Reflections on the 1970s

• Ghana
• 1970s
• art
• art education
• exhibition
• Gilbert Amegatcher

The following is an abridged and edited version of the transcript from a discussion between Gilbert Amegatcher and Raymond Silverman that took place in September 2021. It draws upon Amegatcher’s memories from the 1970s of his days as a student at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi and his early career as Curator of Art at the National Museum of Ghana.

• Raymond Silverman (RS): Gilbert, let’s begin with a very basic question, where and when did you do your undergraduate degree?

• Gilbert Amegatcher (GA): I graduated from the University of Science and Technology (UST), Kumasi, in 1973, with a B.A. in Art.¹ And in 1974, I earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Art Education.

• RS: Excellent. And with your degree in Art, did you have a specialization, a particular medium that you worked in?

• GA: Yes. My areas of emphasis were graphic design as a major, and textiles as a minor.

• RS: How was the department organized at the time? Can you remember any of the people who were on the faculty?

• GA: There was the College of Art. All students first completed what was known as the pre-Art course in which they were introduced to the various areas of artmaking, namely, painting, sculpture, pottery and ceramics, textiles, metal products, and design. I was in the Department of Design and General Art Studies and specialized in graphic design. Industrial Arts, Fine Arts, and Art Education were separate departments. The latter was mainly a postgraduate program. Once you received your bachelor’s degree, if you were going on to become a teacher, you would come back to do a one-year course in Art Education.

• RS: Can you remember any of the people that were on the faculty at that time?

• GA: There were so many. Let me name just a few. In my department, there was Alfred Akpo Teye. He was in charge of the Department of Design and General Art Studies, assisted by Frederick Tete Mate. Then, there was Mr. John W. Bunch, who was British. There was the photographer and cinematographer named Charles Owusu. And then there was another Englishman, Bernard G. S. Bull, who loved African art. There was the painter and sculptor, Ernest Victor Asihene. There was the sculptor, Vincent Akwete Kofi, then another sculptor, Kwaku Asaku Gyapong, and finally, another sculptor named E. K. Azii Akator. Other renowned artists included a German ceramist, Gerd von Stokar, and then another [ceramist] William Charles Owusu. There was also Edmund Kwame Jimmy Tetteh (aka E. K. J. Tetteh), who was among the most influential teachers and painters in the 1960s and 1970s. Almost all of them have passed away, but there are a few who are still alive, such as the ceramist, James Kwame Amoah, and in textiles, Ablade Glover, who’s now better known for his paintings.

• RS: Yes, he’s famous.

• GA: Then we had external examiners who would come and oversee and moderate our examinations. They included Ben Enwonwu and Uche Okeke from Nigeria.

• RS: Wow! Two other well-known artists.

• GA: And Demas Nwoko and Yusuf Grillo from Nigeria. And there was M. MacLeod from the UK.

• RS: I am intrigued; a number of the people you mentioned were, in fact, expatriates, most of them British. It seems that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was still a fairly strong expatriate presence on the faculty.

• GA: That is true. Though there were just a few, they had a strong impact. They adapted. Somebody like Bernard Bull, at one point, returned to Britain, but then came back to Ghana because he felt more at home here. And he lived in Ghana until he died. In addition to teaching history, he was very interested in African sculpture.

• RS: Who were the most important artists who were working in Ghana in the late 1960s, early 1970s?

• GA: This is interesting because what was going on was more nuanced than what one might assume. Let me start with three observations. First, traditional artmaking continued to flourish all over the country, even if not enough attention was being paid to it. There were women and men doing pottery, basketry, textiles, and leather work too. Second, Kumasi and Winneba were the centers of contemporary art, primarily because they were associated with formal arts education. There was the College of Art at UST and the Winneba School of Art. There was also the Ghanatta School of Art in Accra, a private school founded in 1969 that operated until 2016 and produced many influential painters and graphic designers.² And third, cities also were centers of informal art activities characterized by the painters who produced signage. People painting vehicle inscriptions and chop bars primarily worked in the cities. You will find Kwame Akoto (also known as “Almighty God”) and a popular artist named Alex Amofa, the founder of Supreme Art Works, in Kumasi. I believe one needs to be careful not to mainstream and marginalize such artists who were active at the time. Back then, they may have been unrecognized, but today we are very much aware of their work and contributions to the visual arts of Ghana.

  One can speak of the state artists. Their influence was so strong in the 1970s. One, for example, is Nii Amon Kotei, the designer of the Ghana coat of arms. I mean, he would belong to the group with Kofi Antubam, who passed away during the previous decade, in the 1960s. He died very young. Though he does not belong to the 1970s, because he designed much of the nation’s state regalia, his presence was very strong; his influence was very strong in the 1970s. His peers and students continued to work and some of them remain to this day, which is why while we are talking about artists who were prominent, artists who were important in the 1970s, I include Antubam. He left quite a legacy.

