Alan Donovan
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| Alan Donovan | |
|---|---|
 Alan_Donovan.jpg Donovan at the African Heritage House in January 2016 | |
| Born | Alan Donovan August 11, 1938 Sterling, Colorado, U.S. |
| 💼 Occupation |
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| Known for | African Heritage House |
| Notable work | My Journey through African Heritage; A Path Not Taken, The Story of Joseph Murumbi ; African Heritage House a national monument of Kenya |
| 🌐 Website | africanheritagehouse |
| Twitter= | |
Alan Donovan (born August 11, 1938) is an American co-founder of African Heritage, the first Pan African Gallery in Africa and the African Heritage House[1] based on the precolonial mud architecture[2] of Africa which has been designated a national monument of Kenya.[3][4] He arrived in Africa on July 4, 1967 as a relief officer with the US department during the Nigerian Biafra war. He resigned his post in 1969, bought a Volkswagen bus in Paris, traversed the Sahara Desert to Nigeria, and then drove across the Congo to Kenya, arriving in Nairobi in March 1970.
He was enamoured[5] with the creativity of nomadic people of the Northern frontier district of Kenya where he spent several months with them. The Turkana people had beautiful designs such as the “Akarum”, a wooden milk container based on a gourd prototype but carved of the wood of the Acacia tree. The container has curved sides and an elegant slender top used as a goblet. He decided to sell his VW bus and make a collection of artefacts from these vanishing cultures who soon would be lost to globalisation. His first exhibition in October 1970, a collection of art and material culture from the Turkana and other peoples of Northern Kenya. The exhibition created the opportunity to meet Joseph Murumbi, the former Vice President of Kenya, and Africa's most notable private collector. In 1972, the first Pan African Gallery[6] on the continent was opened in partnership with Murumbi and his wife Sheila.
African Heritage Festival[edit]
He staged the first Pan African Festivals in Nairobi including one from the island nation of Madagascar for which he imported the Madagascar National Folkloric Troupe, Miss Madagascar, several artists and a huge exhibition of Malagasy textiles, crafts, artworks and musical instruments. Famous movie stars Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine were special guests and former Miss World Persis Khambatta modelled fashions created of Malagasy fabrics, including the Lamba Mena, the fabled raw silk of the country used to honour ancestors. The second festival which coincided with the first Pan African Trade Fair held in Nairobi in 1972 featured arts and crafts from all the states and regions of Nigeria with Nigerian dancers and performers and which featured the first fashion show held in Nairobi with all African models, all African textiles and African adornment. Alan travelled through several African countries every year seeking out artists, craftspeople and acquiring textiles, art and jewellery for the African Heritage Galleries in Kenya and abroad. He opened his first jewellery workshops in Nairobi in 1971 which became the largest exporter of non-precious jewellery from the African continent for over three decades. The jewellery featured several lines and was exported to museum, aquarium and zoo shops, DisneyWorld and leading department stores and galleries. During his time in the mid 1980s as the principal designer for the Banana Republic stores in the US, he set up "global" Jewellery workshops in India and Bali.
In 1976, he had established the annual African Heritage Nights and Kenya's African Heritage Festival with a cast of models, musicians, dancers, acrobats and chefs which traveled the world under the auspices of the Kenyan Ministry of Tourism, The World Bank, Hotel Intercontinental, Hilton Hotel, Sabena Airlines, Kenya Airways and many others. He formed the African Heritage Band with leading Kenyan musician Job Seda aka Ayub Ogada.
Alan Donovan[7] organised a huge street festival for the 100th Anniversary celebrations for the city of Nairobi in 1997 and traveling Millennium Shows to herald the new century with 27 Kenya Hotels, the World Bank, and many other sponsors. For the African Renaissance Show in South Africa for 4000 international delegates, there was no hotel big enough for this show and such a large audience so the South African Government bought an old warehouse and built catwalks and stages to African Heritage specifications with kitchens, toilets, parking lots and facades.
His biggest show in the US was for 60,000 guests of the San Diego Zoo during a two-night extravaganza where models emerged from a forest and strutted over a bridge the zoo had built over a lagoon filled with flamingoes. The National Drum Ensemble of Ghana provided a stately cadence on one side of the bridge and the strains of a modern jazz quartet held forth on the other side as models wandered through candle lit tables of the zoo. Kenyan food was cooked in semi-trailer kitchens in Los Angeles and trucked down to the zoo.
Africa Heritage also produced the largest roadshow to come out of Kenya during a six weeks tour of 11 European cities in 1995.
