Stedelijk Studies Journal Issue #13

Decolonizing the National Museums of Kenya

through the Visual Arts and Art-Based Research

by Kristina Dziedzic Wright

November 30, 2023

British colonization of Kenya consolidated under the concept of a nation over forty different ethnic groups, most of whom did not share a common sense of identity or language in the precolonial period. The colonizers employed strategies to set these different ethnic groups in opposition to one another, leaving a legacy that affects conceptions of Kenyan nationalism today.^[1]

The National Museums of Kenya (NMK) was originally founded by colonists in the early 1900s, with a focus on natural history and prehistory that continued to influence institutional governance and undermine support of the visual arts and art-based research at the museum until recently. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, NMK has been undergoing a process of decolonizing the institution to establish its own priorities and values that are independent from its colonial past; as part of these goals, the role of art at the museum has been centralized in unprecedented ways. Because the visual arts had not been included in the museum’s collections during the colonial period, incorporating contemporary art as one of the keystones of NMK’s mission was a deliberate strategy to decolonize the museum and facilitate greater involvement with the different communities that NMK serves.

The history of Kenyan art has heretofore largely been told through a Western perspective (or ignored by Western scholars altogether), but recent efforts among curators, contemporary artists, and art historians both in Kenya and within the diaspora are attempting to disentangle these narratives and establish a Kenyan-centric art history. This paper traces how modern and contemporary art have entered institutionalized discourse in Kenya and the importance of this shift to the museum’s decoloniality. Based on qualitative research conducted by the author in Kenya intermittently over the past twenty years, this article considers art as a conduit for “museum-ing” and examines the ways that the visual arts and art-based research is affecting exhibition development, educational programing, and public outreach at NMK.

Background

In 1911, during the period of the East Africa Protectorate, a group of colonial British naturalists known as the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society established a small museum to house the specimens they collected.^[2] By 1922, the collection had grown enough to warrant a purpose-built museum, which the society constructed in central Nairobi where the Serena Hotel is now located.^[3] Nine years later, the colonial government constructed a new and much larger building at what has become Museum Hill, and the institution was named the Coryndon Museum in homage to Sir Robert Thorne Coryndon, the colonial governor of Kenya from 1922 to 1925.^[4] After Kenya’s independence from Britain in 1963, the Coryndon Museum was renamed the National Museum of Kenya (eventually to be known as “Museums” in the plural, as locations, sites, and monuments throughout the country were added).^[5] However, during the early decades of the post-colonial period, the visual arts were not widely conceived of as a medium through which the new nation-state would express its identity, and archaeology, paleontology, and natural history dominated the museum’s research, collection, and display priorities.^[6]

In the early 1970s, Joseph Murumbi, the second vice president of independent Kenya and an avid collector of African art, introduced the idea of a national gallery of art to showcase works created in East Africa as well as across the continent, but the government’s priorities in building the nation did not include developing a museum dedicated to art._[7] The colonial legacy of undervaluing the arts continued with the 1983 National Museums Act that vested NMK with the mandate to “serve as a national repository for things of scientific, cultural, technological and human interest” without specifying the visual arts.^[8] In 1995, however, an internal NMK report identified the establishment of a national gallery of art as a key component to long-term development plans for the preservation and dissemination of Kenya’s cultural heritage.^[9]

As democratization in Kenya developed by the end of the twentieth century, NMK recognized the need for more inclusive representation of disparate cultures in Kenya and began to strategize on how the museum collections and exhibitions could “promote unity in diversity and nationalism.”^[10] This strategic development process at NMK is consistent with decolonization efforts at other museums throughout Africa.^[11] Decolonization of museums involves a deliberate and purposeful rupture from past institutional structures that can lead to transformation in the institution as well as within different communities whose voices and views are increasingly being included in museum collections and exhibitions.^[12] In 1999, NMK leaders invited museum experts to evaluate the institution’s structure and operations in order to suggest improved practices for decolonizing the museum and democratizing the preservation and dissemination of cultural heritage in Kenya.^[13] Following the recommendations of this study, NMK committed to moving beyond “static showcases of the past to a more dynamic contemporary present” through the National Museums of Kenya Support Program (NMKSP) or “the museum in change” as it was popularly called.^[14] Such an emphasis on dynamism as a process of change exemplifies the application of museum as a verb, by which “museum-ing” both represents and engages with culture in its ever-evolving forms. With eight million euros in funding from the European Union to implement NMKSP, the museum’s Nairobi location closed to the public between 2005 and 2008 for extensive renovations to the physical building, reorganization of the institutional infrastructure, and development of new exhibitions and public programs.^[15] According to internal museum documents held in its archive, the overall aim of NMKSP was to decolonize the museum by refashioning it into an institution “that is both nationalistic and inclusive in its image and representation of the displays… [with] more gallery spaces dedicated to Kenyan culture, history, and contemporary art in place of the rather dominant prehistoric focus of the old museum.”^[16]