  Next to him is Amon Kotei, who designed the Ghana coat of arms. The other person is the woman who designed the flag of Ghana, Theodosia Okoh. She is important for other reasons, such as the fact that she comes from a family of artists, and therefore is an artist of some pedigree. Now, apart from artists who received commissions from the state, there were artists who were associated with institutions—educational institutions: the secondary schools, the training colleges, and so on. They had immense influence and following among artists at the time, even if they were not vocal. They include an artist named Emmanuel Addo-Osafo.³ He was a fine artist, but very political. He was working in educational institutions. Teachers were hardly mentioned—for instance, the teachers of El Antasui and Ato Delaquis, as well as Galle Winston Kofi Dawson, who recently passed away. And then there were the teachers of Prosper Tawia, who died about a year or so ago, and Sylvanus Kwami Amenuke and Desmond Fiadjoe. Many of these happened to be the pupils of Grace Salome Kwami, the mother of Atta Kwami.

• RS: Very interesting. Yes, I’ve spoken with Atta about his mother.

• GA: Mrs. Kwami had a huge presence, more than people acknowledge. If we look back during that period, she had such a strong presence. She was the same generation as Kofi Antubam. She taught all these artists who I have just mentioned, including me.

• RS: Was she at UST, or someplace else?

• GA: Mrs. Kwami studied from 1952 to 1953 at what was then the Kumasi College of Technology (KCT), later renamed KNUST. She taught at a number of institutions, including Achimota College, with Kofi Antubam and others.⁴ For the period we are talking about, Mrs. Kwami was not doing state commissions. Her major contribution was as a teacher, training the next generation of artists and art educators. Also, like Mrs. Kwame, Vincent Kofi, Walter Sakitey, Kobena Asmah, and the African American artist, Leroy Kwame Mitchell did much to nurture this next generation of artists and art educators, and more. Leroy Mitchell was from Detroit.⁵

  Then there’s another group of notable artists, who initially trained for other professions but became better known for what they did in art. They include Dr. Oku Ampofo, who lived for almost 90 years and was the chairman of the GMMB in the year I was hired at the National Museum. Next to him, there was Dr. Kobina Bucknor, who was noted for what he referred to as “painting in the sculptural idiom.” He was an entomologist who took to art while pursuing his graduate studies at Cornell University and continued after he retired. He became the Director of the Animal Research Institute. But concurrently, he painted and was better known for his art than for his science. Unfortunately, he lived just 50 years. Next, there was Dr. Seth Cudjoe. He was also from medicine. But his interest was mainly in art criticism. He published critical reviews of art and exhibitions.

• RS: What about exhibitions that you remember from when you were a young man, in the 1970s. Where were these exhibitions held and who organized them?

• GA: The one exhibition I remember most clearly is the Ghana at 20 exhibition, which was held in the National Museum gallery, to mark the twentieth anniversary of Ghana’s independence. A number of items were assembled. I participated as a member of a curatorial team. The items we displayed included parliamentary regalia, some designed by Kofi Antubam. We also exhibited the statue of Kwame Nkrumah by Nicola Cataudella, which was felled during the 1966 coup d’état. Today, that statue can be found exhibited on the grounds of the National Museum in Accra.

• RS: That’s interesting. Were there any specific venues for the critical discourse such as that being written by Cudjoe? Were people publishing reviews of exhibitions, for instance, in the press in Ghana at the time?

• GA: Looking back, art criticism was slow in catching up with the work that was being produced. The criticism that was published has been an important resource for a history of the times. For example, Dr. Cudjoe, whom I mentioned a moment ago, was critiquing works. Then, in the newspaper called “Ghanaian Times,” Kwasi Woode was also critiquing art being produced at the time. He did that so nicely. There were publications that carried art reviews such as Okyeame from the University of Ghana Institute of Africa Studies, and Image from the College of Art [UST]. Furthermore, if you recall, there was West Africa, the weekly magazine published in Britain. In 1974, there was a review of a seminal book by Marshall Ward Mount, African Art: The Years Since 1920.⁶

• GA: And then there was Transition, a journal founded in Kampala in the early 1960s with which Ali Mazrui and Wole Soyinka were associated. In 1975, Ato Delaquis published an article in which he talks about the dilemma of the contemporary African artist, specifically, the dichotomy, of whether the art he or she was making should be associated with Western heritage or African heritage.⁷ He wrote extensively on that subject.

  It is, in fact, the same issue that Kofi Antubam discussed in his Ghana’s Heritage of Culture, in which he argued against the expectations that his work had to reference the old traditional sculptures.⁸ He said he was not interested in going to examples from the graveyards, and items found on the mossy shelves of European museums. His language was very strong.

• GA: And when it came to the time of Vincent Kofi, he also took a stand. He didn’t take the bait. He said he did not see the need for this argument about Western and non-Western art, and the necessity of authenticating the work of Ghanaian artists. He asked the rhetorical question, “If letters from the Roman alphabet are used to spell my name, does that make me a Westernized person or artist?” He was quite cheeky and interesting.

