ART GALLERY AS A TOURIST CENTER
Nike Art Gallery Lagos
Nike Art Foundation of Nigeria is the sole initiative of Chief (Mrs.) Nike Okundaye with the principal objective of using it to develop and enhance our cultural heritage. She decided to use this initiative as a tool for creating awareness amongst our youths to embrace our culture instead of coping negative foreign culture. In her humble vision, Nike Okundaye also took this path as a way of reaching out to the rural women and the youths of this country and so that she can provide them with the necessary unique platforms for developing their capacities to earn a decent living through the art.
In 2007, Nike Okundaye founded a charity-Non profit organization, the Nike Art & Culture
Foundation of Nigeria with some eminent Nigerians as members of the Board of Trustees in order
to fulfil her dream of empowering the neglected rural women and the youth of this country through the art.
What came to her mind here was an art training center which she established at Osogbo where presently,
training in all forms of art is offered free of charge to Nigerian.
Also in 2007, Nike Okundaye established the Nike Art Gallery under her Foundation to provide a
unique environment for the display of artworks produced at the training center by the students
so that the principal objectives of her Foundation can be met. The Nike Art Gallery undoubtedly
has grown to be the biggest reservoir of indigenous Nigerian artwork collection in Nigeria and
currently the largest privately-owned art gallery in Africa. Since its incorporation in 2007,
the gallery now has four branches in Nigeria: in Lagos, Abuja, Osogbo, and Ogidi-Ijumu in Kogi State.
The Nike Art Gallery in Lagos is the largest with four floors of artworks of different
descriptions such as paintings in different media, batik and Adire fabrics, embroidery,
appliqué, beadworks, pen & ink drawing on paper and on canvas, aluminum & copper works and sculptures
also in different media, all set out in the most conducive climatic condition.
The Lagos Nike Art Gallery is a hub for art lovers, art collectors and visiting tourists in Nigeria.
A mixed grill of ethnic, traditional and contemporary artworks are found in all the
branches of Nike Art Galleries in Nigeria.
Coded by Judith Fashipe