Curatorial Conversation – Museum Development in Nigeria: The John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History
- Region: Online
- Type: Talk
- Cost: Free
This event is organised by the Association for Art History in conjunction with The Warburg Institute, University of London.
Thursday, 18 September 2025, 5:30pm-7:00pm
Online via Zoom
Attendance free with advance booking
Will Rea, Senior Lecturer in African Art History, University of Leeds and Seun Oduwole, Principle at Si.SA Architects (Lagos and London) in conversation with Bill Sherman (Warburg Institute Director) and Gregory Perry (CEO, Association for Art History). This event is organised by the Association for Art History in conjunction with the Warburg Institute, University of London. Please join us online for the next instalment of our Curatorial Conversation series, on the creation and development of recent museums in Nigeria, particularly the John Randle Centre, with the curatorial consultant for the museum, Will Rea, and the architect for the Randle Centre, Seun Oduwole.
The opening of the John Randle Centre in Lagos was a major event in the development of museums in Africa. The Centre was unapologetic in its insistence on bringing the best of current curatorial and design practice into Lagos, but more than this, developing a museum that was actively influenced by local priorities and practices.
As such it stands as an example of new developments in curatorial practice in Africa, but it is not alone. Across the continent the place of the museum, and a related attention to heritage, has begun to have startling effect. Practices embedded in new thinking about what curation means within local contexts offer a talk back to European and American curatorial practice. In these conversations the very nature of the museum as a sited ‘store’ of material cultures is being re-evaluated. As such the new museums of Africa build upon conceptions that allow ‘things’ an active agency rather than as tokens of context.
At the heart of these debates is a challenge to the idea of heritage. As a concept this is both an idea that has been central to communities across the continent, but one that has also suffered from colonial and post-colonial incursion – set as ‘traditional’ against ideas of modernization, and as such often actively rejected. Increasingly a new generation in Africa is actively disentangling what Heritage might mean; moving from static ideas of the ‘traditional’ and the associated belief systems (that have often been rejected) to a rethinking of heritage as being central to the constitution of identity. The debates about new heritage in Africa are wide ranging – from calls for repatriation to questions about where this revalued concept stands in a world of neo-liberal transaction. Understanding how curatorial practice, and the role that Europe may or may not have in that practice, is now an urgent debate.
Curatorial Conversations, in collaboration with the Association for Art History, invites museum directors and curators of recent exhibitions and installations at world-leading museums and galleries to discuss their work. The conversations, led by Bill Sherman and Gregory Perry, discuss the issues of setting the directorial or curatorial agenda and staging meaningful encounters with objects. The series is designed to draw out discussion of the discoveries made, challenges tackled and the lessons learned in heading a collection, presenting important permanent collections and putting together internationally renowned exhibitions.