapid development happening around it. ‘The National Museum needs to play an important role in remembering us about where we come from. It houses the best collection on the history of Ghana you can think of. We need to rethink the positioning of the museum in today’s Ghana,’ says Joe Addo.
All of these new developments are fast overtaking the past. New ways of life are sprouting up, old habits are soon forgotten. Development at such a dizzying pace is a fantastic and dynamic process to witness, but it can
On the 4th August 2011, Joe Addo and collaborators such as Seth Dei and Nat Amartefio proved that his idea resonated with Ghanaians when they gathered an impressive crowd for a debate on the role of the museum in the Adventurers in
Report
[Top, Left] Francis Ademola, Fritz Baffour & Nat Amartefio [Top, Right] The panel during the AiD, Golden Tulip Accra [Below, Left] Architect David Adjaye speaking & Mr Acheampong (Vice Director of the National Museum) [Below, Right] Ghanaian artist Kofi Sertodji
the Diaspora series, including the world famous Ghanaian architect David Adjaye. A few days later he had the honour to guide former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his wife through the National Museum. These historic events gave the rise to more questions than answers: ‘What is the role of the museum in the future, are we restoring it, are we using it the same way? How can we make sure it gains meaning for all Ghanaians? Do we need to develop the concept of a ‘museum without walls’?’ The ArchiAfrika newsletter features some of the ongoing debate, with Rachel Stella Jenkins interviewing Dr. Amekudi, Director of the Museum, and some of the key staff members of the institute, exploring the past, the present and possible future plans of Ghana’s National Museum. Mae-ling Lokko unfolds the architectural history of the building, one of the extraordinary examples of tropical Modernism, designed by the British architect Sir Denys Lasdun. Will the building be fit to take a new role, or does revitalisation mean a complete overhaul? We hope that our focus on Ghana will reverberate with our audience to provide a larger African perspective, where national museums find themselves in similar positions, even while economic growth is steadily climbing. All over the continent, National Museums are viewed as relics of a colonial past, seldom frequented by visitors, undermining their own importance in shaping the national vision and development agenda. In the newsletter, Rafael Chikukwa reports about these issues in a broader African perspective. The up and coming painter Fatric Bewong also underlines the role the National Museum can play in finding new ways for cultural development: a workshop space for artistic explorations which investigate the past.
After all this talk about the role of the past, we also would like to present to you one of the drivers of growth on the continent: Laurus Development Partners CEO Carlo Matta in an interview with Rachel Stella Jenkins. Laurus’ key focus is on eco-friendly and sustainable developments, and has formed a key partnership with ArchiAfrika and are continuing to support us in 2012. We hope that this is only the beginning of a long lasting relationship. In his interview, Matta reveals the urgent need to introduce environmentally friendly and high standard buildings in Accra. We hope that you will join us in the continuing discourse on the role of the National Museum in the national development of Ghana. You are warmly invited to take part in the planned events in 2012, which will be made available online via livestreaming video link to global participants. This newsletter and the ArchiAfrika website will also notify you of all upcoming events.
The National Museum:
[Above] Interior view of museum central hall
Past, Present & Future Visions By Rachel Stella Jenkins
On the 5th of March 1957, the day before the first colony in Sub-Saharan Africa declared its independence, the National Museum of Ghana, now one of the oldest museums in West Africa, was inaugurated. A place that served to create a common front in the face of a newly independent and ethnically diverse state, and a synonym for a united African independence, the National Museum, situated in Accra the capital city, stands as a testament of a time when the first African nation made a transition from colonial rule to independence. Capturing the imagination of the nation, the continent and the world, the museum became a site for legitimising ancestral heritage whilst also forging the new African personality. So powerful was this moment and opportunity that Ghana became a Mecca for children of the Diaspora. Famous individuals such as Louis Armstrong, Maya Angelou, Muhammad Ali, C.L.R James, Martin Luther King, who visited with President Nixon for the Independence celebrations and Malcom X all came to Ghana. Becoming a centre for disseminating culture and looking at all the aspects of African culture, Ghana was also the setting for Encyclopaedia Africana. Like the Encyclopaedia Britannica, it was compiled to give evidence of everything about Africa. In essence, that Africa and Africans alike had a history and a capability, a dream that so many were enhanced by. For the urban generation of today faced with different challenges, what legacy remains of the high hopes of the time of independence? What is the space of the past in the present - and the future? I met with key members from the Ghana Monuments and Museums Board and prominent figures of Accra’s cultural scene to open a dialogue on the role of the museum and culture in Ghana’s growth and development.