Expansion of art at NMK

The NMKSP assessments identified a need to more actively engage the public in developing exhibition themes and related programming, and it sought to accomplish this goal through workshops and seminars for various constituency groups, visitor surveys, and radio programs during which the general public could call the station to offer suggestions.^[17] Through the public engagement forums and internal strategic development, the three themes of nature, history, and culture emerged as the focus for the new museum’s exhibitions, with contemporary art identified as a key subcomponent to culture.^[18] More recently, NMK has recognized the “four pillars of Kenya’s national heritage” as “nature, culture, history, and contemporary art.”^[19] The emergence of contemporary art as a vehicle for decoloniality enacts museum-ing in order to counter the static portrayals of culture previously found in the colonial prehistory and natural history displays at NMK.

The NMKSP’s recognition of the significance of Kenyan art to its two key goals of decolonization and community engagement led some stakeholders to advocate the establishment a national gallery of art, but such an initiative was not within the scope of the EU-funded museum’s expansion program.^[20] Instead, a permanent exhibition about the history of Kenyan art was to be developed under the NMKSP rubric. The stated goal of the permanent art gallery is to trace the development of Kenyan art from prehistoric rock art through modernism to contemporary times in order to provide “a more global and historical context” for museum visitors.^[21] This curatorial approach to locating the origins of Kenyan art as far back as possible is consistent with what Simon Knell has noted in other “settler nations attempting to reconcile themselves with the consequences of colonialism [which] have placed pre-settlement indigenous cultural artifacts at the beginning of the national narrative.”^[22] According to the curatorial proposal, after establishing the historical background of Kenyan art, the exhibition proposes to trace the development of Kenyan art through modernism, which is inextricably linked with Western influences and European support of artists because Kenya entered the modern era through colonialism.^[23] This approach resonates with discussions of modernism within the broader Kenyan art historical scholarship. For example, Margaretta Swigert-Gacheru traces the emergence of a distinctly Kenyan aesthetic in contemporary art based on the makeshift practices of the informal sector known as jua kali (Swahili for “hot sun”) that has emerged to defy hegemonic myths about “tribal art” that pervade discussions of non-Western influences in the development of modernism in art.^[24] For NMK, the proposed permanent exhibition offers an opportunity to disentangle such narratives and tell the story of art in Kenya from a distinctly African perspective. However, when EU funding for NMKSP ended in December 2007, not all of the planned exhibitions were finalized “due to overambitious planning and coordination problems.”^[25] One of these planned exhibitions that has not yet been realized is the permanently installed gallery dedicated to art in Kenya. Nevertheless, contemporary art has increasingly assumed a more important role at NMK since the reopening of its Nairobi flagship branch in 2008, which was rebranded as the Nairobi National Museum (NNM).

Prior to the NMKSP, exhibitions of contemporary art at NMK were not part of the institution’s purview. Although the precursor to NNM had a small gallery dedicated to contemporary art, it was initiated and operated by the Kenya Museum Society (KMS) rather than NMK. Renowned paleontologist Richard Leakey began KMS in 1971 to generate interest in NMK among the general public and raise funds for various programs and services at the museum.^[26] In the mid-1980s, KMS started the Gallery of Contemporary East African Art (GCEAA), where it organized exhibitions and operated a small store that sold artworks.^[27] Wendy Kamali, a KMS member, was the curator of GCEAA, and KMS funded the expenses of special exhibitions.^[28] During the NMKSP restructuring, the museum assumed responsibility from KMS for exhibiting contemporary art and additionally committed to assembling a permanent art collection.^[29] After NNM reopened to the public in 2008, the Creativity Gallery was established as a museum space dedicated to contemporary art exhibitions. Significantly more space, totaling over 400 square meters, was allotted to the Creativity Gallery than GCEAA had previously occupied (fig. 1). A workshop called the Discovery Room was also added near the entrance to the Creativity Gallery as a space where the Contemporary Art Section at NNM provides hands-on workshops and other arts-related programming.

Figure 1. Floor plan for art galleries at Nairobi National Museum. Image courtesy of National Museums of Kenya, 2017.

