What is wrong with the visual arts sector – Dr. Abdullah Muku

One of the youth programmes we have initiated since the inception of the gallery is what we called Saturday Art Club. It is a biweekly programme which   is carried out in all the 24 stations we have across the country and the headquarters. What we do is we have school pupils and students from secondary […]

One of the youth programmes we have initiated since the inception of the gallery is what we called Saturday Art Club. It is a biweekly programme which   is carried out in all the 24 stations we have across the country and the headquarters. What we do is we have school pupils and students from secondary schools who are raised by the gallery in those out stations  and they come every weekend to be tutored in the visual art sector for them to appreciate art.  A lot of them are now pursuing art as a course. Through this youth programme, we have exhibited a lot of their works.  We are trying to put up a brochure to even market   some of these works.  A lot of people are even interested in picking them; it is just that we want to keep them for posterity.  We have exhibited these works in some of the exhibitions we have had.   We have another programme, which is the annual National Children`s Day Art competition/exhibition. This  is a programme  where youths do compete;  we  always come up  with a  theme   for  every  Children’s  day  celebration  which   they will come up with works that will  capture the theme of the day. That we have done often the works are exhibited and winners do go home with prizes.

We also have one programme called National Visual Art Competition which is categorised into four different segments. We have categories for primary schools, secondary schools and one for students in the university and we have the professional category. We have had about four different editions. Unfortunately, this year, we could not have it because we have a dwindling budget.  Like I have said, art works today are very expensive. This one in my office is a work we picked for national collection and it is a work we picked for 4. 2 million naira. There is money in visual art so we need more youths to partake in it.

The art industry as you said is a huge business,  especially  in   advanced countries , what is your gallery  doing to ensure that this huge potential we have in Nigeria is well tapped?

One of it is the introduction of this programmes I mentioned earlier.  We have also done a lot of exhibitions within and outside the country.  We have opened up market for artists mainly to see that the youths inculcate interest in the visual art subsector. We have taken some of our artists both young and old outside the country in order to share ideas with their colleagues from other parts of the world. It has always been appreciated , yes we have  started  and we have  grown and I want to believe that we have  started well  because  a lot of our artists  can compete favourably with  some of these artists in the developed world.

 

Are there any plans to put up a befitting art gallery in the country?

We are happy that Mr. President himself has directed that we should have a gallery  built within the city centre comparable to any gallery in the world and we have started the process and when you are building a national gallery for that matter,  it  would  require  a large  space of land which would be developed over time, it takes up to 30 years to develop   a gallery of international standard  because a lot of things are found  within a gallery apart from the exhibition hall, which include temporary and permanent exhibition halls,  we have a research centre, we have  lecture halls where  discussions on arts and theories of art  are developed . We have treatment centre to treat works of painting on paper and we have different treatment centres.  So all these are galleries within gallery.

We have acquired a large parcel of land for these purposes.  Those are the things we are doing to see that we can catch up with the developed world because when we talk of tourism, we can’t talk of tourism in the heaven, tourism must have destinations and wome of the destinations are the Gallery and Museums.

It is obvious that Nigeria has not achieved the desired success in the art industry, what are the challenges hindering the growth of the arts industry in the country?

The challenges majorly are funding. We would need the private sector to come in, you know government cannot do it all alone.  The truth is that government is saddled with a lot of other challenges like power, education, health etc.  I think we must encourage the private sector to come and   partake in the art sector. In developed countries, we have non-governmental foundations that are wholly dedicated to art development. If we are talking of security of this country, the security can be achieved by providing employment to take the idle hands away, and then you don’t need guns to achieve that.  Even for the security of some of this private industries, there is a need to put money in the visual art subsector. So we are calling on the private sector to help develop the visual arts in the country.

A lay man would like to know the  distinct  function  of  National  Gallery of Art (NGA) from  other  sister cultural agencies like National Commission  for Museums and Monuments(NCCMM),  National Institute  for  Cultural Orientation (NICO)  and  National Council for Arts and Culture ( NCAC).

The National Gallery of Art is charged with the responsibility of promoting and developing the visual art subsector while NCCM is about the museums, antiquities, ancient works maybe monuments and you know we have many monuments in this country.  NCAC is  charged with the  responsibility of promoting  art crafts  while  we are majorly into the creative arts called  visual arts.

NGA is charged with the responsibility of collecting and keeping the best of paintings, drawings and prints, sculpture, pottery and ceramics, photography, textiles, jewellery, architectural designs and communication designs.

We have so many talents in the primary, secondary and tertiary institutions across the country. How do we ensure that these talents are not wasted?

That is why we came up with national visual arts competition to discover these talented Nigerians and when they are discovered they are being encouraged to pursue whatever they are talented in as a course of study to excel.  Because at times, even when you have the talent it has to be developed. You might not even know you have the talent until somebody who knows discovers you.  Most of the programmes we do here are to discover them and each time we discovered them; we just don’t let them go. We encourage them by way of counselling, assisting them with funding to grow in whatever they are talented in.

What message do you have for Nigerians in the area of visual arts?

The message I have is that the visual arts subsector is one area that can contribute immensely to the GDP of the country just like oil.  It has the capacity to generate so much funds and all that we need is the support from the private sector. Government has been doing that. People should also see arts as some kind of treasure because very soon art will be used as a medium of exchange   and   store of value. Just like gold that appreciates same is for visual art, something that is bought for four million naira can appreciate to eight million naira later. It is big business which we need to key into.