A Yoruba prince who has built the largest private collection of Nigerian Modern and contemporary art in Africa plans to display works in a new museum at a university in Lagos. Prince Yemisi Shyllon signed an agreement last week with the Pan Atlantic University, which will provide land at its campus in the Ibeju-Lekki area of the city. The museum, which is due to open in 2018, will be named after Shyllon. It will display around 1,000 works from his 7,000-strong collection.
Shyllon, a retired engineer, owns works of classic and contemporary art from Nigeria and the rest of Africa, including pieces by El Anatsui and the acclaimed Nigerian Modernists Ben Enwonwu and Aina Onabolu, among many others. He has also amassed some 50,000 photographs of Nigeria’s “fast-disappearing cultural festivals,” he tells The Art Newspaper. He says the country currently lacks “a national exhibition space for such works”.