Purity Senewa Kinaiyia was the first museum-appointed curator of contemporary art at NNM. In 2010, Lydia Gatundu Galavu succeeded her and still occupies the role at the time of this writing. With a background in art education and an active practice herself as a painter and sculptor, Galavu, in collaboration with NMK’s Education Department, initiated a program called the Nairobi National Museum Art Club (NNMAC) to provide training and exhibition opportunities for secondary school students and teachers.^[30] In July 2017, I organized a workshop for young NNMAC artists-in-residence called “The Art of Origins” that used art to consider prehistorical artifacts collected during the colonial period within contemporary contexts. Participants were given a behind-the-scenes tour of the archaeology and paleontology labs at the museum, and archaeologist Dr. Stan Ambrose shared objects in the NMK collection that demonstrate the artistry of our ancestors from thousands of years ago. After the tour, I led the artists in an activity in the Discovery Room to reflect on their experiences with the collections using “soil mâché”—a combination of chapatti flour, water, recycled paper, and soil (fig. 2). Through this creative process, the artists were asked to reflect on what it means to be human and how Kenya’s cultural heritage is a source of identity for them. In the context of upcoming presidential elections in Kenya the following month, the workshop provided an opportunity to contemplate our common origins of humanity and the shared ancestry that predates ethnic groups and race. Through this workshop, archaeological artifacts that were a constitutive component of the colonial collections were reactivated with contemporary resonance through art. Some of the artworks that the young resident artists created during the “Art of Origins” workshop were displayed in one of the museum’s galleries during the closing event for the NNMAC 2017 residency period. NNMAC and other art-making activities in the Discovery Room enable museum-ing practices at NMK through the dynamic inclusion of multiple perspectives from various audiences beyond the usual visitors to the exhibition galleries.

Figure 2. (left) Dr. Stan Ambrose shows archaeological artifacts to NNMAC artists-in-residence; (right) “Art of Origins” soil mâché activity.

NNM currently organizes around fifteen to twenty temporary exhibitions of contemporary art per year, which are developed by its own curatorial staff and in collaboration with artists, curators, and other cultural practitioners both locally and internationally. These comprise one-third of temporary exhibitions at NNM and play an important role in bringing repeat visitors regularly to the museum.^[31] In addition to curating temporary exhibitions, NNM maintains a permanent art collection of approximately 300 objects that includes works by some of Kenya’s most well-known artists, such as Sane and Eunice Wadu, Rosemary Karuga, Joseph Bertiers, and Magdalene Odundo.^[32] The next section examines a temporary exhibition at NNM—Who I Am, Who We Are—that was a collaborative work of contemporary art as well as an example of arts-based research that furthers decolonization in Kenya and enacts museum-ing.

Exploring what it means to be Kenyan through art

Who I Am, Who We Are was a participatory, community-based art project organized by Xavier Verhoest and Wambui Wamae Kamiru that traveled around Kenya between 2013 and 2015 to “create spaces and conversations for personal reflection on the themes of citizenry, civic responsibility, race, belonging, ‘ethnicism’ and nationalism.”^[33] Both Verhoest and Kamiru are respected contemporary artists in Nairobi’s art world, and Who I Am, Who We Are was a collaborative work of contemporary art they produced with the participation of Kenyans from all over the country as a response to conflicts that devastated Kenya after the contested presidential election in 2007 (fig. 3). Much of the media coverage of this violence focused on the ethnicity of the different groups targeting one another and their alignment with the contesting political parties, but some analyses have suggested that the underlying reasons for the civil unrest were less about ethnicity per se and more related to poverty, unemployment, a widening gap between the rich and the poor, and the distribution of scarce land to political allies of the ruling elites since colonial times.^[34]

Figure 3. Installation view of Who I Am, Who We Are at the Nairobi National Museum. Photograph courtesy of Xavier Verhoest, 2015.

In the aftermath of the 2007 post-election violence and the process of redrafting the Constitution of Kenya, which was ratified in 2010, Verhoest and Kamiru each began interrogating their own processes of self-identification as Kenyans and examining how Kenya as a nation-state has developed from the advent of colonialism to the present day.^[35] In discussing these ideas with one another and other Kenyan artists, the idea for Who I Am, Who We Are emerged. Kamiru’s artistic practice largely centers on installations to explore issues related to identity, decoloniality, and African independence.^[36] In the book published from the Who I Am, Who We Are project, she describes her own identity by saying “I am Kenyan because I choose to be. I am aware of that choice every day.”^[37] For her, the project provided an opportunity to reflect on this identity and the choices it entails at a personal level, but also communally through the many conversations that were generated and the individual stories that were given voice through the various workshops and pop-up exhibitions around the country.^[38] For Verhoest, the creative medium of body mapping was key to the art project, as it “enables people to look at past and present experiences to reflect on future actions.”^[39] With historical roots in the art and narrative therapy developed for HIV-positive patients in South Africa in the 1990s, body mapping is a method that uses artistic techniques such as drawing, painting, and collaging to represent the creator’s lived experiences as mapped out onto a life-sized outline of their body.^[40]

