Heritage Bank supports SMEs with Nigeria's first virtual arts museum

Ifie Sekibo, Managing Director/Chief Executive, Heritage Bank Limited

Heritage Bank Limited has sponsored Nigeria’s first Virtual Arts Museum, a project of the Pan Atlantic University.

The museum, named the Virtual Museum of Modern Nigerian Art is an online, free, searchable database of Nigerian art from the beginning of the twentieth century. Its main aim is to serve as an educational resource that will contribute to the dissemination of knowledge on modern Nigerian art and artists among the widest possible audience.

“The Virtual Museum of Modern Arts is in line with our mission to preserve and transfer wealth,” said Ifie Sekibo, Managing Director/Chief Executive, Heritage Bank Limited.

He said  “preserving our heritage is a mission. A lot of people think preserving heritage is all about money, but heritage is also about what we leave behind for posterity, like the way of life, the culture we leave behind. Art is certainly a way of life; it is a depiction of a way of life. So it is a major thing for us to sponsor, it is also as our way of giving back to our society as part of our corporate social responsibility.”

Sekibo said the sponsorship is also in recognition of the huge cultural and economic benefits the museum offers to Nigeria especially the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) sector.  He said for example, it would increase access of Nigerian arts and artists to the international market, thereby boosting the business of arts.

“For the University it is a wider learning space for research, for development but beyond that it exposes Nigerian arts to the international market in the virtual space. Great men like Bruce Onobrakpeya, their legacy will leave beyond him, because somebody in China, somebody in Europe will look at his art, with the write-ups, and would be able to appreciate it more. And we would find out that we sell ourselves better on that platform. So it is not necessarily about the University, it is about our country, our heritage, and our children would be able to look it.

“Beyond that, it is also about our business. There is business in arts and it is in the form of SME. Those young men that would paint, sculpt, carve, it is an opportunity for them to display their wares and people would come to buy them. If they cannot put up major gallery or museum, that will become an avenue where they can put their wares together, and it would be out there and they can sell. So, for the university, it is a wider learning space for research, for development.”