Memory, Discontinuity and Sustainable Knowledge Forms: Recasting Museum Practice in Postcolonial Nigeria

Abstract

The visible history of our past is best preserved in museums. In addition to this, the museum represents a place of study; a resort of the learned, an institution or repository for the collection of exhibition and study of objects or artistic, scientific, historic or educational interest. In contemporary Nigeria, Museums serve as a repository for preserving and conserving objects that were hitherto kept in shrines, homes and palaces. The paper recasts this discontinuity for its contemporary utility.  It locates the genealogy of museums in their relation to secular and immaterial expressions of power. This is shown in the symbiotic relationship between the palaces as representations of power and history and museums as expressions of the image history of the people in some parts of Nigeria. It also reviews the problems involved in the contemporary management of these museums. Suggestions, recommendations and ways of improvement are also expressed in the discourse. This is done with particular reference to the Museum of National Unity located in Akure, Ondo State of Nigeria, which has under its auspices, the petroglyph at Igbara-Oke and the Deji’s palace at Akure declared national monuments in 1963 and 1990 respectively.

Keywords: African architectural conservation; historic building; intangible and tangible cultural heritage; Nigeria; palace-museum; petroglyphs.

DOI: 10.7176/JAAS/82-07

Publication date: November 30^th 2023