A total of 1,600 Kenyans participated in the creation of Who I Am, Who We Are, either by creating a body map at workshops conducted by Verhoest or by entering the “Silent Room,” where they could record their oral responses to a series of questions.^[41] Through these creative media, Verhoest and Kamiru compiled an archive of primary art-based research about the ways that Kenyans conceive of their identity, experience stereotypes and misconceptions, and consider the role of multicultural diversity in the ongoing development of Kenya as a postcolonial nation. As the project moved to different parts of the country, Verhoest and Kamiru mounted a pop-up exhibition in each location with selected body maps and a sound installation of recordings from previous sites. A final exhibition of Who I Am, Who We Are was installed at NNM from December 4, 2015, to March 27, 2016, with a selection of the body maps and voice recordings from each region of Kenya, along with photographs and films to document the project’s two-year process (fig. 3).

For the Who I Am, Who We Are body-mapping workshops, Verhoest worked with local community groups and non-governmental organizations to recruit participants who were selected to represent a cross-section of society based on factors controlling for age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic background, education, and occupation.^[42] Most participants did not consider themselves to be artists, which Verhoest indicated is consistent with how the body map method is usually executed, as the overall point is to engage a wide range of people in creative expression of their own experiences. Verhoest organized each body-mapping workshop as a set of activities in which he asked a series of questions that the participants responded to visually through drawing. After participants had explored questions about their identity and conceptions of self relative to where they live, they discussed their responses with each other and then traced an outline of each other’s body onto a large canvas. Participants then mapped their story onto the outline of their body by drawing, painting, and/or collaging their previous drawings onto the canvas, with a timeline of important events in their life appearing somewhere on the composition (fig. 4). Verhoest recorded the conversations during the workshops with the participants’ permission and also interviewed most of the participants to compile additional archival materials for the project.

Figure 4. Kenya at 50 and Who I Am, a body map by a workshop participant. Photograph courtesy of Xavier Verhoest, 2015.

The final exhibition at NNM included a selection of body maps with printed excerpts from the recorded conversations and Verhoest’s interviews with participants. For example, a participant in the Kisumu workshop in Western Kenya created a body map that she titled Kenya at 50 and Who I Am (fig. 4). Around the outline of her body, she wrote a timeline of important events in her life, beginning with Kenya’s independence in 1963, which she considers one of the most important events to influence her life even though it occurred twenty-fours year prior to her birth. The title of her piece celebrates fifty years of her country’s independence and reflects the significance of the end of colonialism to her identity. She depicted herself running with a red leg to represent tribalism and a black leg representing all Kenyans; the motion indicates that people “don’t have to wait for Government and politicians to come to help.”^[43]

Besides body maps, the other major component of Who I Am, Who We Are is the Silent Room, a “confidential and intimate space installed in a public sphere that creates conditions for self-reflection and expression in an individual way.”^[44] The Silent Room consisted of an eight-sided mbati (hut made from iron sheeting) with a chair, a speaker, and a microphone inside (fig. 5). The hut and its interior were white with blank canvas hung on the walls inside to create a neutrally designed space free of distractions. As the project progressed, photographs taken during the workshops and pop-up exhibitions were added to the hut’s exterior. Participants individually entered the Silent Room, where they were given full control of the space with guidance to operate the equipment. In solitude, participants were able to use the microphone and speaker, through which an interviewer located outside of the hut asked them a series of questions to provoke an introspective process of identification with self, nation, and others. In addition to being interviewed themselves, participants could also listen to select recordings of other people who had visited the Silent Room before them. Most participants claimed to be Kenyan, but their explanations of what that means varied widely from legal constructs of citizenship to language, cultural customs, and social definitions. Many people expressed pride in Kenya’s diversity of cultures and geographic landscapes, but others were ashamed that such diversity caused divisions among the various communities comprising the nation. Political corruption, oppression, and socioeconomic inequities were common themes among the responses to the question of what participants were not proud of about Kenya.^[45]

Figure 5. (left) The Silent Room installed at NNM; (right) detail of the hut’s interior. Photographs courtesy of Xavier Verhoest, 2015.

To coincide with the exhibition opening at NNM, Verhoest and Kamiru published a book of the exhibited body maps and accompanying texts, transcriptions of selected recordings from the Silent Room, photographs taken at the various iterations of the project, and essays by prominent Kenyan writers and cultural practitioners reflecting on the different themes of Who I Am, Who We Are. Although NNM curatorial staff had not been involved with the planning or implementation of the project as it traveled around the country, it was important to both the museum and the artist-curators that the endeavor concluded with a final exhibition in Nairobi at NMK’s flagship institution. Exhibiting Who I Am, Who We Are at NNM contributed to NMK’s institutional mission of preserving and disseminating Kenyan art and culture and furthering decolonial goals. The project’s active engagement with history and culture at a personal level through contemporary art and art-based research performs three of NMK’s “four pillars of Kenya’s national heritage.”

