Nigerian National Museum, Lagos

The Nigerian National Museum is a national museum of Nigeria, located in the city of Lagos. The museum has a notable collection of Nigerian art, including pieces of statuary, carvings also archaeological and ethnographic exhibits. Of note is a terracotta human head known as the Jemaa Head (c. 900 to 200 BC), part of the Nok culture. The piece is named after Jema'a, the village where it was discovered. The museum is located at Onikan, Lagos Island, Lagos State. The museum is administered by the National Commission for Museums and Monuments. History In July 1948, the first architectural sketches of the museum were submitted to a conference on museum policy in Nigeria. The museum was founded in 1957 by the English archaeologist Kenneth Murray. The main purpose of constructing this museum was to preserve different historical artifacts of Nigeria. Kenneth Murray had collected several traditional masks from Cross River State, these masks were displayed in the museum. During the first decade of the museum's existence, the British Museum gave the Nigerian National Museum two plaques and other artifacts. In 2018, a virtual tour of the museum was added using an adapted version of Google Street View along with other tourist sites in Nigeria. Collections The museum houses the collections of artifacts belonging to different cultures of the ethnic groups in Nigeria. The size of the collection is estimated at 47,000 objects, made of different materials such as wood, ivory, metal and terracotta. The artifacts include masks, textiles, drums, dane guns and wooden figures. Among the artifacts, in the Yoruba section, the museum includes Egungun costumes and clay pots. The museum has a collection of statues dating from different periods of Nigeria's history. The museum also houses traditional musical instruments such as sansas, fiddles and flutes. The museum also contains divination bowls and ancestral figures made of wood, including Mumuye figures, which are used by communities in Adamawa State as well as Ikengas wooden figures, which are part of the Igbo culture.