Op-Ed: Why the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) Is Key to Nigeria’s Rich Art and Cultural Legacy

For months, it seemed like all roads led to Benin. With the Nigerian art week rounding up in early November, writers, artists, and patrons seemed to be making a beeline towards the land of bronzes, ready to attend the preview week for the new and highly anticipated Museum of West African Art (MOWAA). Plane tickets were booked, and so were hotel rooms. Excited features were published, and the buzz was mountain high. For many, MOWAA’s presence represents an audacious new era in and for Nigeria — one where citizens can lay claim to another world-class art institution working across disciplines and fitted with the infrastructure and knowledge to conserve and promote cultural heritage. MOWAA, in its official description, says it is dedicated to the “preservation of heritage, expansion of knowledge and celebration of West African arts and culture.” With Nigerian and West African art exploding, it seemed a formidable home base was finally taking root.

For the preview week (November 11-15), MOWAA was set to open its doors for Nigeria Imaginary; Homecoming, an ambitious, socially engaged exhibition curated by Aindrea Emelife and first presented under the Nigerian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale last year. In its new iteration, the exhibition, which initially included works by artists like Yinka Shonibare (MBE), Precious Okoyomon, and others, brought in four new artists — Modupeola Fadugba, Ngozi-Omeje Ezema, Kelani Abass, and Isaac Emokpae. But on the day MOWAA was set to kick off its preview week, as it was welcoming guests to its sprawling campus and the exhibition, a group of demonstrators gathered outside in protest. The demonstrations, which demanded that the museum be called the Benin Royal Museum and kept under the administration of the Oba of Benin, were rowdy but didn’t cause any of the guests harm. Nonetheless, the protests have effectively stalled the long-awaited soft-opening of MOWAA and set off a firework of controversies. 

Guests were ushered out and urged to return or not visit in the meantime. And not long after, MOWAA’s land authorisation was revoked, effectively placing the building in a precarious state.

“It shouldn’t have come to this because MOWAA should have seen this coming, and perhaps there was a need to hold off on the opening itself and engage in some dialogue if possible,” Ayodeji Rotinwa, an art critic who was at the MOWAA campus for the preview event when the protests began, tells OkayAfrica. Many other visitors OkayAfrica spoke with agree that there ought to have been increased foresight for these demonstrations, which should have been diplomatically engaged beforehand.

Molara Wood, a writer and journalist, says she arrived in Benin just as the demonstrations were underway, signalling an end to the exhibition opening preview week, which she was excited to see. “I was beyond shocked, and my mind was troubled in so many directions – what it meant for Nigeria at this moment when the whole art world was focused on Benin City, the prospects for the museum and its officials and workers, the museum community, the restitution debate,” Wood explains.

Still, at the moment, MOWAA finds itself embroiled in a spate of disputes surrounding its transparency and allegations of misrepresenting its mission. To many locals, MOWAA has styled itself as a home for the Benin Bronzes, whose return many have advocated for for many years now. Despite circulating accusations about the re-lotting of Benin Bronzes, MOWAA maintains that it neither possesses nor displays any of the returned bronzes and has not claimed to be a home for them. To others, MOWAA’s alleged privatisation (MOWAA says it is an independent non-profit) pits it against what was originally envisioned as a Museum for the Edo people and under the jurisdiction of the Oba of Benin, Omo N’Oba N’Edo Uku Akpolokpolo, Ewuare II. But the mission, according to Phillip Iheanacho, MOWAA’s executive director, grew bigger than just a place to facilitate and house the return of Benin Bronzes. 

“One of the frustrations I've always had is that from the beginning we have said we will be about the modern and contemporary…But because of the Western story about the return of the Benin Bronzes, everyone kept referring to us as the museum where they will go. The problem with that is we are not the owners, nor do we have any legal title to the bronzes,” Iheanaco told the BBC in a recent interview.

In a briefing, the Oba of Benin spoke about the alleged deceit and lack of transparency on the part of former Governor Godwin Obaseki, who spearheaded the project. The entire fiasco has left a lull, forcing MOWAA to suspend ongoing programs and close down until further notice. But amidst all of this, an important point keeps rising to the surface: MOWAA as a concept and as a cultural institution is important, and we must work together to ensure it survives.

As Wood puts it, this is “A moment when the focus ought to have been on the historic achievement of this museum and the positive impacts for Benin City, for Edo, for Nigeria, Africa, and the black diaspora as a whole. That oft-posed question came to mind: “Why can’t we have nice things?”

Nigeria needs formidable art institutions. MOWAA’s work occupies a strong and immensely useful position, producing work that runs along conservation and contemporary engagement. MOWAA is also well positioned, should this recent issue be resolved and an agreement reached, to house Nigeria’s artifacts, but also be a strong voice in the conversation about the regeneration of new visual languages emerging from Nigeria.

“As a cultural institution, MOWAA presents an opportunity for Nigerians to demonstrate to Nigerians that we have the capacity to provide, care, preserve, document, and promote our own art and histories,” Rotinwa explains. “There’s this narrative that we don’t do it and are not able to do it. MOWAA wants to promote modern and contemporary art and make linkages within the West African region, and wants to build a standard for conservation.”

Even from its preview week, MOWAA has demonstrated a willingness to showcase strongly developed modernist art programming, bringing together elements of sound, visual, and text into a traditional art space. For its preview week, it culled a lineup of art spaces around Benin, from poetry collectives to literary outfits, as an extension of its commitment to reshaping the plains and delivery of art under its ‘City Connections’ project. 

As an institution, MOWAA has the chance to add additional muscle to an art ecosystem that has so far been centralized (in Lagos) and often overwhelmed. In a country bursting with artistic talent and still solidifying its archival practices, Nigeria needs more MOWAAs. The country needs future-facing institutions that think not only about Nigeria’s art ecosystem but also about the country’s interaction and relationships with the continent. This sentiment powered the ethos of the FESTAC 77 activities; it also has the power to further solidify our growing cultural identity and dispel the notions of the country’s inability to preserve artworks of and from its heritage.

Wood believes that the controversy surrounding MOWAA should and can be resolved. “There’s the opportunity here for all the stakeholders — the Museum leadership, the Benin Kingdom, the Edo State Government, and the Federal Republic of Nigeria — to send a message about how we can work through the sensitivities and sensibilities, addressing all concerns, coming to some compromise, offering assurance, to arrive at a solution that benefits us all.”

When reflecting on Nigeria’s next phase as one of the prominent voices in West African art, an institution like MOWAA represents something crucial: capacity, strength, innovation, and a readiness for the future. 

“The cost of failure is too great, unthinkable. As for conservation, it’s a really interesting aspect of MOWAA’s work that I hope will energize more people; this focus on developing the specialized skills and expertise here in Africa, that we don’t always have to send workers elsewhere to be attended to, or import the experts. We can have the art experts here, and MOWAA offers real prospects of that. There is a real sense of ownership there, a matter of pride and belonging.”

At the moment, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has assembled a committee looking into the matter. We need MOWAA to survive, and it is our responsibility to ensure that we support and stand behind an institution whose work is conversant with the past but firmly committed to the future.