Sammy Olagbaju-it’s Been One Year

IT will be one year, next Saturday, September 23, since Sammy Olagbaju passed away. The Nigerian patriarch of art collecting was in the middle of preparations of his second book when he left. “For a long time, Sammy had wanted to publish a book that would show important works from his collection and put on record some of his remembrances of interactions with artists”, recalls Jess Castellotte, the architect, author and critic. It would have been a follow up to Contemporarynigerianartinlagosprivatecollections:newtreesinanoldforest, which he sponsored. Olagbaju saw art collecting as a way of building relationships with artists. Eight years ago, he disclosed how anxious be became when he first went to an art exhibition in the early 1960s and how that anxiety turned him into a compulsive art buyer. He recollected the first exhibition he attended at the Goethe Institut, then the most important site of exhibition of contemporary art, on Broad Street, in Lagos. The Oshogbo artists, whose works were on view, would come and whisper to him to ask: “Egbon how do we go about pricing our works to these European Oyibo expatriate art collectors?” Soon he found himself considering… “Are these artists going to last: Are they going to keep creating these works? “Having seen the art and enjoyed it, Olagbaju said he didn’t want to part with the experience. He wanted to keep it. As he showed up at exhibition after exhibition, buying works, he started looming large in the consciousness of the artists. “At some point Bruce Onobrakpeya asked me… ‘Look do you sell these works?’”, he told this writer in his book lined, art filled sitting room close to the Lagoon in Old Ikoyi. Olagbaju helped, in a large measure, to Nigerianise art collecting; to convert the tribe of collectors from white expatriates to mainly Nigerian and to turn the country into a leading market for visual art on the continent.