Kenneth Crosthwaite Murray

Many of the important developments which have come to be accepted as permanent assets in the newly independent countries of Africa were conceived and pioneered by individuals, who at the time were unregarded and hardly known, but it was by their enthusiasm and devotion that they succeeded in gaining support for their work and getting their ideas adopted and put into effect. Kenneth Murray was one of these pioneers.

After training in architecture and sculpture at the Birmingham Central School of Art, Kenneth went to Nigeria in 1927 to join the Education Department as an art teacher. He worked in this capacity at Queen's College, Lagos, and at the Government College at Ibadan and Umuahia, for most of the years before the war. At that time he was only an itinerant art teacher, and his pupils travelled around with him. One of these was the now famous Ben Enwonwu, and another Uthman Ibrahim, who subsequently succeeded him as art master at Government College, Ibadan.

His teaching was probably unconventional for those days, but his aim was always to discover and bring out his pupils' inherent gifts, based on their own traditional art forms, rather than to impose European ideas of artistic merit. Partly for this reason he was constantly studying local crafts and traditional art. He was captivated by the artistic skills of local craftmen with their seemingly primitive tools - the decorations on the Fanti fishemen's boats on Victoria Beach at Lagos, calabashes in domestic use but transformed into artistic treasures by their intricate designs, the skillful patterns used by Ibo women to ornament their bodies before going to their markets, carved ceremonial canoe paddles used by a chief's retinue, shapely clay pots made by women without the use of any potters' wheel, and above all the arresting masks and carved wooden figures that he found in so many different parts of Nigeria, often in remote villages. These carvings were used for seasonal festivals; traditional dances, or religious rites that were gradually being abandoned as local customs disappeared with the opening up of communications and the impact of western civilization. This was deplored by Kenneth, because it meant that the traditional crafts associated with them were dying out. It was largely for this reason that he started to make his collection of masks and carvings to save them from neglect and destruction.

When war came Kenneth joined the army. By that time he had made a splendid collection of masks and wood carvings, many of them rare antiquities. Some of these he sent to a South African museum for safe keeping, and some he carefully packed up and stored in one of the old wooded staff bungalows at Umuahia Government College. He left money while he was away to pay a night watchman. Fortunately, no art dealer could have suspected that it contained such a valuable hoard of "fetishes". In 1943 Kenneth was recalled from the army to join the Information Office, and in 1946 he was appointed the first surveyor of the newly-created Antiquities Service of Nigeria. This enabled him to give his whole time to the collection and preservation of Nigerian art treasures and antiquities, but he still had no permanent home in which to keep them. For some time he occupied the old wooded building on iron pillars formerly used as a mess when the British Cotton Grower's Association had a ginnery at Moor Plantation, Ibadan. The ground floor was packed with carvings and other wooden objects, and was also used as workshop. The bedroom drawers were filled with a large collection of ibeji and other Yoruba figures that he had rescued from destruction by members of a zealous religious sect.

The priceless bronze and terra cotta heads at Ife, many of which were only discovered in 1938, needed special care and protection. It was largely due to Kenneth's advocacy that the Federal Government enacted the Antiquities Ordinance in 1953. This made it an offence for anyone to export Nigerian antiquities. Money was also voted for the building of the museum that Kenneth and his friends, had wanted for so long.

The Nigerian Museum was built in King George V Park in Lagos, and was officially opened by the Federal Minister of Works in the presence of a distinguished audience in 1955. Kenneth's collection was at last safely housed and displayed in a worthy setting; at that time it formed the major part of the Museum's contents. He was largely responsible for the design and arrangement of the Museum that was built at Ife to house the terra cotta and bronze heads, which are probably Nigeria's greatest art treasure. At Oron Kenneth discovered a large number of neglected wooden ancestral figures which were falling into decay. He persuaded their owners to place them in a small museum that he had made out of the old waterside rest-house. Unfortunately, most of these valuable figures were looted and sold during the civil war.

Kenneth retired in August 1957 and built himself a house at Tarkwa Bay on the West side of Lagos harbour. From here he would go over in his motor boat when he l--ad work to do at the museum. Seven years later, when Bernard Fagg who had succeeded him was also due to retire, he agreed with some reluctance to return to his old post, to fill the gap until such time as a Nigerian would be available to take his place. He finally retired in March 1967, when Ekpo Eyo was appointed to succeed him. When Kenneth was not travelling on behalf of the museum he was absorbed not only the mounting and display of art objects, but in the endless task of cataloguing, preserving and storage.

After his final retirement he was still willing to give any help required at the museum and to undertake journeys on behalf of the Antiquities Department. It was when he was on his way to Benin to advise about the proposed museum for the famous bronzes that he was killed in a road accident on April 22^nd, 1972.