Mzungu who wanted to be born a Turkana

A walk into African Heritage House in Mlolongo area will take you back in time. You will be awed by the original collection of African art.

Some pieces will make you laugh, others will make you want to stare more, while others will leave you amazed by the artistry and talent of their creators.

While the environment appears solemn, the silence in the rooms is soon broken by visitors eager to learn more about the artefacts — the key purpose of the art, which is learning our history and heritage.

At the heart of the masterpieces is one Alan Donovan, who dedicated almost his entire life to collecting and promoting African art across the continent and beyond. He breathed his last on Sunday last week, December 5.

Margaretta wa Gacheru, art enthusiast who has been writing about culture since the 1970s, described Donovan as a global champion for African art.

“Donovan wasn’t an African, he could look from the outside-in and appreciate the beauty of our own culture. He saw the beauty,” she says.

In an interview with the Star, she said she met Donovan in 1976 at the pan-African gallery, then housed along Kenyatta Avenue, when she started out as an art writer for Hilary Ng'weno's Weekly Review and Nairobi Times.

“Donovan was highlighting African stuff, and his place was very important because it was exhibiting with East African artists,” she recalls.

Along with Kenya’s second Vice President Joseph Murumbi, Donovan pushed through hurdles, including little support from the state, to build and nurture the art industry at a time when pre-colonialists still had a lot of dominance.

Donovan would still pursue his dream even after Murumbi’s death.

“I have a great respect for him. He wasn’t an easy person but he always was working on ideas. He took care of his artefacts like someone would take care of his child,” she said, adding that over the years, Donovan has promoted architects, musicians and artists.

WHY PRESERVE CULTURE

Margaretta says culture is everything. “The foundation of economics, politics, religion... It's the basis of what you do, say and think. So, if you don’t take your culture seriously, you don’t take yourself seriously. If you don’t recognise the value of culture, you are not really understanding the nature of what it means to be a human being,” she says.

She laments that the government has not shown enough support for Donovan and that the current Sports and Culture CS Amina Mohamed is the first minister who has taken him seriously.

“Murumbi asked for a national art gallery in 1966. If you go to national museums now, they are still advocating for it. The politicians couldn’t care less,” Margaretta says. 

“Appreciate the guy. Go to his place and see African heritage and appreciate Kenyan artists among you. Buy a piece of something, put it on your wall or table. Start to look at the value of your own beauty and the things Kenyans are crafting themselves.” 

Paul Ekhaba has worked as African Heritage House media and collection officer for one year now and accompanied Donovan in his last trips to US and UK to repatriate his collections.

Being with Donovan inspired him to want to study more on African heritage and art in his post-graduate studies, which he plans to pursue next year.

“Donovan is a guy who gave his all in Africa. He said if he was to be born a second time, he would like to be born a Turkana. When I was with him, he felt that the continent was losing heritage, and it really devastated him.”

Muthoni Wanyeki, director of the Open Society Foundations Africa regional office, says Kenyans and Africans at large need to keep Donovan’s dream alive by going to see the archives.

“The gallery teaches our kids about our history and generates demand and interest about it. When there is demand and interest, there is a possibility of sustaining the collection and making it useful to people,” she says.

She says none of the communities does creation of material culture now, a critical aspect of life that is part of answering who we are, where we come from, what our textile heritage was and what our pottery heritage was.

“These are the things that young Africans have a right and need to know,” she says.

KEEPING LEGACY ALIVE

Early this year, Donovan announced the sale of his house, constructed using the design of the mud Grand Mosque in Djenne, Mali, West Africa.

In an interview with the Standard, he said: “I am too old now and need to find someone who will look after the priceless items. I may go to another house in the vicinity and continue with my pan-African studies.”

It is then that Open Society Foundation expressed interest in supporting the revitalisation of all the pieces of the Donovan and Murumbi collection.

According to its website, The Open Society Foundations describes itself as ‘the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance and human rights’.

Wanyeki said the foundation was concerned about what was going to happen to the collection if the sale of the house went through and landed in the wrong hands.

“So we entered into a conversation with him about various options that would work for him and us. Eventually, we settled on an idea that because he has an existing trust, we should expand the trust with active people. We looked at all different parts of Murumbi heritage, the gallery, archives, some pieces at Serena Hotel and Strathmore University and Murumbi’s old house in upcountry,” she said.

“Our interest was really accompanying him in his journey to make sure that the trust could adequately deal with all these pieces of the heritage and preserve it for posterity, in the public interest not just of Kenya but of Africa at large.”

The foundation put together a group of people from art collections, some people from academia in the cultural sphere, and others who have worked on world heritage issues before.

“Our idea was to give him some new energy and idea from which he could draw into the trust and then help him develop his plans, and we would come to support it,” she says.

Like other people the Star spoke to, including Donovan himself before his death, Wanyeki said the government’s support has not been enough, terming it on and off.

“We did a tour of the archives. Everything was dusty, the guided tour that he had recorded to take people through, there was no one to do it. The guilds that he had trained don’t exist anymore. He has really done his part,” she says.

The Joseph Murumbi Peace Memorial Park at the Nairobi City Park that has been run down over the years, with a touch of restoration from Kenya Forest Service and volunteers, is one of the areas Wanyeki’s team seek to help preserve.

The park is the gravesite for Murumbi and his wife Sheila and Pio Gama Pinto, a freedom fighter who was assassinated in 1965.

“There is so much we don’t know about our own past and the work that he (Donovan) did with Murumbi in terms material culture from Kenya and across the continent, and it's of immeasurable value,” she says.

“Other than material culture, there is a need to preserve work of the first generation of post-independence artists and creators.”

As a teenager, Wanyeki recalls her first interactions with Donovan when she visited the African Heritage Gallery, enjoying food and the presence of models.

She describes Donovan as an extraordinary person, extremely inspirational, extremely generous with his knowledge of the collection and its meaning in Africa at the very point he interacted with it.

“He was extremely knowledgeable. He was guiding us through and we were just amazed by his energy. He did so much of this out of pocket,” she says.

“On one hand, he owns collections that are of immeasurable value financially, but he was not a wealthy person by the time he died. And yet he was still paying out of pocket for recording, lights, repair, cleaning, and that’s quite some dedication.”

By the time of his death, Ekhaba says, Donovan was planning to build a new house based on black and white mud architecture from Ghana and Burkina Faso to host collections that show African creativity and a library.

Edited by T Jalio