Although materials collected along the way were displayed in each location where Who I Am, Who We Are traveled, the final exhibition at NNM was the most refined presentation of the work, with the exhibited materials carefully curated to represent each region of Kenya and the diversity of the Kenyan people. Furthermore, the NNM exhibition reached a wider audience in terms of overall visitor numbers than the previous iterations in various satellite locations and enabled the ongoing collection of materials. The Silent Room was installed in the Creativity Gallery at NNM and, while on display, the project continued to collect material and offer opportunities for more people to participate. Over 10,000 people visited the exhibition in Nairobi and several public programs were offered, some of which were created for specific groups from different universities, schools, and community organizations. NNM curatorial staff worked closely with Verhoest and Kamiru to install the exhibition and organize various public outreach initiatives as an integral component to the show.^[46] Such interaction and engagement with different constituencies through a participatory process of making art and conducting research through this creation is an example of how museum-ing can foster inclusivity and reflect the dynamic nature of culture. This participatory process can be considered a counterpoint to the colonial ethnographic practices that documented culture in static ways from an outsider’s perspective.

Overall, Who I Am, Who We Are compiled an archive of eighty body maps along with their accompanying texts, 1,500 recorded interviews in the Silent Room, eighty recorded interviews between Verhoest and various participants, 2,000 photographs, and hours of filmed footage.^[47] The published book and exhibitions only included a representative portion of the archived materials, all of which are currently in Verhoest’s custodianship. The process of accessioning the project’s entire archive into the collection of the National Archives has been initiated, but the transfer had not yet been completed at the time of writing this article. Verhoest and Kamiru emphasize the importance of making the materials available for scholarship and additional research into Kenyan identity and decolonization.^[48]

Although the engagement itself that occurred throughout Kenya during the various Who I Am, Who We Are events comprises the primary artwork of the project for Kamiru and Verhoest, the art-based primary research compiled through this engagement is a valuable source of knowledge for Kenyans as they attempt to heal and reconcile their various conceptions of identity. In this project, art was a vehicle for fostering national cohesion and contributing to a comprehensive cultural narrative in a country with multi-ethnic diversity and over a million internally displaced people and refugees. Temporary exhibitions like Who I Am, Who We Are show how the museum’s expansion during the NMKSP to include contemporary art has facilitated the institution’s relevance beyond its colonial legacy as “keeper of the culture,” with heritage narrowly confined to archaeology, paleontology, and natural history. Such projects exemplify the museum as a site of decolonization through creativity and demonstrate how art projects and art-based research can empower people to construct their own narratives about self and other. However, despite the expansion of contemporary art exhibitions and programing since the reopening of NNM in 2008, the museum has yet to achieve its important goal of installing a permanent exhibition about the development of Kenyan art. In more recent efforts to implement this project, the goal has been expanded to finally build a national gallery of art within the grounds occupied by NNM on Museum Hill.

The ultimate goal to establish a national gallery of art

From the initial planning stages of “the museum in change” program, NMK leaders have acknowledged the importance of Kenyan art history and contemporary art production to institutional goals of decolonizing the museum, strengthening community engagement, and democratizing the representation of culture in Kenya. In many developing countries around the world, national art galleries serve as crucial forms of support for advancing the arts and artists by providing exhibition and training opportunities as well as assistance in accessing materials and workspace.^[49] Many countries have seen the establishment of a national gallery as a foundational nation-building institution, with the National Gallery of Art in Nigeria and the South African National Gallery (SANG) serving as examples of this in Africa. SANG, in particular, has been instrumental in developing a sense of post-apartheid national identity, although museums in South Africa had previously upheld colonial and apartheid ideologies.^[50]

As previously explained, discussions about establishing a national gallery of art in Kenya date back to the early postcolonial period when Vice President Murumbi first championed the cause. But in the spring of 2019, the initiative began anew when Lydia Gatundu Galavu, the NNM contemporary art curator, along with Lydia Kitungulu, the head of public programs, wrote a series of four articles for a local newspaper to explain the need for a national art gallery in Kenya, its benefits to the nation, and the challenges in achieving such a goal.^[51] They trace the history of several grassroots initiatives among Kenyan artists since independence in 1963, but lament that the state has yet to provide sufficient support, despite now finally recognizing that “art is an integral part of a nation’s identity, culture and cohesion.”^[52] In September 2019, NNM hosted a meeting to discuss the development of the National Art Gallery of Kenya (NAGOK) with a variety of stakeholders, including artists, curators, and representatives from most art galleries and collectives in the greater Nairobi area, as well as from other parts of the country such as Lamu, Naivasha, and Kisii. The Cabinet Secretary for the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Heritage was not able to attend the event, but sent a representative to explain that she had begun to raise funds for NAGOK and “is committed to establishing a ‘world-class’ National Art Gallery before she leaves office.”^[53] Prominent businessman and philanthropist Manu Chandaria noted at this stakeholders meeting: “No museum and possibly no country can survive without a national art gallery.”^[54] Indeed, as Simon Knell has shown, many countries have developed a strong sense of identity as an “art-nation” through a national gallery.^[55]