Accra is now a bustling and expansive African metropolis of between 4 to 5 million people and globalisation is rapidly changing the economic and social character of the city. Airconditioned shopping malls, hours of traffic jams, gated communities and a growing presence of Chinese migrants, to name a few, are evidences of the changes taking place. Can the museum find its way to go beyond being a centre of memorialisation and also become a place of inspiration? As the nation becomes increasingly urban and builds more ties with the outside world, a time where traditions and customs are often forsaken in the name of development, can the museum maintain its ambition of presenting and propagating what binds Ghanaians together beyond the ancient artefacts on show? These are some of the questions my conversations brought up. Old Mandate The museum - along with the National Museums of Uganda and Tanzania, the Revolution Museum in Mozambique and many others - constituted the then evolving cartography of cultural sites devoted to nation building. Accra was renowned as a pivotal site in the independence movements on the continent led by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah known to many as the father of pan-Africanism. Nkrumah, much like his counterpart in Senegal President Leopold Senghor, who started building museums and cultural institutions after independence in his own country as a means of re-writing history under a new era, saw the museum to be an important political tool in building the new national consciousness. Talking to the current Director of the National museum, Dr. Amekudi explained to me that having studied and lived in the United States, Nkrumah became familiar with the concept of
museums; how museums told stories of people and created the idea of an identity. Plans which had begun under the colonial government to establish an ethnographic museum in the capital were adopted and adapted by Nkrumah to showcase an independent African personality and identity along with the new territory called Ghana. Nkrumah faced many challenges as he led the new government. It was undoubtedly a deliberate choice for the museum to be inaugurated on the eve of independence; one critical challenge Nkrumah faced was uniting the four territories of the Gold Coast. Serving as a platform to create a common front, a space to showcase what united Ghanaians through culture, the museum became a unifying force. At its opening Nkrumah spoke of the museum as being a centre to show who the African is, The fact that Africans were united by common threads in terms of tradition, language and religion, but also united by pain and sorrow. Dr. Amekudi explains Nkrumah recognized that not everyone who would be able to go to Ghana would be able to go to other liberated African countries, thus he wanted the National Museum to be a testimony of the variety of the African personality – and as such also an inspiration to the freedom fighters who came to Ghana to train. At the time countries on the continent such as Egypt and Ethiopia had already become well known for their archeological finds. As a result the museum in Accra exchanged a lot of artifacts from across the continent. The current assistant Director, Mr. Acheampong, informs me that this included an Egyptian mummified hand that is estimated to be from about
[Right] Installation showing local game [Below] The Museum from outside
3000 B.C. still in the museum’s collection. These newly acquired artifacts were added to the already sizeable collection of Ghana’s national treasures that was started in the 1950’s by British researcher and professor of archaeology at the university of the Gold Coast (now University of Ghana) A.W. Lawrence. What began as a personal collection of archeological finds became the basis for plans by the then colonial Governor for an ethnographic museum. Despite the change of power leading up to independence, Nkrumah’s desire was so strong that Ghana should have a museum to mark the dawn of this new era and that the museum was commenced as a joint venture with members of the colonial government. The museum’s Modernist architecture bears the signature of its architectural firm Fry, Drew, Drake and Lasdun architects - a reminder of the times modernism was being exported and the discourse on globalizing the movement through forms of tropical modernism were being explored. The aluminum dome, the museum’s most distinctive feature, encapsulates a powerful metaphor; made from ore imported from Ghana, then a material high in demand in the world, it was fabricated in the United kingdom then shipped back to Ghana to be assembled upon the concrete body. Mr. Fritz Baffour, a member of parliament and the Chairman of Ghana’s Monuments and Museums Board, explains to me how African heritage and African culture was something people were conversant in around that time, ‘It was very
[Above] Mr. Acheampong, Vice Director at the National Museum in his office
much pack and parcel with what was going on and many scholars wrote about the museum’s collections’. Next to the museums Nkrumah set up two national universities and later, in 1965, inaugurated the television service. Culture was undoubtedly a force in Nkrumah’s, and the nation’s, drive to create a new reality. After the completion of the museum plans soon emerged for an extension to be built. This time an Italian architect designed a larger two-storey structure. With support from UNESCO building commenced. In 1966 however, nearly ten years after the museum was inaugurated, Ghana experienced a military coup d’état, and not long after the new government came into power the construction of the extension was stopped. Today sitting behind the offices of the museum remain the remnants of the extension building. Marking a time when culture and the museum, with state patronage from Nkrumah, were central in capturing the promise of the future. To this day, I am told whilst visiting the museum collection, nearly 40 years on, not one member of the successive governments has set foot in the museum on an official visit. New challenges Resource cuts and tight spending budgets has meant that the museum has been facing difficult times. Signs of wear are showing in the museum’s physical structure; the rotunda ceiling is leaking and the ventilation no longer works, making it sometimes uncomfortable for tourists. And more recently, the museum directorship was told that the museum will have to fend for itself on internally generated finances. Mr. Acheampong tells me that while they have received public support and sponsoring in the past, aside from the revenue
