National museum · Nigeria
Nigerian National Museum, Lagos
The Nigerian National Museum stands in Onikan, on Lagos Island, and opened in 1957, three years before independence. It holds some of the most important early art of West Africa — Nok terracottas, heads from Ife and Benin bronzes — and Ben Enwonwu's bronze Anyanwu, made for the museum, still stands outside.
Published 3 min read
A museum built before independence
The museum was the project of Kenneth Murray, the British art teacher who had trained a generation of Nigerian artists, among them Ben Enwonwu, and who became Nigeria's surveyor of antiquities. From 1946, with help from William Fagg of the British Museum, Murray bought Benin bronzes on the market so that they could come back to Nigeria for a national museum in Lagos. The Art Newspaper, which told the story in 2002, notes that the purchases stopped when the museum opened in 1957.
The museum is now run by the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, the federal body that also runs the Benin City National Museum and the country's other national museums.
What to see
The collection is a survey of Nigeria's art over more than two thousand years. The highlights most guides name are:
- Nok terracottas: fired-clay heads from central Nigeria, among the oldest figurative sculpture in sub-Saharan Africa. The museum's Nok pieces include a head from Jemaa that sources date to between about 900 and 200 BC.
- Ife heads: naturalistic heads in copper alloy (usually called bronze) and terracotta from the Yoruba city of Ife, thought to represent its rulers. The museum's online catalogue lists among them a Janus head, with a calm face on one side and a worried one on the other, entered in the collection in 1957.
- Benin bronzes: plaques, heads and figures from the royal court of Benin, including the pieces Murray bought back in the 1940s and 1950s.
Not everything is art. The bullet-riddled Mercedes in which the head of state Murtala Mohammed was assassinated in 1976 is on display, and the museum has rooms on Nigeria's peoples and on the road to independence. The Guardian (Nigeria) has reported that only about 300 objects were on show, with some 47,000 in storage: the galleries are a selection, and what is on view changes.
Anyanwu at the door
The first work most visitors see is outside. Ben Enwonwu's Anyanwu, an elongated bronze figure whose name is the Igbo word for the sun, was made in the mid-1950s for the new museum and still stands in front of it. It became a symbol of the young nation: in 1966 Nigeria gave a cast to the United Nations, and it stands at the headquarters in New York.
Returned works
The museum has become one of the places where looted art comes home. In 2025 the Netherlands returned 119 Benin objects to Nigeria at a ceremony at the National Museum in Lagos. The ownership of returned Benin works, and where they will be shown, is still being settled between the federal commission and the palace of the Oba of Benin; the Benin Bronzes page follows the story.
Visiting
The museum is in Onikan, on Lagos Island. Opening hours and fees are set by the NCMM and change; check locally before you go. For Nigerian modern art after Enwonwu, see our list of Nigerian artists and the Zaria Art Society; for other museums across the continent, see where to see African art. The National Museum of Ghana in Accra opened the same year, on the eve of Ghana's independence.
