NCC to establish national art galleries
Accra (Greater Accra) 30 June 2000
Mr Yao Dzemefe, Director of National Art Galleries of the National Commission on Culture (NCC), on Thursday said the commission is to establish three major art galleries by the end of the year to enhance the essence of art in national development.
These would be a National Gallery of Arts that would be a broad-based collection of all aspects of art works and a National Portrait Gallery to house the portrait of all personalities, who have contributed to the development of the nation at national, regional, district, community and unit levels.
The third one would be a National Child Art Gallery for the collection of all works of arts that is beneficial to children.
Mr Dzemefe in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Accra said the art galleries would be resource centres for collection of cultural information about Ghana and the sampling of perception of other nationals in the country.
He said the commission through its regional offices would establish Regional Folk Art Galleries to promote folk art of the particular region.
"It is necessary that artists and other creators of aesthetic visual manifestations together with administrators, patrons of the arts, critics, financiers and the general public are brought together in realising this noble idea that would be the first of its kind in the country."
Mr Dzemefe said the commission is to use the creative energies of art as effective and efficient means of pooling resources to promote its development through exhibitions.
He said the NCC acknowledges the fact that apart from the National Anthem, which is an auditory art, all the symbols of nationhood are visual artworks. Unfortunately, the artists have not yet been dully recognised.
"The 'Unknown Artists' deserve a greater recognition and a significant position in the scheme of national development than they have so far been accorded."
The commission, in collaboration with other stakeholders in the art industry, is to organise an exhibition of the "Unknown Artists", the first of its kind in the country, to promote all aspects of art that include all categories of designers, handicraft producers and pictorial photographers.
The objectives of the exhibition include the promotion of professionally competent but unknown Ghanaian artists, to tap talents and draw attention of artists to the need for them to contribute more meaningfully to national development.
Mr Dzemefe said the exhibition would also motivate and reward the unknown artists, to acquire high quality artworks for the national art galleries and to serve as a means of soliciting assistance for art promotion and development.
He explained that if all creative people were educated through exhibitions to recognise their potentials and to learn to assert themselves economically, poverty across the country would have been reduced.
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