from entry fees, the museum will have to find ways to sustain their future and new considerations and measures will be needed to be drawn when depending on surrogate sources of funding. As Rafael Chikukwa, writes in ‘African Museums and the Past: A critical view on Postcolonial dilemmas- Challenges by Museums in Africa’ (ArchiAfrika Newsletter, P.11), this predicament of funding support is a major challenge facing Museums in the African continent but it is also one Western Museums are not immune to especially in the current global economic meltdown. In Ghana however, where new economies such as oil are creating rapid development and change, talking to Mr Baffour, the question arises of how Ghana can develop in a direction that is true to itself rather than imposed, ‘It might not be easy because we have a lot on our minds, but I believe that our culture is far more important. Developing in a way you can draw from your culture, you know where you are going, you know where you are coming from and so you have that strength’. Urban realities Accra is quickly becoming one of the strongest economic hubs in West Africa, Mr Saki, who has been working at the museum for over a decade, tells me that he believes the museum can have an important role in building public consciousness. With 44% of Accra’s citizens being migrants to the city and over half the city’s population being under the age of 25, the realties and aspirations of the city’s residents are changing quickly. Most Ghanaians who visit the museum come on a school excursion, and it is becoming increasingly evident to
Mr. Saki that local cultural traditions, such as why no fishing is done on Tuesdays, are being overlooked and forgotten, ‘this comes at great cost’, Saki stresses, ‘we are living in a world where we are constantly being told to value the new. The museum could become a tool to help us to understand our traditions and customs, contributing towards a more sustainable form of growth’. The museum has been active with an outreach programme to gradually engage with people beyond the museum, however the economic pressures of urban life, such as finding work and sustenance, Mr. Acheampong attests, determines that most people in the city spend their time trying to find work opposed to visiting the museum. This raises valid questions on creating a living museum. How to keep memories alive? How do tradition and modernity relate to each other? How can the museum not only house artefacts but also actively create art and culture, linking the past to the present, and the future? As we talk further on reaching the urban youth, Mr. Achempong tells me about an interesting TV show on Ghanaian television called ‘Ghana’s Most Beautiful’. It is a cultural programme and pageant for women from the ten different regions of Ghana. The goal of the girls on the show is to portray the tourism potential from their region, including the culture of the people, ‘When these girls want to be part of this show they spend weeks visiting the museums and asking questions. They need to know more about their culture and heritage so when they are on stage they can showcase it.’ The challenge of transformation is a feat all museums face, beyond doubt new medias can be a powerful tool in reaching a wider - and younger – audience, bridging new ways in which we can engage with heritage and conservation. Conclusion It is said that if you don’t know what is the sound of the drums of your chief, you get lost in the midst of a crowd. If we don’t know where we are coming from we wouldn’t know where we are, let alone where we want to go.
Encouraging the African population they have something worth fighting for, that they need not look up to European civilisation for inspiration, meant Nkrumah, and the likes of Senghor in Senegal, utilised culture as a political force at the centre of the developmental agenda. What does the urban age mean for Ghana? It seems the museum is needed more than ever. Talking to Mr. Amarteifo, former mayor of Accra, on how the museum can reconnect with the past and bridge this to the present, he advised ‘ There is room for the heroic. But it is also important to engage the imagination of the people, the ordinary people, leading ordinary lives, what is the social tissue binding us together? What are our aspirations? Explore the ways contemporary issues impact Ghanaian people and its form of development.’ Contemporary culture was something Nkrumah showed a lot of interest in. As the nation builds more ties to the outside world and with over half the city’s population under 30, the museum has a large potential audience who are already active in Accra’s vibrant cultural scene and can bring fresh input, introducing new ways the museum can become a voice in shaping the country’s vision of itself. The focus of this write up, the Museum, stands as a milestone, undoubtedly a beacon to Nkrumah’s vision and dreams of a united and independent Africa. Certainly a case for reflection on the past as well as the future. Once characterizing the rise of newly independent Africa, its potential to become an emblematic & attracting icon goes without saying, but it needs to re-locate its focus to become a place that fuels creativity, shares and documents the unique charm of what embodies the nation - and continent through its vast collection - in terms of the present and not only the past. To do this will mean engaging with with the local culture, becoming, as well as a repository of the past, also a place for cultural production; hosting events, workshops, artists’ studios, competitions and relating this to the past as well as the future or as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah would say: “We face neither East nor West, we face forward” Pictures provided by: Ikando & Rachel Stella Jenkins [Left] Urban realities: Billboard advertising ‘LA Beach Towers’ in Accra
