The Manhyia Palace Museum jointly with the UNESCO Representative in Ghana will bestow the inaugural Asantehene Art Awards to ten distinguished artists in Kumasi on May 23, 2025.
It is the beginning of a ten-year project to recognise industrial leaders in the country and to inspire a new generation of practitioners including in the digital arts.
The 2025 Inaugural Artist Laureates which is dubbed, ‘Our Old Masters,’ are being so honoured for their lifetime influence of African art practice and history.
Recognised internationally, they are the painters: founder of the Artists Alliance Gallery in Accra and former Dean of the College of Art at the Kumasi Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Professor Ablade Glover; the last Dean of the College before it was re-named College of Art and Built Environment, Professor Ato Delaquis as well as the metallurgy artist and one of Time magazine’s 2023 100 Mostly Influential People who was also a former Professor and Head of Fine and Applied Arts Department of the University of Nsukka in Nigeria, El Anatsui.
The others are the innovator and sculptor, Kwatei Nee-Owoo of Touch of Bronze; the gallerist, Frances Ademola of The Loom; the folklore princess, painter, collector and author, Peggy Appiah; the public artist, Kwame Akoto, founder of the Sirigu Women Organisation for Pottery and Art, Melanie Kassie, the Manhyia Palace royal artist, Nana Amponsah Dwumfuor of Nsoase and the Ghanatta College of Art and Design in Accra.
The event which will attract policy makers and art patrons from other African countries including an official delegation from the Seychelles Islands will be addressed by the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Abla Dzifa Gomashie and the European Union Ambassador to Ghana Irchad Razaaly among others.
The Director of the Manhyia Palace Museum, Mr Ivor Agyeman-Duah has explained that some huge investments have been made in the acquisitions of works of the recipients. The Museum will therefore be the first in Ghana to have at its new Contemporary Art Gallery, a collection of major ‘Our Old Masters.’
It will be part of a larger collection including the recently acquired gold regalia and ornaments from South Africa’s AngloGold Ashanti. It is also a beneficiary of 80-year -old geometric and figurative Ashanti gold-weights from the estate of its world led collector, Peggy Appiah part of which collection will be with the Harvard University Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
He explained that Otumfuo Osei Tutu II’s motivation for the awards followed the return to Kumasi of looted objects last year after the 1874 and 1897 Anglo-Ashanti wars. Whilst that was in the past and forcibly taken, contemporary works of Ghanaian artists are at the mercy of international art houses and markets. Non-governmental institutions should therefore be encouraged to preserve some.
The UNESCO Representative in Ghana and one of the speakers at the event, Mr. Edmond Moukala, hinted of mobilization locally and externally of an endowment fund with a consultant put in place to ensure the sustainability of the Award for Ghanaians and other Africans.
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