National museum · Ghana
National Museum of Ghana, Accra
The National Museum of Ghana, on Barnes Road in central Accra, was opened on 5 March 1957 by the Duchess of Kent as part of the celebrations of Ghana's independence the next day. Run by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, it holds archaeology, ethnography and fine art — more than 10,000 objects by one estimate — and reopened in 2022 after seven years of repairs.
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Opened for independence
Ghana became independent on 6 March 1957, the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to leave colonial rule. The day before, Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, in Accra for the celebrations, opened the National Museum in Accra. A museum of the country's history and art was one of the institutions of the new state, alongside the flag, the anthem and the regalia that the state artist Kofi Antubam designed for it.
The building
The museum was designed by the British architects Lindsay Drake and Denys Lasdun, who shared an office with Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew and worked on several buildings in Ghana in the 1950s. Its central hall is covered by a dome, which the Royal Institute of British Architects' archive credits to Lasdun and which was prefabricated in Britain and shipped to Accra. Among their drawings is a "diagrammatic analysis of building climate and function": the museum was planned around the heat of the coast.
What to see
The museum is the oldest and largest of those run by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, and its collections cover archaeology, ethnography and fine art. Visitors' accounts and guides mention:
- Asante stools, among them ancestral stools, seats that in Akan tradition are believed to hold the spirit of their owner — the same world of signs as adinkra symbols and kente cloth.
- The chair of state designed by Kofi Antubam, on which Kwame Nkrumah sat at the Republic Day celebrations on 1 July 1960.
- Musical instruments, dress and sacred objects from Ghana's peoples, and an exhibition on the slave trade.
- Paintings and sculpture by Ghanaian artists, from the pioneers to contemporary work, in a smaller gallery, with a sculpture garden outside that includes a statue of Nkrumah.
Closed and reopened
The museum closed in 2015 because its building needed repair. After seven years of work it was reopened by President Nana Akufo-Addo on 10 June 2022. Reviews of the new displays praised the restoration; one, in the online magazine This Is Africa, also argued that some of the hardest stories of Ghana's history were still left untold.
Visiting
The museum is on Barnes Road, in central Accra. The Ghana Museums and Monuments Board publishes its fees and opening hours on its website; check before you go. For Ghana's modern and contemporary art, see our list of Ghanaian artists and the profile of El Anatsui, who studied in Kumasi before he moved to Nigeria. The Nigerian National Museum in Lagos opened the same year.