History & Architecture of the National Museum By Mae-ling Jovenes Lokko
[Above] Asante stool installation, opening evening of the Museum
On the eve of March 5, 1957, the National Museum opened its doors for the first time to the public. For many of its guests who were part of the British colonial and political ranks or members of the Ghanaian transitional government, it marked a night where they to see a thirty-year collection period of colonial history and glimpses of an imagined future offered by the museumʼs collection. The absence of certain artifacts and the presence of others were deeply revealing of interwar attitudes that involved a ʻransackingʼ of prized cultural possessions as well as a subsequent conscious movement to construct the nationʼs pre-colonial history. The latterʼs ʻpresenceʼ was framed within the museumʼs bold architectural forms which was to become part of a larger architectural movement that sought to develop a deep sense of national consciousness. While the modern movement in architecture in the West began in the mid-nineteenth century and endured until the 1970s, the architecture that emerged in the independent colonies of Britain in the late 1950-60s marked a distinct divergence. In the West, the intellectual and political foundations for the modern movement were laid during the Enlightenment and its emphasis on the value of the individualʼs rational thought. By the 1920s modernism as an architectural style had reached its peak and was characterized by buildings that were stripped of
history, embodied in pure clean forms of squares, spheres of controlled proportions. The dictum of Modern architects was that a buildingʼs form must follow its function and thus was devoid of decoration and ornamentation that were seen as the trappings of culture and history. Concrete was the material of modernism, used to shape bold sculptural forms that have become icons of modernism. These ideas embedded in Modernism lended itself easily to public administration buildings, factories and large-scale housing in Europe and America where post-war migration and rapid population increase demanded rapid, modular and universal architecture. But while universalism condensed into regular, controlled and pure forms were a central tenet of modernism in the West, the modernist architecture in the newly independent West African nations forty years later began to respond consciously to local conditions and influences. This variant of modernism was embodied in large urban planning schemes for the city of Accra and in major public buildings and housing projects. Ghanaʼs National Museum is considered an early and prime example of the modern movement in West Africa through its employment of formal elements, pure geometries, concrete and its signature climatic device, the brise-soleil. However the political and cultural underpinnings of this architecture, unlike
[Above] Aerial shot of National Museum
the European or American modern movement, sought to respond and embrace a singular cultural and national identity — that of the new nation state. Located northeast of the thriving Central Business District the museumʼs site was incorporated into what was to become Accraʼs cultural artery, Barnes Road, where many other national and cultural institutions were also allocated space. At the time, the site also marked an interstitial space between two prominent neighborhoods of Adabraka, where an emerging African elite resided and whose architecture contrasted the European colonial settlement in Ridge. The Museum was designed by the celebrated Sir Denys Lasdun, who twenty years later designed the Royal National Theatre in London. Lasdun was heavily influenced by iconic figures of the modern architectural movement such as Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier evidently seen in his ʻcluster blocksʼ in Bethnal Green as well as many institutional buildings throughout England. Lasdun joined Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew in one of the most successful architectural practices working in post-war British West Africa and whose experimental works characterized a divergent take on the modernist tradition. Whether viewing the museum on ground level, from an aerial position or standing within its space, the most prominent feature of the museum is its concrete roof. The eighty-foot wide stressed skin is supported on a reinforcedconcrete ring beam and clad in sheet aluminum. The choice of the dome-motif had two precedents, the first at the Wudil Teacher Training College
in Nigeria built in 1953 as well as the iconic Dome of Discovery completed in 1952 on Londonʼs South Bank. Both became symbols of modern design and novel technical expertise used to produce and shape the aluminum extrusions. The use of these modern materials, reinforced concrete and aluminum, emphasized not only the modern aspirations of the nation but more specifically the grounding of the museumʼs mission in scientific inquiry and research. This is evident in the museumʼs initial development scheme which involved the construction of the main building mainly dedicated for research and technical work and housing. Following this phase, was the building of 3000 square feet to accommodate research galleries, student rooms and archaeological workshops. Finally, plans were made to include a Science Museum with its own galleries, workshops and offices. The dome structure sits on top of a brise-soleil façade structure. The long façades were divided into a series of nine wall components separated by a set of windows set at ninety degrees to the wall surfaces. By doing so this façade system provided protection by using the concrete component to absorb the sun’s primary radiation in one direction while allowing louver windows to facilitate cross ventilation in the other. Furthermore by shading the windows, uncomfortable day lighting effects such as glare was prevented. The cool interior space bordered by these walls formed an elliptical-shaped ground floor joined to the second floor by two staircases. On both floors, the shapes used ensure that there is no dominant circulation axis, allowing a democratic experience of the collections within the space.
