From Hoarders Paradise to White Cube

Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art

The Yemisi Shyllon Museum is a non-profit organisation set up by Yemisi Shyllon, the prince of Ake in Abeokuta, Ogun State. He has amassed a collection of over 7,000 artworks from Nigerian artists as early as the modernist era to contemporary artworks. He has stated that collecting art is his obsession and began collecting from the early years in his life as a student at the University of Ibadan and continued to collect through the rest of his degrees at Univerity of Lagos and University of Ife and throughout the rest of his life participating in almost every auction and supporting artists before they rose to fame. Previously he has had to build extra storage facilities to house his collection and showcased his work in his private home where any given wall would be decorated from precipice to base with artwork in a hoarders paradise of bric a brac and art. He has since donated all of his works and established the Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art (YSMA) within the Pan Atlantic University. The museum is dedicated to education and professes to put forth heavily curated and thematic displays of his collection.

The thing that struck me the most about the museum and its establishment is the architecture of the building. The fact that you can walk around the upper deck of the museum and see glimpses of the art over and over through crevices, nooks and balconies is a real eye opener for me making this museum a contender for museums of the world stage. The current exhibition that has been on show since its opening, spanning a year and a half, has been well thought out and takes you on an African art history journey cross sectioning through material, starting with sculpture and kingdoms, continuing with colonial influence of bringing in painting and finishing with references to social unrest in contemporary works.

The exhibition was meticulously curated and progressed through the space by material starting with clay and wood. In the opening hall, the generational sculptors of the Fakeye clan were on show. The first part of the exhibition mainly consisted of sculptures because in Nigerian art history sculpture was the main medium of expression, with tribal and native religions and dynasties requiring idolatry worship of Gods and Kings. In the following part of the exhibition the material moved from wood to metal with sculptures in bronze depicting the Benin deity rulers that were fabricated in order to commemorate kings in life and in death. The sculptors of these were often unknown because the subject is what has been revered: the kings of Benin and Ife for which bronzes are renowned. In this section of the exhibition some modern and contemporary works were on show, including the Kola Nut man “Ali Maigoro” by Abayomi Barber that was meant to epitomise the Nigerian spirit by capturing the average man in Nigeria in his warts and all naturalistic portrayal in the form of a bust. The exhibition goes on to beads and fabric and then to repurposed materials that transcend the one dimensionality of the materials earlier on show. What I mean by this is that it becomes multi-faceted and dimensional with repurposed materials because the art becomes conceptual. An example of this would be Peju Alatise’s “The nine year’s old bride” that uses ankara encapsulating figures made out of plaster with painted motifs that have become quintessential of Alatise’s work. The conceptual aspect transcends the material with the girls seen to be struggling and constrained by the prospect of child marriage. Another example of a material that has transcended the object of the piece is Ade Adekola’s piece about Aso Oke that is a light installation that transcends traditional materials. The exhibition then introduces painting on the first floor with the prerequisite that painting is an offshoot of Western influence on Nigerian art, beginning with the painting of Aina Onabolu and ending with contemporary paintings such as that of Tony Nsofor. The exhibition was well thought out in that it covered a scope of Nigerian artworks from pre colonisation to western influences to when Nigerian painting took its own autonomy.

I personally had seen many of the artworks at the Prince’s house on a private tour, but to see his collection housed in such a majestic way that could better preserve the works and be seen by the public rather than just collecting dust and mold, shut off from the world and badly looked after in the bric a brac, hoarders paradise of the Prince’s private mansion where art is lofted one on top of the other and can be found in as problematic spaces as the shower and water closet (WC) room where condensation breeds mould and decay. At the museum, I could see evidence of the poor conditions the art had previously been housed at, with Lamidi Fakeye statues (The Yemisi Shyllon Foundation owning the largest collection of his works) being snapped and broken in some displays and the general preservation of the artworks were less than would be desired with discolouring visible in places and threads fraying upon closer inspection.

The museum is a non-profit institution focusing on education, as a part of the Pan Atlantic University, a catholic school. I must warn any prospective visitor that due to the aforementioned parameter, they adhere to strict christian protocol. A friend of mine had driven an hour and a half from Lekki Phase 1 to the museum and was turned away at the gate because her clothing was deemed to be not in accordance with school rules: the museum does not allow exposed shoulders or legs in a ludicrous bid to avoid skimpy clothing by catholic principles. This was a shock to me, despite being a staunch Catholic myself that turning people away on grounds of dress code makes the art exclusive and defeats the purpose of widening the audience and making the art more accessible.

The main aims of the museum are to educate prospective students by giving tours and having workshops with artists in their outdoor gazebo. I would like to see how the programming of the museum takes shape and is able to put into action the mission of education because as it is the museum is quite deserted and is only sighted upon appointment only for visitors. A steadfast and robust program is being drawn up by Polly Alakija and Jess Castellote, the head curator and architect of the museum.

Highlights from the collection were the Benin bronzes, the sculpture works by Peju Alatise, the Aso Oke ethereal material less works by Ade Adekola and the Zaria School of Painters artworks. The Yemisi Shyllon Foundation has over 7000 artworks in the collection but what struck me as making the museum a winner is the fact that they were able to curate a story and thematically and materialistically make sense of such a vast collection and made the exhibition make sense in terms of arrangement and art history. I would recommend visiting. The next exhibition that the museum is putting on (finally!) is “The Invisible Hands” focused on female artists curated by Olufisayo Bakare.