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False msafiri habariinspiration 30 Meet James Muriuki, curator of RaMoMA, Nairobi’s ground- breaking Rahimtulla Museum of Modern Art A life in... VITAL STATISTICS NAME JAMES MURIUKI OCCUPATION CURATOR and PHOTO GRAPHER country KENYA background For as long as I can remember, I have always drawn and sketched. When I was five or six, I remember drawing what I said was a bus; it probably looked like a loaf of bread on wheels. My father was a teacher, but he did drawings on the side. My mother was also a teacher and used drawings to explain things to her pupils. I did a degree in interior design at the University of Nairobi; photography was one of the units. I found it fascinating to look through a frame at something as ordinary as a spoon and block out other things. I did my graduate paper on building a home office, and one of the people I interviewed was the painter Mary Collis, who is the founder of RaMoMA. She put me in touch with Carol Lees and invited me to a show by Kenyan painter Justus Kyalo. I joined RaMoMA in August 2001 and gradually got into curating. The greatest challenge in our new premises is to use the big space well. To select among the artists is quite challenging. They are working in very different media. It’s important that we showcase a permanent and varied collection. FURTHER INFORMATION Q RaMoMA, 2nd Parklands Avenue, Nairobi Q Open seven days a week including Saturday art fairs where local artists show and sell their works Q Tel: 254 20 374 8612 Q Email: ramoma@ africaonline. co. ke 09.00 Today is going to be a bit tricky because we have just received the 150 photographs from The GoDown Arts Centre that form the Kenya Burning exhibit they put together to document the violence that followed the disputed results of last December’s presidential election. I have to hang the entire exhibit before tomorrow’s opening. 11.00 As so often happens, a task in progress is interrupted by visitors who are interested in viewing – and, hopefully, buying – works by local artists. One of our major aims is to house a permanent collection of local art, and our wonderful new building on Parklands Avenue is perfect for that. A guided tour through RaMoMA’s seven exhibit spaces elicits considerable interest; now I need to photograph the works selected and email them to the potential buyers with the relevant information. 13.00 Sylvia Njenga arrives with her portfolio of photographs from which we have to select pieces that will make up her show in the space RaMoMA now has reserved for photography. A professional photographer myself, I am very interested in promoting local and international photographers. 15.00 Now it’s time to go through the paintings of John Kamisha and Yasir Ali, who will be featured soon in a joint show. Painting has been a mainstay of RaMoMA’s exhibition schedule, but with our new, much larger premises, we have ample space to mount several exhibits at a time that include installations like Smash Hits by Miriam Rinck ( Mina) and her partner Nairobotics Inc. Miriam is throwing an opening party tonight in the Ford Room, so I have to rearrange part of Pat Keay’s lovely retrospective of paintings from Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast to accommodate the bar. 16.00 I sit down with RaMoMA programme director Carol Lees to discuss the upcoming week. It was Carol who brought me into this exciting – and sometimes exhausting – world of art management; and it’s days like this that remind me how much I still have to learn. 17.00 It’s time to dash off to Westlands to meet someone who wants me to do an overnight photo assignment tomorrow in Mombasa, but I’ll be back in time for the party. “ People are opening their eyes to art,” says Muriuki