[Left] Sir Denys Lasdun, [Right] Brise soleil façade device, [Below] Museum plan
In his study of the emergence of independent nations, Benedict Anderson aptly characterizes the importance and influence of the museum as an institution that shapes the way the “colonial state imagines its dominion, especially the legitimacy of its ancestry”. That evening, the museumʼs space was filled with installation pieces of Asante stools and portraits of independence-era activists and leaders. In her paper “Exhibiting Ghana: Display, Documentary and “National Art” in Nkrumahʼs era, Janet Hess describes this distinctive hybridized display as “an eclectic collection of “traditional” art [that] seemed at once to underscore the art’s historical significance and at the same time to anchor objects within an encompassing vision of national solidarity and cultural homogeneity.” The growth of the museumʼs collection from what Hess describes to the broad pan-African and Ghanaian treasure it is today is indicative of a consciousness to collect and preserve objects representative of their growing heterogeneous
culture. With over 25,000 objects, 10% of which are on display, David Adjaye calls this rare treasure, a collection that overshadows even that of the highly anticipated Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington DC. A huge part of the challenge for the revitalization effort today lies in allowing its architecture to reflect the value of this trajectory and more importantly to respond to the changing image of the Ghanaian nation, an identity that was first constructed within its very walls.
African Museums & the Past: A critical view on Postcolonial dilemmas - Challenges by Museums in Africa. By Raphael Chikukwa
[Top] National Museum of Tanzania [Left] National Museum of Nairobi, Kenya [Below] National Museum of Uganda
The end of the Second World War in 1945 brought about a wind of change not only to the African continent but also to some of the oppressed nations, Asia and Latin America for example. Today very little is mentioned of the bravery and sacrifices made by our fathers in the 2nd World War, repeating what had happened in the 1st World War. Africans remain nameless and faceless despite the fact that some were, conned to fight for the Empire and some were forced. It was everyone’s cry that the independence in some colonised nations that the independence will usher new ideologies and news ways of living. With independences coming in Africa, Latin America and Asia, they felt that the West has not only a political and economic dept with their respective continents, but also a cultural one. They wanted their history back. All their history that the Westerners find interesting [such as the mentioned ‘’great civilisations’’] This implies restoring cultural heritage to their moral owners but also rewriting history together under a new era. Now that Museums are back, in our own hands what is the way forward and what is the future of Museums in Africa? This question comes at a time when the future of Museums in Africa needs an immediate attention from our stakeholders. Given the legacy of colonialism, African Museums have been utilized as a place for exhibiting curious art and a bit of colonial
art. Having said that, today Museums are so removed from the masses just like in the colonial era where Museums used to be for whites only. We must constantly remind ourselves that Museums are not for the elite but for all of us. The opportunity is ours to tell our own story and preserve our own heritage. Today the situation is different and the challenges are different too; Museums need are now open to the masses. The previously deprived people must claim ownership to their heritage and story telling and not to cry when others tell your history. Yes, we are all aware that there are so many various challenges facing Museum in Africa. Let us be reminded that Africa has contributed immensely in the arts and culture to America and the World. It is unfortunate that it has not been able to harness its contribution enough. Africa should take a leaf out of the late Senegalese President Leopold Senghor who started building Museums and Cultural institutions after independence in his own country. His legacy today lives with the only Biennale in Africa. The Dak ’Art lives, as the
legacy of Senghor and it still needs support from the rest of the continent to keep going. The Biennale might have challenges but it has survived for many years. The Future of Museums in Africa has not been addressed for many years and with the end of apartheid in South Africa 1994, arguably their Museums are still under the old guard. Nevertheless, these are some of the major challenges facing Museums in the African continent but Western Museums are not immune to the following challenges. 1. Contradictory goals. 2. Not being able to attract previously disadvantage audiences. 3. Lack of funding, Museums in African depend too much on International Foundations and the funding always comes with strings attached to it. 4. No Skilled manpower, (inexperienced Museum personnel running big Museums. 5. Mimicking the West (Museums in Africa want to learn to run before the learn how to walk). 6. Brain Drain. 7. Curatorship and Repatriation of Stolen Objects from the Western Museums. Africa has not been able to fight with one voice for the repatriation of the stolen objects housed in the so-called Museums in the West. (I call them Houses of Stolen Goods) 8. The political instability in Africa is a course of concern for African Museums, because looters from hell are still looting objects into the Western Market. 9. Elicit trade of stolen objects from Museums are seen in flee markets in Cape Town, London, New York, Paris and other big cities around the world. 10. Audience development is another key issue (Marketing Museums to the previously disadvantaged community has never been addressed and the Museum buildings are not welcoming). 11. Lack of research centers in Africa is an obstacle for Museums researchers because they end up travelling to the West to research about the continent. 12. Issues of Representation is still pending. 13. Curatorship of Human Remains and religious symbolic objects, which are out of context in this so-called Museum abroad. 14. Slavery (The story of Slavery is still being told by the same organizations, which benefited from slave trade and the other voice is still silenced). 15. Cultural genocide. How do we address all these burning issues? I am sure our concern should be focused on these conflicting demands of different interest affecting Museums practice in Africa. Having said that Western Museums are not immune to some of these challenges faced by African Museums, they also need to address the following issues: Repatriation of stolen objects from colonized nations. I would like to say there is need for more Western countries to take leaf to the Italian Government, which repatriated an artefact back to Ethiopia. On The 19th of April 2005, the first part of the 150 tones Ethiopian Obelisk arrived to its audience after having been looted during the colonial era in 1937. We all need to address the purposes why Africans want their artefacts back to their original homes. Others cannot deny that these objects have a national importance to countries of
