Nigeria Welcomes a Museum like No Other

The John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History, which describes itself as “a fitting symbol of the multiplicity of identities in the metropolis”, is in the Onikan area, the cultural heart of Lagos island. Unlike the National Museum, built in the late 1950s on a western model by the English archaeologist Kenneth Murray, the centre is “unapologetically Yoruba”, according to Seun Oduwole, the site’s lead architect. “If you go to a western museum, the African section is often in the basement, it’s dark. But this museum pops with colour and sound to highlight the vibrancy and the dynamism of the Yoruba culture,” Oduwole says. Yoruba words are bigger than English counterparts on signs and displays. The external walls of the Yoruba centre, which has 1,000 sq m of exhibition space, are concrete and finished in earth-coloured pigments reminiscent of the mud features in old Yoruba settlements. The gold lattice is a reference to the craftsmanship of Yoruba people.

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN