A King's Passion

A 21st-Century Patron of African Art
SMO Contemporary Art, 2023
Publisher: Five Continents Editions.

ISBN: 9791254600498

Dimensions: 28.5 x 28.5 cm

Pages: 580
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Passion, intellectual curiosity and intuition inspired His Royal Majesty Igwe Nnaemeka Alfred Achebe CFR, over a period of forty years to collect and support artists from his native Onitsha, south eastern Nigeria, Ghana the broader West African region and indeed the African continent. 
 
Accompanying the opening of his Chimedie Museum to the public — a repository to house and display his personal art collection— this volume chronicles the Obi of Onitsha’s journey as a collector and patron. It illuminates the many friendships he has forged along the way with several artists, becoming as entangled in the process of making as in acquiring their work, much in the manner of the patrons of the High Renaissance. This latter assertion is accentuated by his status as a reigning monarch, which lends weight to historical ideas of patronage inexplicably linked to royalty and aristocracy. 
 
Significantly, A King’s Passion: A 21st Century Patron of African Art illuminates not only HRM’s collecting thrust and underlying philosophy but it also documents his relentlessness and successes in restoring marginalized artists to mainstream discourse. In addition, this publication addresses the emerging role of art patron- ship in Africa and how indigenous collectors are expanding narratives on the art of the African continent.
 
Lavishly illustrated in full color, A King’s  Passion features 120 artists and 310 carefully selected masterpieces across a broad diversity of media from the over 4,000 that underscore the HRM Igwe Nnaemeka Achebe Collection as one of the largest and most comprehensive African-owned private collections of African art. Written in easily  navigable language by some of the finest scholars on the subject, this book embraces an intimate interview with the collector by the book’s editor, Sandra Mbanefo Obiago and critical essays by Sylvester Ogbechie, Frank Ugiomoh, Edwin Bodjawah, Babacar Mbow, Krdyz Ikwuemesi, Jerry Buhari, Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Chike Nwagbogu and Oliver Enwonwu. Together they call formidably for the establishment of more museums of modern and contemporary art in Nigeria, to address their near absence while making a case for their changing role in Africa today in fostering the protection of indigenous culture and promoting cultural knowledge work. Consequently, the arguments are compelling justification for the establishment of the Chimedie Museum in Onitsha, well acknowledged for its historical role in contemporary Nigerian culture and the global economy. Other highlights include commentary on select major works, brief biographies as well as the contributions of the collection to genres such as portraiture and in celebrating the seminal Things Fall Apart by renowned novelist Chinua Achebe. 
 
A King’s Passion: A 21st Century Patron of African Art fulfils its primary objective to foster research into modern and contemporary art in Africa by challenging the existing canon. Owing to the physical impossibility of including the entirety of the broader collection in this edition, it inevitably calls for sequels that together ultimately address first, the dearth of publications aimed at an increased understanding of the context in which African collectors engage with indigenous art, and second, it testifies to the enduring legacy bequeathed by African artists spanning seven decades, from the 1940s till present.