originality more than where they are located now. One cannot rule out that African Museums come from an unfortunate background having to do with very little funding and highly depending on Western Foundations. Museums in Africa are all operating in different stages and phases depending on when the country gained its independence. The most important thing to do is to carry out an audit of those objects in Western Museums. How many of those Western Museums are ready to repatriate these objects back to their original homes? A number of African artefacts are well preserved, researched, documented and digitalized my Western Museum. The question here is, do these objects have the right interpretation or no? We should all remember that most of the collectors did not speak the native languages. Surely, these objects are significant in promoting education and bringing pride to the African community. It is in my view that denying people their Heritage is an abuse of Human Rights and the Human Rights. Human Rights issues need to include Cultural Rights as part of rights of people – language, heritage, culture and artistic expression valid as developmental goal not luxury but an imperative for national survival for preservation of national identity. People take pride in their culture and Heritage but why do we have to take pride away from them. The question here, how many Africans get to see their heritage in the Western Museum? The answer is, just a fraction. Will it be possible for Africa to network more with the Western countries so much that revenues created from African artefacts in Western Museums can be channeled to assist Museums in Africa? The main challenge for Museums in Africa is to convince their Governments and private sectors of the importance of the Debate: “What Future is there for the African collection in Western Museums that are facing closure due to the economic meltdown? The repatriation of artefacts and this debate needs to be an immediate one and we have seen conversation on most of the online media is very important. Traditional leaders have been left out of some of these discussions and yet they have knowledge about some of these looted artefacts. Lastly I would like to say, there is very little to celebrate in what has been achieved by African Museums in this era, we still have a long way to go. Political instability in the continent hinders the development in our museums the need for cultural maintenance is more urgent than ever. It is unfortunate that the lack the AU does not have an organ of Culture and if its there it needs to be shared among its member countries. There is so much to learn from Europe and America in their Museum policies, despite the recent financial meltdown globally. The promotion of Museums and celebration of other cultures is at an advanced stage than our own situations. Raphael Chikukwa is a Zimbabwean Curator & has a PhD from Kingston University in London. He is the National Gallery of Zimbabwe Curator.
[Left] ‘Under Divine Protection’, [Centre, Top] ‘The Act Of Allowing’ [Centre, Bottom] ‘The Red Line’ [Below] ‘Khronika’
“A nation that has no proper documentation of her history is a lost nation”. By Fatric Bewong
A national museum of Art will bring to the forefront the significant role of Art in Ghana in the promotion of our sociocultural development. It will help define and preserve our national identity as a people. It will showcase our past and present in a properly established and documented manner for future generations. An Art museum will showcase the evolution and history of the rich Ghanaian culture and its people visually. It would highlight the unique national character and further project our ideologies, values and beliefs. It will also provide a strategic platform for making Ghanaian art more accessible to other nations and cultures. Such an establishment will connect Ghana to the World and the world to Ghana consequently promoting socio-cultural integration and strengthening Ghana’s position within the international art community. Furthermore, it will promote the building of strategic relationships both nationally and internationally with all stakeholders for future policy design and implementation. An Art museum will also show how contemporary artists choose and interpret reality through the eyes of society. It would reflect the times the art was created, the freedom and patronage artists received and international influence of those times. It would be a statement of ‘progress and progression’ providing and preserving invaluable history lessons of our society. The Educational benefits of such an establishment
for organizing workshops and seminars to art students and the general public is enormous. The establishment of the national art museum will also have the knock-on effect of engaging and encouraging the collection of art by practitioners and enthusiasts in the Ghanaian art community. It will also promote and sustain interests in Ghanaian art and culture among the youth. The economic benefits of such an establishment will be the provision of jobs opportunities for practicing artists, encouraging of art as a career option among the youth and the provision of a one-stop international stage for showcasing ones artistic talents. Fatric Bewong was born on the March 1981, in Tarkwa, Ghana. She graduated in 2006 from the College of Art Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, with a BFA in Painting. She did her National Service with the Ghana National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI). Since the completion of this, she has gone into fulltime studio practice as a painter. Pictures: http://www.africancolours.com/fatricbewong
“It takes just one building to put a city on the map, to change perceptions & extend the limits of what is considered possible ” An Interview with Carlo Matta, Laurus Developments By Rachel Stella Jenkins
[Above] One Airport Square under development in Accra
