Examining arts as a unifying element [opinion]

By Asiwaju Adekanmbi Olufemi

ARCHAELOGISTS and anthropologists heavily rely on arts and artefacts to fill in the blanks in their study of man’s way of life. Arts express the strength of human imagination and provide the cultural trajectory of people’s culture and societies. Hence, arts is the window to our past and the time capsule for our future.

The global art market is valued at about $67 billion with over 40 million artefacts sold and Nigerian arts made their own contribution to this exotic trade. It is natural for the lucrativeness of the business to attract illicit transactions and create a very busy black market; to this also, Nigeria has fallen victim.

For instance, in 2014, the Museum of Fine Arts returned eight artefacts from the Royal Palace in Benin with one stolen as recently as the 1970s. In 2020, a terracotta sculpture of Ile-Ife origin believed to be about 600 years old, was returned from the Netherlands.

As more artefacts are making their way back home, they…

Source: Vanguard Newspaper