Many renown models[8] and musicians emerged from Kenyan's African Heritage Festival including Africa's most famous models, Iman [9] and Khadija. Iman continues as a force in the fashion world up to today. The late Ayub Ogada who founded the African Heritage Band with Alan Donovan performed all over the world with his Luo 8 stringed harp, the Nyatiti. He provided music for many major films including The Constant Gardener.
In 2017 he celebrated his arrival in Africa.* He staged a 50-year[10] retrospective for the Oshogbo artists from Nigeria whose works he had displayed for 50 years[11] both in Kenya and abroad. Then in 2019, 600 guests arrived by steam train at the African Heritage House[12] headed by the Kenyan Minister of Sports, Heritage and Culture Amina Mohammed. The occasion launched the magnificent double volume opus, African Twilight by his long-life colleagues Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher.* This duo has published 17 books and acquired the world's largest repository of photos of the vanishing ceremonies and rituals of Africa. Alan Donovan has launched all of their major books in Kenya, the US and Europe since he first met them and introduced them to each other at African Heritage in the early 1970s. During the event, Alan Donovan was installed as a chief of the Yoruba by visiting chiefs Nike Seven Seven Okundaye and Muraina Oyelami and given the title of Babalaje of Ido Osun.
Awards[edit]
He has received numerous honours and awards including one from the Nigerian Government for promoting the artists of Kenya and Nigeria, an award as the founder of Kenya fashion, and a lifetime achievement award in 2015[13] for the collection and preservation of African cultural heritage. He received an award from the Pan African Broadcasting Heritage and Achievement Awards based in South Africa for “Thirty years of Visionary Leadership in the Arts in Africa”. African Heritage was given an award as the best gallery in Africa and Kenya's African Heritage Festival was noted as the best cultural show on the continent.
Alan Donovan now lives in African Heritage House, the architecture of which is based on the pre-colonial mud architecture which he calls, “Africa’s Lost Architecture”. The house was gazetted by the Kenyan Government as a National Monument in 2016.
Books[edit]
Alan Donovan has written[14] numerous books and articles,[15] most notable are his memoirs in [16] My Journey through African Heritage,[17] hand bound in a genuine royal backcloth cover from Uganda, in 2004, and A Path Not Taken,[18] a collection of transcripts and notes and articles by, for and about Joseph Murumbi. During the recent pandemic he has penned two books, An American in Africa, 50 Years Exploring African Heritage and the Legacy of Racism in America, with African World Press and Black Beauty through the Ages, which has profiles of nearly 200 women from 4500 BC to the present day which is to be published by Rizzoli NYC in 2022.
References[edit]
- ↑ "The most photographed house in Africa: African Heritage House". Capital Lifestyle. 2020-08-21. Retrieved 2021-03-24.
- ↑ "Plenty of Africa at Heritage House". The East African. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ "The African Heritage House". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ August 20, 2020, Thursday. "In life do-over, I'd be a Turkana". Business Daily. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ "Alan Donovan loves Africa's arts and crafts". Los Angeles Times. 2012-01-08. Retrieved 2021-03-24.
- ↑ "The rise and fall of African Heritage Pan African Gallery". The Star. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ "Tour of the African Heritage House with Alan Donovan". Google Arts & Culture. Retrieved 2021-03-24.
- ↑ "African heritage and the rise of supermodels". The East African. Retrieved 2021-03-24.
- ↑ "Donovan, mwanamume aliyemgundua Iman". BBC News Swahili (in Kiswahili). 2016-02-24. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ "50 years of promoting African heritage". The Star. Retrieved 2021-03-24.
- ↑ November 13, 2017, Monday. "Alan Donovan: 50 years of creating afro-fusion art". Business Daily. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ "African Heritage House en Nairobi: el guardián del África que ya no existe". Traveler (in español). 2014-06-06. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ Chemweno, Brigid. "Nairobi's art centre director Alan Donovan bags African award". The Standard. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ "Articles by Alan Donovan | AllAfrica, Daily Nation, The Star (Kenya) Journalist | Muck Rack". muckrack.com. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ "Kenyan model who conquered beauty world". The Star. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ "My Journey Through African Heritage". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
- ↑ "My Journey Through African Heritage : Alan Donovan : 9789966253392". www.bookdepository.com. Retrieved 2021-03-24.
- ↑ Sibi-Okumu, John. "A Path Not Taken – The Story of Joseph Murumbi - AwaaZ Magazine". www.awaazmagazine.com. Retrieved 2021-03-24.
External links[edit]
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