Located at a short distance form Kotoka international airport One Airport Square is an office and retail centre currently being developed in what is quickly becoming a prominent commercial district of Accra: Airport City. Due to be complete in 2013, the development proudly boasts it will be the first certified Green commercial building in Ghana. One Airport Square is brought to Accra by the investor that developed the Accra Mall: Actis. A private equity group based in London, Actis has been investing in emerging markets real estate since 1948 and active in West Africa for 6 years now. Working in partnership with the investor is the property development firm Laurus Development Partners who is currently operating in both Ghana and Nigeria. Laurus has supported ArchiAfrika and the African Perspectives conference in Casablanca this year, where two of the firm’s representatives presented the One Airport Square development. I met with Carlo Matta (C.E.O) who is an architect by qualification and has over 20 years of experience in the real estate business, to learn more about Laurus, their goals to put Accra on the map and raising the bar in terms of quality and sustainability in commercial building. Coupling an international consultant, lead architect Mario Cucinella Architects from Italy (whose projects include; Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies in Ningbo, China & 3M Headquarters in Milan, Italy) with a local consultant Deweger Gruter Brown and Partners Architects Matta explained to me that knowledge exchange are core values of the development.
The building, which comprises nine floors of office space and 2,000 sqm of retail space, aims to achieve 4 stars under the Green Star SA environmental certification scheme. Environmental considerations include rainwater harvesting, passive solar protection, optimum daylight penetration, enhanced indoor air quality, office recycling facilities and an efficient comfort cooling system. Aesthetically, the concrete and glass exterior were designed to echo the diamond pattern bark of Ghana’s palm trees & the decorative facades customary in the North‐East of the country. And world renowned Ghanaian artist Kofi Sertodji has been commissioned to create a sculpture for the central square. Actis was awarded the African Private Equity Firm of the Year by Private Equity International Magazine for four consecutive years, I start by asking Matta about Actis’ and Laurus’ interest in West Africa. From an economic standpoint West Africa is very appealing. If you want to be a developer, want to develop real estate, you need to be in a high growth environment. Europe and America are almost over‐built. It is very hard to find something new to build. You can, but it is not in the volume you need to make it interesting. As a private equity fund, Actis, needs to deliver returns to investors so of course for Actis there is a financial value. In cities like Accra, it is really at a turning point, the growth is now triggering the need for a different kind of property. Be it offices, retail or residencial. And now developers are now starting to respond to that. In the past year I saw an increase
[Above] Main entrance and piazza
in interest for architects and engineers because there is not much work in the States or in Europe, so they are looking here – but also developers and investors. If you were talking about West Africa three years ago nobody would even take notice ‐ people would think you were crazy – now it is becoming almost mainstream to the point where at the MIPIM, the world’s largest real estate trade fair and industry gathering every year in Cannes drawing about 30,000 professionals from the real estate industry ‐ I have been there every year for 10 years ‐ this was the first year there were conferences dedicated to real estate in Africa. They were over subscribed and fully booked. . Actis did the Accra Mall which opened in 2008, when they planned it in 2004 people told them they were crazy – ‘who in Ghana will have the money to go and spend in a shopping mall?’. And now it is the most successful story of Accra, it has 160,000 visitors every week, the rent doubled in two years and they have a waiting list of about one year for tenants who want to get in and rent space. So there is demand for quality space and there is demand for quality real estate, the supply is slow to respond, but it is coming. Already 2 floors have been pre‐let and half the retail spaces already signed for, at this rate it is certainly off to a positive start. Would you say you are pioneering in terms of quality levels? Yes certainly what we want to do is to set the bar. Because until now developers had a very easy life in the sense that you can build any type of low quality building and it will lease out of desperation. But when quality products become available, then whoever builds or develops after you needs to meet that standard. So you set the bar for the industry, which is the way
you contribute to the local market, because you put Accra on the map. So right now, for example, if you have a building like this in Europe, where there is a lot of investors such as an insurance company or pension fund contacting you and trying to buy the building before you even complete it – because it is a good long‐term investment as it generates income for maybe 20 years. Nobody dreams of doing this in Accra because there is no investment grade building. If you do a good quality building these kinds of people will start to look at Accra, and Accra will get into the radar screen of investors and it will generate more business and more interest. It is a cycle that you have to start. Has this influenced your decision to locate this development near the airport, in terms of Ghana opening up to more international business? Definitely that is a component. Another would be traffic. The city centre, was around the High street back in the days, now because of congestion they have moved up to the Ridge. The Ridge tower, UPA tower they are all there. Now again because of traffic they are moving further up and Airport City is becoming a new centre of the city. Accra Mall, which is near, has had a role in this shift. Airport Residencial area, which is a high‐end residencial area, also further aides in this shift. From the original old centre to the Airport City area on a bad day it can take you two hours or more. So companies want to be out of the old centre and near the airport. There is a brilliant book called Aerotropolis by John Kasarda and he is a theorist behind the idea that cities will increasingly gather around airports as connectivity becomes the most important feature.
