MUSA HERITAGE GALLERY: Preserving the Arts and Crafts of the Cameroon Grass-field and efforts in encouraging the local population to become friends of museums

Paper presented at the International Conference on the Artist, Culture, Globalisation 24 - 26 September 2000,Santorini, Greece.

Peter Musa, Director Musa Heritage Gallery, Cameroon. Freelance Journalist, VisualArtist. Member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and an informal intercultural network known as Web Art Garden (WAG). Joined INCD after having read about it from the International Arts Quarterly Digest.

Musa Heritage Gallery is a museum with focus on the Arts and Crafts of the Cameroon Grass-fields. Established in December 1996, the museum has a rich collection of over 400 diverse objects done mainly during the last three decades of the just ended twentieth century and continues to acquire contemporary Cameroonian art.

Resume:

This paper unfolds with the presentation of Cameroon as an African nation with diverse cultural potentials. Unfortunately, with no Arts Council or support fund for its promotion of arts. It further advocates for the creation of Arts Councils on the African continent. The difficulties that the absence of an Arts Council in Cameroon, poses to artists and to people interested in cultural projects is also highlighted. I also embarked on this paper to x-ray a heritage initiative "The Musa Heritage Gallery." Its genesis, evolution and its role in sensitizing the local population in developing a liking for the arts and the work of museums is brought to light. In the conclusion a call is made to the Cameroon government to put in relentless efforts in activating the country's heritage sector by putting into operation the National Museum and other heritage related services.

Arts Councils: Springboards:

Unlike some Western industrialised countries such as the U.K., Canada, Australia, U.S.A. and Switzerland who are promoting arts and culture through institutions such as Arts Councils, Cameroon fondly dubbed "Africa in Miniature" has no such arts funding or support structure for the promotion of arts and culture.

This country, centrally positioned within the rich cultural Africa is blessed with people from over 200 ethnic groups cohabiting peacefully. This implies an abundance of cultural diversity and this can be witnessed in the numerous cultural festivals and manifestations organised throughout the country each year.

In this era of globalisation it is imperative for African countries to introduce the existence of Arts Councils in their respective nations. You will all agree with me that countries with Arts Councils produce the best artists, studios, status, markets, institutions and above all better appreciate the arts in all its diverse forms.

In Africa, I have read about the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe (NAC) and the National Council for Arts and Culture of Gambia (NCAC). I commend these institutions and any others on the African continent.

Cameroon has thousands of talented visual and performing artists. In-spite of their bright, wonderful and why not lucrative and self-supporting ideas in a country with high unemployment. These lofty dreams which would have greatly boosted up the country's cultural sector dies down naturally as the initiator or initiators who are mainly artists, with no financial backing hardly find promoters for such ventures.

The Story of Musa Heritage Gallery:

Musa Heritage Gallery was established on the 18 December 1996 as a family operated museum. The museum located in Kumbo town inCameroon's North West Province is contributing towards upholding and preserving the Arts and Crafts of the Western Grass-fields region.

Fully aware that Musa Heritage Gallery could not rely on government assistance or alternative funding sources for its creation and sustenance,  Mrs. Pauline Musa, (widow to my late father, Daniel Kanjo Musa in whose memory the museum is named) and myself in our capacities as the museum's promoters took upon the challenge to establish the museum following my father's death in March 1995. We were highly motivated and committed to our cause and knew we could only finance the museum through meagre family resources. This is exactly how Musa Heritage Gallery was created.

Since its establishment, we have been striving to make Musa Heritage Gallery serve the local population. This has not been an easy task for us. A lot of reasons contribute to this. Firstly, very few museums exist in the country. This makes museums not to be popular. Secondly, very little is said on the country's rich cultural heritage. Thirdly, Cameroonians are yet to be sensitised on the educative and social roles of museums. Lastly, locals do not have any reasons to visit museums when they imagine that at the museum they will find masks, statues or costumes often worn by juju men or masquerades at festivals regularly and which are seen free of charge. As such they do not find any reason to visit museums some of which require visitors to pay an entry fee. Musa Heritage Gallery as a private museum falls under this category and relies greatly on this as its main source of income generation.

At Musa Heritage Gallery we are always seeking and trying on different approaches to bring the museum closer to the people or the people closer to the museum. To commemorate the 23rd International Museum Day, Musa Heritage Gallery organised Open Days as from Monday 15 to Thursday 18 May 2000. The public of Kumbo were invited to visit the museum free-of-charge. Sadly very few adults took advantage of the museum's generous offer. However three secondary schools notably; Government Bilingual High School (GBHS), Chaffee Memorial College (CMC) and Saint Augustine's College (SAC) took advantage of the generous offer and sent in some of their students. At the end of the Open Days we recorded a historic number of 350 visitors, far much higher than the less than 100 visitors we received throughout 1999.

To cope with technological advancements and emerging new information technologies, Musa Heritage Gallery is presently developing a web site. The project is the initiative of Dr. Ian Fowler of the Oxford Brooks University in the UK. It is the intention of the project initiator to expose the museum to a wider public internationally and through the site we hope to encourage overseas visitors to the Musa Heritage Gallery thus contributing towards the growth of cultural tourism to Cameroon. The site is expected to be

launched within the coming weeks.

Activate Cameroon's Cultural Heritage Sector:

The government of Cameroon attaches great importance to the cultural heritage sector. The Ministry of Culture runs a department dedicated to this sector. This department is known as the Department of Patrimony. Provincial museums such as, the Buea and Garoua museums are run by this department.

In Bamenda, North West Provincial headquarters the Provincial Museum was forced to close down in favour of a library which now occupies the Bamenda Cultural Centre building which used to house the museum. The Bamenda museum established by colonial administrators was an important stop for anyone who was interested in studies on the Cameroon Grass-fields. Both the library and museum are important cultural and educational institutions and for the sake of preserving the rich cultural relics of the Cameroon Grass-fields held by the museum which is no more functional, there is urgent need for government to re-open the Bamenda museum.

The government of Cameroon also needs to re-activate the cultural heritage sector by putting into operation the National Museum, National Antiquities Commission as well as the creation of a National Heritage Training Centre. Government should also engage in a massive sensitisation campaign on the importance of the country's cultural heritage. The Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Ministry of Communication, the Cameroon Radio Television Corporation (CRTV), other public and private electronic and print media organs, private museums and the corporate sector could all be brought together in a

partnership to make the campaign successful nation-wide.

Unless the government of Cameroon takes urgent and appropriate measures to re-activate the country's heritage sector, the first being the effective setting up and running of a National Museum. It will certainly continue to take a very long time and remain nightmare for many Cameroonians to appreciate the role of museums such as the Musa Heritage Gallery as institutions at the service of humanity and of its development.