A King’s Passion: A 21st-Century Patron of African Art

Lavishly illustrated in full colour, the volume features 119 African artists drawn from 10 countries including influential figures like Ben Enwonwu, Uche Okeke, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Ablade Glover, El Anatsui, and Ludovic Fadairo.

Passion, intellectual curiosity, and intuition inspired His Royal Majesty Igwe Nnaemeka Alfred Achebe CFR, over a period of 40 years, to collect and support artists from his native Onitsha, southeastern Nigeria, Ghana, the broader West African region, and indeed the African continent.

Accompanying the opening of his Chimedie Museum to the public — a repository to house and display his personal art collection—this volume chronicles the Obi of Onitsha’s journey as a collector and patron and it is written in an easily navigable language by some of the finest scholars on the subject. Carefully selected are 322 masterpieces across a broad diversity of media from the almost 5,000 — ranging from drawings, paintings in oil, acrylic, and mixed media, photography, prints, etchings, and sculpture in bronze, wood and ivory to installations and site-specific commissioned friezes in the royal palace — that underscore the His Royal Majesty Igwe Nnaemeka Achebe Collection as one of the largest and most comprehensive African-owned private collections of African art.

Includes critical essays by Sylvester Ogbechie, Frank Ugiomoh, Edwin Bodjawah, Babacar Mbow, Krdyz Ikwuemesi, Jerry Buhari, Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Oliver Enwonwu, Chichi Anyagolu- Okoye, Chika Okeke-Agulu, and Olu Oguibe