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| Onobrakpeya |
One of Nigeria’s leading
artists, Dr Bruce Onobrakpeya, has called on the Federal Government to set up a
national art museum to store up the best artworks in the country.
Onobrakpeya made the call
in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on last week Friday in
Lagos.
He also urged the
government to ratify the nation’s cultural policy to enable artists to take
advantage of the business opportunities in their trade.
“We want a museum, a kind of modern art museum
to be built. We don’t have one now.
“Right now in Abuja, one
has been proposed but it’s taking very many years now it has not started off
the ground.
“In a country we need the
museum to store the best of the artworks, those best of the artworks will now
attract people from all over the world to see and that again will now boost the
culture and bring a lot of money and prestige to the country.
“Those two things ratify
the cultural policy; build us a museum, a modern art museum
“And then, make it
possible, empower the artists to be able to create, those are things that are
the challenges that we have now in the country.
“We are working as
individual artists now in the country, the organisations that we have Society
of Nigerian Artists and other organisations are not strong enough.
“So what we ask is for the
government to ratify the cultural policy, so that some of the things should be
made available to empower the artists to fund their organisations and do a lot
of things which they are not able to do now.“
NAN reports that
Onobrakpeya, 82, was last year honoured by the Smithsonian Institute in
recognition of his significant achievement in the arts in the last six decades.
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