• RS: Yes, fascinating. So, what else can you tell me about the art scene in Ghana in the 1970s?

• GA: Just after graduating from UST, my National Service assignment was at a secondary school in Winneba. It was an exciting place to be at the time. The Specialist Training College (now the University of Education, Winneba) had an art department with a dynamic young faculty that included artists such as El Anatsui, David Akotia, and Desmond Fiadjoe, among others. Not long before then, Vincent Kofi had been a major figure at that school, as had Charlotte Hagan and N. G. Agbo.

• RS: Indeed, that must have been an exciting time to be in Winneba. So, what happened after that?

• GA: In late 1975, I interviewed for and was selected for the position of Curator of Art at the National Museum of Ghana. I started work there, in January 1976.

• RS: Can you talk a bit about your activities as the Curator of Art?

• GA: Certainly. I assisted in acquiring the work of some young and promising contemporary artists, such as George Atta Kwami and Kwesi Owusu-Ankomah. Then there were temporary exhibitions that I assisted in organizing. Some of them were international in nature. For example, there was an artist named Vittorio Quintavalle. Quintavalle was a guest of a builder in Ghana named Ernesto Taricone. I was charged with evaluating what he had to offer and advising the museum about the viability of exhibiting his work. Well, we engaged, and it worked; we had a nice exhibition of Quintavalle’s paintings. We were responsible for introducing international artists to Ghanaian audiences, including those associated with the Goethe-Institut, and what were the then embassies of East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

• RS: And what about Ghanaian artists?

• GA: That was very much a part of it. We exhibited many contemporary artists at the National Museum, including Charlotte Hagan, Albert Osabu Bartimeus, John Christopher Osei Okyere (a.k.a. J. C. Okyere) and the sculptor, Asa Anakwa, whose daughter, Margaret Asabea Anakwa, has continued with this tradition and is a modern-day sensation. We also exhibited the work of artists from neighboring countries such as Togo; we exhibited an artist named El Loko. So, the museum was not confined only to the old, traditional arts and ethnographic pieces, but also was a magnet for some of the things that contemporary artists were doing.

• RS: I’m intrigued. You mentioned the artist from Togo. Earlier, you talked about external examiners at UST, people like Ben Enwonwu from Nigeria. Were you exhibiting any artists from other parts of Africa, in addition to Togo?

• GA: Well, we had work from artists in Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo, etc. I remember one Kalenge Mwambay from Zaire. Then from the Mediterranean region, the museum acquired reproductions of ancient sculpture from North Africa and Egypt.

• RS: Back in the 1970s, did you feel the National Museum, and the GMMB, were adequately funded by the government?

• GA: The funding often was not adequate. Looking back, there was great enthusiasm and grand expectations, but the resources were not adequate to realize them.

• RS: Gilbert, the last thing I want to ask you about is your research on the sculptor, Vincent Kofi, who passed away in 1974. I know that in 1982, you left the National Museum and joined the faculty of the College of Art at KNUST, and in 1988, you had an opportunity to pursue a master’s degree at Indiana University under the mentorship of Roy Sieber. You wrote your M. A. thesis on Kofi; can you tell me something about that experience?

• GA: Of course. I was not the first African to study with Professor Sieber; Cornelius Adepegba, Babatunde Lawal, Dele Jegede and others preceded me. I spent four years in Bloomington, and I decided to write my thesis on Vincent Kofi because I had noticed that scholars were writing about present-day “traditional” artists, but there was very little writing on contemporary studio-based (i.e., academic) artists, such as Kofi. I also was aware that, relative to other modern artists, there was a good deal of archival information about the sculptor. And remember, he was one of my teachers when I was a student at KNUST in the early 1970s!

• RS: Right. So, how did you approach researching and writing the thesis?

• GA: There were various sources. Apart from the standard published books and periodicals, I combed the so-called ephemera, looking at brochures for exhibitions, newspaper articles, and unpublished papers. I asked myself the fundamental question: what life experiences and ideas informed the career of Vincent Kofi? Tracing his life and career led me to encounter many of the individuals and institutions that shaped academic art during the twentieth century. I learned a lot about the importance of the Presbyterian Training College in Akropong, Achimota College, and the artists affiliated with these institutions. This new-found knowledge helped me understand Kofi and his art.

• RS: This has been so interesting, Gilbert. Thank you! Before we conclude, is there anything else you’d like to mention about your recollections of the 1970s?

• GA: Thank you, Ray. This has been a lot of fun reminiscing about the “good old days”! The only thing I’d like to add is that I continue to be interested in the issues that people like Kofi Antubam and Ato Delaquis raised back in the early days after independence that speak to the tensions between “tradition” and “modernity,” the past and the present, the necessity of looking back and looking forward, a dynamic that continues to offer creative energy for the visual arts in Ghana.⁹

• RS: Again, many thanks, Gilbert.