While the COVID-19 pandemic stalled the momentum for NAGOK’s planning that was generated in 2019, recent exhibitions of contemporary art at NNM have rekindled the initiative. Marejeo: Renaissance of a Vision, on display from July 8 to August 8, 2021, was organized by the National Visual Arts Organizing Committee, the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Heritage, and NNM curatorial staff members (fig. 6). The word marejeo, which means “the ultimate goal” in Swahili, indicates the significance and long-standing efforts of the mission to establish a national art gallery art in Kenya. The Marejeo exhibition involved a residency program for forty upcoming artists from sixteen different counties all over Kenya. Older and more established artists mentored the artists-in-residence, and the exhibition included works by both of these groups along with a selection of pieces from NMK’s permanent collection. Some of the artist mentors were former members of Sisi Kwa Sisi (Swahili for “each other”), a group of artists in the 1970s who were early advocates of a national art gallery in Kenya. The exhibition included display panels with key moments in the development of Kenyan art, from the influence of Makerere University in Uganda from the 1930s through the 1960s and Vice President Murumbe’s efforts to establish a national art gallery in the early days of independence, to the role of artists in Kenya’s struggle to become a democracy in the 1980s and the present initiative to create NAGOK. As this exhibition demonstrates, NMK’s institutional narrative since its inception in the early twentieth century has been “keeper of the culture,” with a colonial ethnographic approach to culture, but current forms of museum-ing in Kenya increasingly include various forms of the visual arts in these narratives, as Kenyan culture is ever evolving and expanding.

Figure 6. Announcement for the Marejeo exhibition.

A second exhibition, Kesho Kutwa (Swahili for “the day after tomorrow”), from September 10 to October 15, 2021, similarly provided a chronology of Kenyan art history and displayed a selection of historically important works from NMK’s permanent collection alongside new works by five of Kenya’s most internationally renowned contemporary artists: Peterson Kamwathi, Dennis Muraguri, Peter Ngugi, Michael Wafula, and Beatrice Wanjiku. Juxtaposed with the historical timeline and significant pieces from the permanent collection, the new works by these contemporary artists imagine Kenya’s post-pandemic future and herald the promise of the visual arts as a vehicle for empowerment and museum-ing. Both Marejeo and Kesho Kutwa represent the most concerted effort to promote NAGOK between NMK and the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Heritage along with individual artists, curators, and art historians. The latter contingency are formally involved in the NAGOK planning process as the National Visual Arts Organizing Committee, although other arts practitioners in Kenya and within the diaspora maintain a vested interest as well and exert pressure on their governmental representatives to finally bring the goal of a national art gallery to fruition. Throughout the qualitative interviews I conducted in Nairobi as part of my PhD research in 2017–2018, many research participants cited the need for a better sense of Kenya’s art history, which coincides with trends worldwide for previously marginalized art worlds to develop their own narratives and claim their place within world art history.^[56] For example, one of Nairobi’s most prominent artists, Michael Soi, laments a lack of documentation of Kenyan art history and strives to record his own work. Since 2005, he has been photographing the paintings he produces and posting albums on Facebook of his artwork organized by year. Soi considers himself a “documentarian” and creates collages and paintings to critique various facets of politics and social dynamics, with a goal to document specific moments in Kenyan history through his art (fig. 7).^[57]

Figure 7. Michael Soi, Kenya at 50, mixed media on canvas,160 x 100 cm, December 17, 2013. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

NMK’s current mandate as the central repository for objects of cultural, artistic, and scientific interest to the country includes preserving, studying, and promoting national heritage, leading conservation efforts, developing cultural tourism, and cultivating the arts in Kenya. As such, NMK bears the responsibility for telling its own stories about conquest, colonialism, and the continued relevance of this history on Kenyan society today, and the visual arts and art-based research provide a vehicle for doing so. Since reopening to the public in June 2008, the art galleries at NNM have been one of Kenya’s primary venues for both emerging and established artists throughout East Africa, and it is currently the only museum in the country that displays contemporary art. Many artists working in Kenya today and as part of the diaspora are engaged in sociopolitical issues, especially since the post-election violence of 2007–2008, and the visual arts comprise a form of activism that contributes to positive social change and furthers museum-ing in Kenya.[58] As the country’s designated “keeper of the culture,” NMK has been assigned the responsibility for cultivating the visual arts by developing a permanent art collection and temporary exhibitions of contemporary art. A national art gallery in Kenya would take the mobilization of art as a medium of decolonization, cultural development, and museum-ing to a new level.

