Affordable art show gives a lifeline to artists and museum

There is hardly a single event that Kenyan artists look forward to with greater anticipation than the annual Affordable Art Show. Organised by the Kenya Museum Society to, among other things, raise funds to contribute to the maintenance and improvement of the National Museums of Kenya, the Art Show attracts hundreds of artists from all over Kenya as well as a few from neighbouring states.

It’s a small cadre of committed workers, mainly volunteers, who make the whole show happen, as it is doing this past weekend (October 29-31) in the open-air courtyard of Nairobi National Museum.

“I’ve been doing the show for the past ten years,” said its executive director, Dr Marla Stone, just a few hours before its Friday night opening. An annual KMS art exhibition had been running in the 1990s, but there had been a hiatus that required art lovers like Dr Stone and her colleague, Wendy Karmali, to revive the showcase for the sake of both the artists and the Museum.

Overwhelming response

Working closely with the National Museum’s curator, Lydia Galavu, Stone and Karmali run a tight ship.

They have to do so since the response from local artists is overwhelming. By now, they all know the drill: they can bring several artworks for screening, but only a maximum of two will be accepted.

Everyone is invited on one specific day to bring their art to the Museum, where artists line up in an orderly style and patiently wait their turn when their art is considered for inclusion or rejection in the show.

There’s one critical factor that both artists and organisers must agree on.

And that is the price tag of each piece. With the a priori agreement that no artwork will sell for over Sh150,000 (this is why the show is tagged affordable), each artist can propose their price, but that tag is finally negotiated between the two parties.

“One reason artists love bringing their art to the Affordable Art Show is that they are practically assured their artwork will sell,” says Samuel Njuguna Njoroge.

Naturally, not all the artworks displayed on every inch of wall and panel space available gets sold. In fact, according to Dr Stone, a little less than half the works exhibited during the previous AA Show sold when KMS organised an extraordinary Affordable Art Show earlier this year.

“We decided to hold that show in April because we seriously wanted to raise funds for the Museum, and our usual fundraisers, such as our weekend safaris, had been hit by the lockdown,” recalls Stone.

She considers that show a success, and KMS was able to contribute to the National Museums. But she expects this show to be even more successful. 

Why? For one thing, the April show had only 280 artworks selected, while the jurists, Stone, Karmali, and Galavu, selected no less than 300 mainly paintings this time around.

“There were very few pieces that we rejected,” says Lydia Galavu. “There were quite a few ‘emerging’ artists who’d recently come out of art school, and that also made a big difference. The calibre of work was higher than we have generally seen,” she adds.

More women

What’s more, there were many more women in this year’s show. We could still see familiar names of established female artists like Mary Ogembo, Patricia Njeri, Geraldine Robarts, and Leena Shah on display this past weekend. But then, there were also newer names like Nadia Wamunyu, Naitiemu Nyanjom, Chela Chelagat, Sheila Bayley, Daisy Buyanzi, Marilyn Abwao, Yvonne Nzilani, and Fridah Ijai, few of whom have exhibited at the AA Show before.

What was also fun to see was how many established artists who have absented themselves from public displays in recent years came out this year.

They included artists like Hosea Muchugu (aka Giko), Kahara Miano, Sebastian Kiarie, and Chain Muhandi.

Then again, the rest of the show was a rich mix of familiar styles featuring everyone from Adrian Nduma, George Ngaruya, Evans Yegon, Adam Masava, and Leonard Ngure to Samuel Githui Gomba Otieno, Jimmy Kitheka, Mike Kyalo and Njogu Kuria.

The organisers tried their best to classify the artworks according to their focus on either women, land- or seascapes, animals, or ‘large paintings’. But it seems there were more miscellaneous paintings, revealing the wide range of imaginative approaches that many Kenyans explore.

Some of the works didn’t thrill me. But one artist who seems to come out every year with an award-winning work is Dickson Nedia. This year was no exception. His Black Beauty is a stunning work of portraiture.

As to whether this year’s Affordable Art Show was a success, Dr Stone happily reports the show made Sh4.7 million or nearly 40 per cent of all the artworks displayed.

A percentage will go to the artists and the rest to the National Museums.