Hot SourceOlawale Ajimotokan in Abuja
The federal government has announced plan to restore and give certification for the National Art Collection. The Director-General of National Gallery of Art, Ahmed Sodangi, disclosed this in Abuja yesterday.
The National Art Collection consisted of art works in storage for a long period of time and held in trust on behalf of the federal government.
Sodangi noted that the certification would give every Nigerian artwork a base value, allow artists to sell their work internationally, help in tracking the art work as well as earn royalty through deployment of block chain.
He said the federal government had also entered into a strategic partnership with the Goethe-Institute and the Museum of West African Art towards creating a digital archive for the available collection.
The gallery, according to Sodangi, would also on August 1 receive the first digitalised inventory of the national collection it had been working on with the Goethe-Institute for the first part.
He described the art works comprising the collections of Jimoh Buraimoh, Bruce Onobrakpeya, and Ben Ossai, among others as national assets that could be used for financial collateralisation after their restoration.
According to him, “The artwork of Onobrakpeya goes for at least $70,000. And we have a lot of them. The work of the late Ben Osai hung here goes for maybe $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000.”
“This particular work of Buraimoh can’t be less than N5 million. These are powerful names in the artwork.”
Sodangi also affirmed the institution’s commitment to repositioning Nigeria’s visual arts sector as a central pillar of the country’s evolving creative economy, and to redefine its value to artists and wider cultural ecosystem.
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