MOWAA Receives $3 Million Grant From Mellon Foundation

BENIN CITY, NIGERIA – The Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) is proud to announce it has been awarded a $3 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, one of the largest organisations supporting arts and culture in the world. This significant funding will support MOWAA’s mission to transform arts management and education in West Africa.

“We are deeply grateful to the Mellon Foundation for their generous support,” said Phillip Ihenacho, Executive Director of MOWAA. “This grant will support us as we establish world-class facilities and programs that will elevate arts management, conservation, and archaeological research in West Africa.”

The grant will fund several key initiatives over the next three years, including:

• Arts Management & Conservation: Developing exemplary collections management operations at the MOWAA Institute and providing skills training in preventative care and object treatment.
• Residencies & Commissions: Offering career-building opportunities for upcoming and under-represented talents to engage in interdisciplinary practice.
• Archaeology & Heritage Management: Documenting and developing participatory approaches to protect Nigeria’s earthen architecture, with a focus on Benin’s ancient moats.
• Skills Development, Learning & Outreach: Supporting traditional crafts-making guilds and integrating traditional craftsmanship into the contemporary arts scene.

This funding comes at a crucial time for MOWAA, as the organization prepares to open its first purpose-built facility, the MOWAA Institute, in 2024. The Institute will serve as a research, conservation, and collections center in Benin City, exemplifying modern conservation practices with climate-controlled storage rooms, well-equipped conservation labs, and exhibition spaces.

“The Mellon Foundation’s support will be instrumental in establishing MOWAA as a regional center of excellence in heritage research, management, and conservation,” said Ore Disu, Director of the MOWAA Institute. “Our goal is to reposition the cultural sector as a viable space for practitioners across borders and to reignite a thriving cultural scene, recentering Benin City as a place of creativity, innovation and knowledge exchanges. One of the ways we intend to do this is through establishing a residency programme for artists and artisans from all over West Africa and the Diaspora.”

The Mellon Foundation joins a number of other local and global organisations such as the A.G. Leventis Foundation, Gerda Henkel Foundation, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), and the German and Nigerian governments amongst others, believing in and partnering with the new Institution.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.