MUSEUM AND GALLERY OF ART IN NIGERIA

For lack of understanding by western scholars, “African art” is not “art” but creãtus esotericus (Latin) – created esoterica of Africans with dimensions far above ordinary art having imperatives of religious, entertainment, communication, power and identity, prestige and pride that gives materialization to the invisible, tangible form to supernatural entities which cannot be taken out of their context. To have labeled such as “art” is reductionism and an anomalously registered scholarship. The aesthetically relevant may not be sociologically significant. The supposedly museum material is expected to function as a contact between an unseen world and a material one, brought out once in a while and returned for safe keep. The rising flood of new African art produced in African schools and colleges curricula with European academic stereotypes produces new expression totally devoid of the content, style and themes of the old traditional art; importation of European culture and epistemological tools to study creativity and museum culture of Africans brings lack of understanding of what was created that is erroneously labelled as art and to be displayed publicly in museum cages.