Empowering African heritage from within: MOWAA leads with homegrown leadership in Art and Archaeology

With her rich historic, cultural and archaeological heritage, Benin City is among the top cultural hubs in Africa.

While the ancient city and seat of the once-famous Benin Empire, may not have lived up to its status as culture and history hub, in the past, it has woken up to the challenge with a more pragmatic way of regaining its place in the African culture space.

Benin City, her culture and people are back on global culture spotlight with the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA), an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to education, learning and skills development aimed at the preservation of heritage, the expansion of knowledge, and the celebration of West African arts and culture.

Set on an approximately 4,000-square meters (43,000 square feet) single-storey building within the city, MOWAA Institute houses collections and archives facilities, material and conservation labs, exhibition space and seminar and lecture rooms.

As well, the multi-purpose built building is an intellectual and cultural monument for the West African region, while also putting MOWAA at the forefront of current African museum practice. It features a highly sustainable interior space for state-of-the-art facilities for archeological research, conservation and public programmes. It also features an atrium exhibition gallery with views into the collection study area, a 100-seat auditorium, conference rooms, conservation laboratories, a library and an outdoor amphitheatre.

It is also set within the ancient moats of the Benin Kingdom, with rammed-earth construction linking the building to the West African heritage, which will be honoured by MOWAA across the campus.

Also at the MOWAA’s expansive premises are participatory workshops on traditional pottery and rammed earth building.

At a recent tour of the sprawling museum, the huge investment by the promoters, world-class facilities including, first-of-its-kind laboratories and the rich collections, speak volumes on the intention and commitment to cultural heritage preservation, archaeological findings, researches, quality education and training of would-be professionals to close the knowledge and skills gap in the conservation and archaeology fields.

At the tour, Ore Disu, director, MOWAA Institute, noted the institute looks to provide quality leadership in art and archeology in West Africa, as well as offering best of heritage and art conservation practices and facilities.

She also explained that MOWAA is big on sustainability, which is reflected in the building designed by Adjaye Associates and supervised by MOE.

“The beautiful and strong walls are built with local earth and you can feel the cool temperature inside here. It tells you that we are big on sustainability and preservation of our heritage,” Disu said at the tour.

Speaking further, she noted that the building, which is in line with global standards of sustainability, also serves as a model for care and preservation of many other mud-wall structures in Benin City, Nigeria and West Africa at large.

On his part, Phillip Iheanacho, executive director, MOWAA, explained that the focus on quality leadership in art and archeology is key in MOWAA’s mission as it moves beyond the notion of museum as a building and research as purely academic knowledge, to practically use creativity to connect and highlight the continuous innovation and sophistication of West African heritage.

“We all visit museums in other parts of the world and see how much they are patronized even by young people. We have to be creative in our approach in order to change the narrative. So, MOWAA is bringing to the table a different, yet unique approach to museums and arts in general,” he said.

Moreover, instead of a single monolithic museum, MOWAA stands out with a campus featuring multiple exhibition spaces connected by memorial gardens and performance areas; the first-of-its-kind in our climes.

Again, it approaches archeology differently. The excavated sites within the campus are rather sites of memory in response to its archeological findings, blending enterprise and learning into an African museum’s landscape for the first time.

Another major difference MOWAA is bringing to the table, which also speaks volume on its focus on providing the needed leadership and professionalism in the art and archeology sectors is collaboration with relevant agencies, and even people, whose culture and heritage are being showcased.

“One of my first priorities would be to establish conservation and collections management practices that respond to our tropical climate, designed as practical and sharable protocols. If we truly want to support other museums and existing collections- which we do- we have to get the fundamentals right.

“The reality is that there are limited grants for African research and educational institutions. Our focus will be to develop professionals with marketable skills beyond pure research, while expanding African-led scholarship,” Disu said further.

Going forward, MOWAA hopes to host and commission works from contemporary artists from West Africa and Diaspora to foster collaboration across disciplines and borders.

Part of the anticipated collaborations include working with artisans to revive traditional crafts making, bring their work into contemporary relevance and expand their market reach.

Of course, MOWAA cannot claim to offer leadership when the fate of the next generation is unknown. With its world class facilities, it hopes to provide opportunities and skills development for the next generation of heritage professionals, with relevant practices in art conservation and archeology.

With all these going for MOWAA, Osaheni Akpata, lead, external relations and special project, MOWAA, called on West African youth to take advantage of the art conservation, archeological findings skills, crafts and skills development offerings of the institute, as the creative industry has presented itself as the new oil well.

Beyond the above Akpata thinks that MOWAA’s various exhibition spaces, amphitheatre, halls and studios, present opportunities for people to nurture and hone their crafts in the creative industry.

Other opportunities abound in the Digital Lab, which will help the creative and research community to unlock the possibilities of digital technologies to advance the heritage economy, education and creative industries and Outreach programmes where an exciting range of learning materials and experience-based prgrammes are being developed to expand public learning.

Continuing its giant strides, MOWAA hopes to develop a Garden Studio, to launch its art residency programme in 2025, an inaugural exhibition in 2025, guest house, rainforest, among other upcoming complementary projects.

Though MOWAA was formed in 2020, its impacts are already being felt in the art and archeology landscapes. It organised the Nigerian Pavilion at the 60th International Art Venice Biennale, while also investing in supporting and advancing the field of academic research in contemporary art, developing a collection strategy, building the curatorial framework and generating new, multi-faceted narratives and interpretations of West African art and history.

Meanwhile, MOWAA and its projects are being funded by generous contributions from Museum of West African Art LTD/GTE Board of Directors, German government, Edo State government, Mellon Foundation, Open Society Foundation, and donations from other local and international individuals, corporate supporters and international foundations and institutions.