The John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History in Lagos ‘pops with colour and sound’ in a dazzling departure from the colonial model
The striking new John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History in the Onikan district of Lagos island, Nigeria. The centre complex, which also houses a swimming pool, is aimed at developing the area as a cultural quarter in the cityThe striking new John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History in the Onikan district of Lagos island, Nigeria.
Will Rea, the Nigerian-born curator and academic who has helped steer the project, adds: “It is very different to a European museum, you walk in a soundscape and it’s noisy, it’s performative, you have to move your body the whole time.”The external walls of the Yoruba centre, which has 1,000 sq m of exhibition space, are concrete and finished in earth-coloured pigments reminiscent of the mud features in old Yoruba settlements.
Former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari unveiled the centre, commissioned by the Lagos state government, in January 2023, but it will open its doors to the public this autumn. Oduwole, who works for the Lagos-based firm SI.SA, says that many Lagosians of his parents’ generation learned to swim in the original Randle pool and went to the theatre in the memorial hall.
“Even today, we find that Yoruba culture is influencing the world in all sorts of ways, with Fela Kuti taking it out of oriki singing tradition into a fusion of west coast American jazz. The notion of – for example – salsa, that is in origin a Yoruba dance movement that was taken up in Brazil. You now find Yoruba cuisine in London and New York. There is real sense that Yoruba culture needs more visibility.
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