Acknowledgments

Research was conducted with permission from the Kenyan National Commission of Science, Technology and Innovation (permit NACOSTI/P/17/99141/15232). I am grateful to all the research participants who generously shared their time and experiences with me—in particular, Xavier Verhoest and NMK staff members—and to the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Nairobi for hosting me as a research associate in 2017 and, especially, Dr. Mwanzia Kyule for helping to organize this institutional affiliation. Special thanks to Zihan Kassam for countless follow-up questions and insightful conversations about the development of art in Kenya and to Karen Levy for her hospitality and helpful consultations whenever I am in Nairobi.

About the Author

Kristina Dziedzic Wright has a PhD in Museum, Gallery and Heritage Studies from the University of Leicester. Through comparative case studies of contemporary art exhibitions in Nairobi and Seoul, her doctoral research investigates tensions between art as a facilitator of cultural understanding, driver of economic development and tourism, and conduit for communicating national narratives. She taught art history and English at Ewha Women’s University and Seoul National University in South Korea from 2011 to 2019 and consulted on a project at the National Museums of Kenya to develop a comprehensive cultural heritage management system, digitize the collections, and curate an online exhibition. She works as an independent curator and is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester.

[1] Elisha Stephen Atieno-Odhiambo, “Hegemonic Enterprises and Instrumentalities of Survival: Ethnicity and Democracy in Kenya,” African Studies 61, no. 2 (2002).

[2] L. S. B. Leakey, “History of the National Museum of Kenya,” Kenya Past and Present 1, no. 1 (1971).

[3] Idle Farah, “The National Museums of Kenya: Achievements and Challenges,” Museum International 58, no. 1–2 (2006).

[4] Kiprop Lagat, “Representations of Nationhood in the Displays of the National Museums of Kenya (NMK): The Nairobi National Museum,” Critical Interventions 11, no. 1 (2017).

[5] Museum Trustees of Kenya, “Coryndon Memorial Museum Annual Report” (Nairobi: National Museum of Kenya Archives, 1963/64).

[6] Karega-Munene, “Museums in Kenya: Spaces for Selecting, Ordering and Erasing Memories of Identity and Nationhood,” African Studies 70, no. 2 (2011).

[7] Anne Thurston and Alan Donovan, A Path Not Taken: The Story of Joseph Murumbi (Limuru: Franciscan Kolbe Press and The Murumbi Trust, 2015).

[8] “The National Museums Act,” ed. Kenyan Parliament (Nairobi: Government of Kenya, 1983), 1.

[9] National Museums of Kenya, “Proposed Long Term Development Programme 1995–2010” (Nairobi: National Museums of Kenya, 1995).

[10] Lagat, “Representations of Nationhood,” 29.

[11] ICOM, “What Museums for Africa?: Heritage in the Future” (Lomé: 1991).

[12] Csilla Ariese and Magdalena Wróblewska, Practicing Decoloniality in Museums: A Guide with Global Examples (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022); Annie E. Coombes and Ruth B. Phillips, “Museums in Transformation: Dynamics of Democratization and Decolonization,” in The International Handbook of Museum Studies: Museum Transformations, ed. Annie E. Coombes and Ruth B. Phillips (Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley Blackwell, 2015); Sumaya Kassim, “The Museum Will Not Be Decolonised,” Media Diversified (2017), https://mediadiversified.org/2017/11/15/the-museum-will-not-be-decolonised/; Amy Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); Itala Vivan, “What Museum for Africa?,” in The Postcolonial Museum: The Arts of Memory and the Pressures of History, ed. Iain Chambers et al. (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014); Alaka Wali and Robert Keith Collins, “Decolonizing Museums: Toward a Paradigm Shift,” Annual Review of Anthropology 52 (2023).

[13] Lagat, “Representations of Nationhood,” 29–30.

[14] National Museums of Kenya, “A Museum in Change,” ed. National Museums of Kenya (NMK) (Nairobi: NMK PR & Marketing Department, 2006), 1.

[15] National Authorising Officer, “Joint Annual Operational Review of Cooperation between the Republic of Kenya and the European Community in 2003” (Nairobi and Brussels: 2004), 21.

[16] Hassan Wario Arero, “Building the New Nairobi Museum: Perspectives on Post-Colonialism in an African National Museum Sector,” in Anthropologists, Indigenous Scholars and the Research Endeavour: Seeking Bridges Towards Mutual Respect, ed. Joy Hendry and Laara Fitznor (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2012), 157.

