A Patron of Afrikan Culture and The Arts
To set out to accumulate a prodigious collection of craft items, jewels, textiles, artworks, documents and pre-colonial books with a team of one would seem the sheerest folly. But if the focus is African material culture and the collector is Joseph Murumbi, then it begins to look like wisdom. For nobody in Kenya’s cultural history comes close to the private collection Murumbi (a renowned patron of African artistic productions) accumulated.
In this final installment of a two-part series, we take a closer look at Joseph Murumbi’s post-political life as a cultural icon.
Following his departure from politics, Murumbi joined the Rothman’s cigarette company as an executive. He then also served briefly as the first chairman of the Kenya National Archives before focussing exclusively on collecting African art, jewels, and craft items. He also served as a board member for the African Steel Pipes company – and all this takes us to the late 1960s and the early 1970s.
Reconstructing Afrikan (Kenyan) Heritage
Inspired by his travels across Afrika and especially his visits to antiquities markets around the world during his time as the foreign minister, Murumbi looked forward to establishing a museum displaying Afrikan objects and artifacts.
During his local art collecting expeditions, Murumbi came across Alan Donovan’s ‘Northern frontier’ (as he, Donovan, liked to call them) exhibits at the Studio Arts’ 68 in Nairobi with which he was impressed. Alan Donovan was an ex-US civil servant-turned-collector of African objects and artifacts who had resigned from his US State Deparment’s job in Nigeria in protest of Nigeria’s 1968 presidential elections. He made Kenya his home and the objects he dabbed as ‘the Northern Frontier art’ were indigenous Turkana artifacts.
Murumbi instructed Donovan to fetch more indigenous Turkana artefacts most of which he intended to purchase. Donovan obliged. This was the beginning of a partnership and friendship that would last for decades. Their partnership undoubtedly played a crucial role in protecting the Murumbi collection from expatriation as we shall see.
In 1972, the duo founded African Heritage – a Pan Afrikan gallery and restaurant located along Kenyatta Avenue in Nairobi and the first of its kind on the Afrikan continent. Also involved in its cofounding were Santagati and Sheila Murumbi, the cultural icon’s wife. “It was in l972, that Murumbi confided in me about his dream to set up a Pan African Centre in Nairobi. He wanted local people and tourists could see the creativity of the entire continent like he had seen during his time as Foreign Minister when he had set up the Country’s missions and high commissions.” Donovan averred.
For the gallery’s inaugural exhibition at the end of 1972 or the beginning of 1973, two budding East African artists were on show – Elkana Ong’esa, our nation’s sculpting sage, and Francis Nnaggenda, ‘the Dean of East African artists’ – a Ugandan. When Murumbi came across works created by those two artists, his appreciation of their art was pure and intense. For Nnaggenda, he bought several of his life-size sculptures and installed them in his Muthaiga compound. It’s also at the opening of the gallery’s first exhibition that he implored Margarett Kenyatta then the mayor of Nairobi to support Nnaggenda’s works.
Fascinated by Ong’esa’s bird themes, he was the first to commission a sculpture from the artist in 1975. So impressive were his bird form sculptures that one was adopted as part of the gallery’s official branding. As Alan Donovan once wrote: “One of those bird sculptures he bought from Elkana now occupies a prominent place in the Kenya National Archives. It stands next to the huge “Baga” mask that brought Murumbi and myself together to open African Heritage. It became the famous logo of the firm, appearing on all of its yellow shopping bags, receipts and letterheads.”
In 1976, a fire broke out at the African Heritage Gallery and destroyed large stores of African art from around the continent. Like in the past, Murumbi, a man abrim with good will and good intentions and generous without cynicism found the courage to rebuild in such grinding extremes of discomfort. Disappointed with the vandalism that had destroyed his four years of dedicated hard work, Alan Donovan was “…ready to buy a ticket and go back to the States after the fire,” he revealed. “But when Joe asked me to stay on so we could still rebuild the gallery, I agreed,” Alan Donovan added.
How much had been lost was unclear at the time. The Afrikan Heritage collection was just getting on track, becoming diverse and satisfying after years of purposeful work. Here a question arises – with the 1938 destruction of the only precolonial historical records that existed about Kenya, could there have been a political dimension behind this act of vandalism of the African Heritage Gallery through fire?
Nonetheless, no collector has set about more determinedly with such a mixture of extreme humility, sacrifice, and extreme ambition to make Kenya’s and by and large Afrika’s collective cultural memory great. To rebuild the gallery anew, Murumbi sold, in 1977, a significant portion of his assets – his Muthaiga house and his Africana collection, a collection of Afrikan books and texts before the 1900s.
Most notable perhaps was his insistence on selling his collection and house to the Kenyan government rather than abroad. “He had been explicit about not wanting his collections leaving Kenya” averred Alan Donovan. Earning a fraction of the amount that it would fetch from prospective buyers abroad, it came with a condition attached – that the government would use his Muthaiga and compound to set up a Pan African Research and Study Centre (Murumbi Institute of African Studies). Further, that the collection would serve as the initial permanent collection for the country’s cultural heritage (Kenya had none at the time) and that the collection was to be displayed in situ.
With the ownership of the project passed to the National Archives to foresee its delivery, it was predicted to be completed and opened to the public not later than June 1980. Unesco had pledged technical and financial support for the project.
Unfortunately, Murumbi was not ideally lucky in his allocation of a part of his collection to the government of Kenya. President Moi failed to make good on his promise to build a national institution to ensure its preservation.