THE WANDERLUST WITHIN • NAIROBI’S AFRICAN HERITAGE HOUSE
Inside
Nairobi’s African Heritage House 80 |
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he African Heritage House, which overlooks Kenyan capital’s National Park, has become synonymous with an epic showcase of African Culture through art, crafts, and textiles. Built in the 1970s, this landmark has accumulated the world’s largest archive of Africa’s ceremonies and rituals, many of which have vanished over time and are no longer known to the current generation. An intriguing element to this story is that the owner and co-founder of the African Heritage House, is in fact Alan Donovan, an American man who hails from the state of from Colorado. He arrived in Nigeria in 1967 as a Food Relief Officer for USAID, at a time when there was a terrible civil war between Nigeria and Biafra at the time. Alan’s first trans-African safari in 1970 would lead him to Kenya, where after then spending several months in the northern part of the country, Alan would hold his first exhibition in Nairobi on the art and material culture of the nomadic Turkana people. In attendance at this exhibition were the first Foreign Minister and second Vice President of Kenya, Joseph Murumbi, and his wife Sheila. Murumbi was possibly Africa’s greatest private collector of African art and all forms of African culture, and it was his dream to set up a Pan African Gallery in Kenya where artists from all parts of the continent could show and sell their works, thereby preserving, protecting and promoting African culture. And thus, African Heritage House would become a reality, formed by the Murumbis and Alan Donovan in 1972. Today, Alan is well known for his passion as a curator, collector, and preserver of Africa’s most precious historical pieces, while simultaneously celebrating modern artists by showcasing their art. According to a World Bank study, the African Heritage House has become the “largest and most organized” show-
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