[17] Lagat, “Representations of Nationhood.”

[18] Frederick Karanja Mirara, “Developing a 21st Century Museum in Kenya,” in International Committee for Museum Management Annual Meeting: New Roles and Missions of Museums, ed. Ying-Ying Lai (Taipei: ICOM-INTERCOM and Council for Cultural Affairs Taiwan, 2006).

[19] Nairobi National Museum, “Historical Background,” accessed March 1, 2023.

[20] National Museums of Kenya, “National Museums of Kenya Support Programme (NMKSP) Mission, Vision and Core Values Workshop” (Nairobi: National Museums of Kenya, 2004).

[21] Lydia Gatundu Galavu, “A Journey through Time: The National Museums of Kenya Permanent Art Collection,” Kenya Past and Present, no. 41 (2014): 16.

[22] Simon Knell, National Galleries: The Art of Making Nations (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 19.

[23] Lydia Gatundu Galavu, personal communication, August 6, 2017.

[24] Margaretta Swigert-Gacheru, “Globalizing East African Culture: From Junk to Jua Kali Art,” Perspectives on Global Development & Technology 10, no. 1 (2011).

[25] National Authorising Officer, “Joint Annual Operational Review of Cooperation between the Republic of Kenya and the European Community in 2007” (Nairobi and Brussels: 2008).

[26] Kenya Museum Society, “History of the Kenya Museum Society,” accessed March 1, 2023.

[27] Galavu, “A Journey through Time,” 12.

[28] Lydia Gatundu Galavu, NNM Curator of Contemporary Art, interview, February 2, 2017.

[29] Galavu, “A Journey Through Time,” 13.

[30] Ibid., 14.

[31] Galgalo Rashid Abdi, NMK Head Curator, interview, February 21, 2018.

[32] Galavu, “A Journey Through Time,” 12–14.

[33] Wambui Wamae Kamiru and Xavier Verhoest, eds., Who I Am, Who We Are (Nairobi: Kuona Trust, 2016), 4.

[34] Nic Cheeseman, “The Kenyan Elections of 2007: An Introduction,” Journal of Eastern African Studies 2, no. 2 (2008): 167; Prisca Mbura Kamungi, “The Politics of Displacement in Multiparty Kenya,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 27, no. 3 (2009): 346–47.

[35] Unless otherwise noted, information in this section is from an interview with Xavier Verhoest on February 13, 2017.

[36] See http://wambuikamiru.com/about-wambui-kamiru/.

[37] Kamiru and Verhoest, Who I Am, Who We Are, 9.

[38] Ibid., 10.

[39] Ibid., 35.

[40] Denise Gastaldo, Natalia Rivas-Quarneti, and Lilian Magalhaes, “Body-Map Storytelling as a Health Research Methodology: Blurred Lines Creating Clear Pictures,” Forum: Qualitative Social Research 19, no. 2 (2018), http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/2858/4199.

[41] Kamiru and Verhoest, 6–7.

[42] Ibid., 35.

[43] Ibid., 56–57.

[44] Ibid., 21.

[45] Ibid., 22–25.

[46] Lydia Gatundu Galavu, interview, February 2, 2017.

[47] Kamiru and Verhoest, Who I Am, Who We Are, 4.

[48] Ibid., 155.

[49] Knell, National Galleries, 46–47.

[50] Andrew Crampton, “The Art of Nation-Building: (Re)Presenting Political Transition at the South African National Gallery,” Cultural Geographies 10, no. 2 (2003).

[51] Lydia G. Galavu and Lydia K. Kitungulu, “Towards a National Art Gallery of Kenya,” Business Daily, April 4, 2019; “Grim Picture for National Gallery without Funding,” Business Daily, June 20, 2019; “Conserving Rich Creative Heritage,” Business Daily, May 9, 2019; “Tapping Art for Economic Gain,” Business Daily, August 29, 2019.

[52] Galavu and Kitungulu, “Towards a National Art Gallery of Kenya.”

[53] Margaretta wa Gacheru, “State Rekindles Hope for National Art Gallery,” Business Daily, September 26, 2019.

[54] Ibid.

[55] Knell, National Galleries, 109.

[56] See, for example, Joonmo Chung and Anselm Franke, “Interrupted Survey: Fractured Modern Mythologies” (Gwangju: Asia Culture Center, 2015); Iftikhar Dadi, Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010); S. N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” Daedalus 129, no. 1 (2000).

[57] Information about Michael Soi in this section is from an interview on February 9, 2017.

[58] Craig Halliday, “Animating Political Protests through Artivism in 21st Century Nairobi, Kenya,” The Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development, no. 24 (2019): 103.