really have value, why pay an architect or consultant when you can just start building?
[Top] View outside [Left] Lobby
In the design of the building, the concrete and glass exterior, as you pointed out, echoes the diamond pattern bark of Ghana’s palm trees & the decorative facades customary in the North East of Ghana. The translation of tradition into modernity is a question many cultures face, is the reapropriation of local cultural values integral to your working process? Yes, this is a problem because what is too often done here and like in many other countries in the rapidly developing world. Models from the United States are imported which I don’t believe is right especially considering the environmental challenges we all face today. When you do a glass box and you put it in the tropics it is crazy as it creates all sorts of problems. Just because you saw it in New York – or even in some cases: Dallas, Texas ‐ it does not mean that you can do it here as it is out of sink with what is needed. Here, as well as in Nigeria, there is a huge power and water problem, the climatic conditions are very adverse, so you need a building that can respond to all these things. These are the responsibilities you should have as a developer. Furthermore, on responsibility when you produce a car for instance, and it is a bad design, to a certain extent nobody really cares because the car will be on the market for three to four years. But when you do a building which is going to stay there for 20, 30 or 40 years, as a developer there is a responsibility to try to do a good job in designing it, to design something that makes sense and to spend some time and money on the design process. To us it takes almost a year to design a building. We really spend a lot of time with the constructors, we put together the team and to make sure the building makes sense. Here people maybe spend 3 months to design a building; there is the culture that architects do not
Would you say this is another form of pioneering in terms of raising the bar on quality standards by working closely with architects? Exactly, but mind you quality does not mean luxury. This is what I tell people, because when they hear quality, they think we are making something unnecessarily expensive. Quality does not always have to mean luxury. This building is very basic, there a couple of good ideas which make it innovative but in terms of finishes it is very basic, we are not going to use very expensive materials in the lobby or super specified toilets, its going to be up there for the market. This is still a growing market so it doesn’t make sense to make class‐A like you see in London or Paris, where you need to use these materials otherwise the building is not successful commercially, here it is a different world altogether. So we are trying to do the right thing; quality in terms of design, quality in terms of use of energy and use of natural ventilation and natural lighting, but it doesn’t mean the building will be a luxury building but you need to make an effort and set an example. I see some developers trying out new and encouraging things here in Ghana. Now they have seen something different and they are following suit – not in terms of the specific architecture but more in terms of the quality and the process which for me is much more interesting than just a debate on design – especially in this environment where people have bigger problems than good looking buildings. Accra is a rapidly growing African metropolis and Airport One square reflects this growth. The middle class is also growing, this ultimately is influencing the development of the city’s aspirations and demands. Airport One Square is raising the bar on local developments by bringing together local artistic components with green solutions. This undoubtedly will, and already is, changing the face of the city and setting an example not only within the local market, but outside also.
Agenda
Honoured guest Saskia Sassen speaking at the opening session of African Perspectives Casablanca 2011 conference To view more pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/archiafrika/sets/72157628097070940/with/6347500034/
Agenda 27 June - 30 June 2012 Sustainable Futures: architecture & urbanism in the global south (Uganda) Text Berend van der Lans Rachel Stella Jenkins Mae-ling Jovens Lokko Rafael Chikukwa Fatric Bewong Art Director & Design Rachel Stella Jenkins
25 July - 5 August 2012 BAMAKO SYMPOSIUM 2012: Media Arts in Focus (Mali) 4 - 5 March 2012 Urbananisation in Africa: Investing in new cities (France) 2013 African Perspectives Lagos (Nigeria)
Colofon
Editing Text Berend van der Lans Rachel Stella Jenkins Design Joe Osae- Addo Tuuli Saarela Editing Translation Translation
Anne-Marie van den Nieuwenhof-Damishimiro FONDATION SHIMIRO, Pointe-Noire, Congo
CĂŠlia Koet-Tchengang
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