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 recognize industrial leaders in the country and to inspire a new generation of practitioners including those 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.
Recognized internationally, they are the painters: founder of the Artists Alliance Gallery in Accra and former Dean of the College of Art at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, 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 Most 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, Francis 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 in Kumasi, founder of the Sirigu Women Organization for Pottery and Art in the Upper East, Melanie Kasise, 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 the Republic of Bennin, Nigeria and an official delegation from the Republic of Seychelles will be addressed by Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, UNESCO and the European Union Ambassador to Ghana HE Irchad Razaaly among others and with participation from ten embassies.
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 to have their collectibles at its new Contemporary Art Gallery.
This will constitute part of a larger collection including the recently acquired gold regalia and ornaments from South Africa’s AngloGold Ashanti and also be 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 art estate will be with the Harvard University Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
He explained that the motivation for the awards followed the return last year to Kumasi of looted objects 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.
