From the beginning, a central conundrum for modern art in Africa has been the extent to which traditional expression needed to incorporate methods borrowed from European colonizers to get the stamp of legitimacy – or even to be taken seriously by foreigners. That quandary persists even today, fueled usually by unnecessary questions about what is art and what is simply handicraft when it comes to beautiful things made in Africa.
Ugandan – and African, by extension – artistic heritage can be said to be a rich tapestry woven with the diverse cultural tendencies of our numerous tribes. Before the advent of British colonial rule, artistic expression flourished across the wider region, encompassing myriad forms such as basketry, pottery, iron smelting, storytelling, and traditional dance. These artistic traditions were not only expressions of cultural identity but also served, for the communities involved, practical and ceremonial purposes.
At the same time, Arab and other traders, who had been traversing east Africa for centuries, also left an indelible mark on artistic expression. From intricate designs in architecture to the introduction of new materials and techniques, ancient trade routes facilitated cultural exchange and innovation, contributing to the evolution of artistic expression in the region. One only has to think of the gomesi, a ceremonial floor-length dress worn by the women of Buganda, the design of which was introduced here in the early 20th century by a Portuguese Goan named Caetano Gomes. The Baganda have claimed the gomesi as their own since 1914 or so, when the wife of Kabaka Daudi Cwa II put it on at the coronation of her teenage husband. A century later, the gomesi has become such a powerful a symbol of traditional elegance that it may no longer matter that the idea came from a business-minded trader. After all, Gomes lived and died in Uganda, a Ugandan in every sense but one.
The other, more profound, influence on local artistic expression came from the West, from missionary people who arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The currents they brought are often lauded for modernizing local artistic practices by, especially, introducing new mediums as well as European artistic techniques. Paint and canvas, as it were, were the notable tools of the missionary style of expression even as indigenous artistic traditions remained resilient, deeply rooted in the fabric of Ugandan society.
Consequently, the extent to which the Western style of creating should be blended with indigenous ways of expression has been a remarkably difficult question for African teachers and artists themselves.
One of the first to grapple with this question was a British art teacher named Margaret Kathleen Trowell. She first came to east Africa in 1929, following her husband who was a doctor deployed to the Colonial Medical Service. First based in Kenya, they later moved to Uganda and lived at Mulago Hospital, in the city of Kampala, where their private residence was to become the first art school in east and central Africa.
Mulago, of course, was very near Makerere College, as Uganda’s sole institution of higher learning was then known, and it would seem that the proximity soon gave Trowell an idea: to initiate art education on a college campus. In this regard, she took direction from the British curator Kenneth Murray’s exhibition of works by formally trained Nigerian artists in London. Inspired by Murray’s success, Trowell saw an opportunity to replicate his model in Uganda, modifying it to suit her peculiar circumstances in Uganda and taking advantage of the lack of formal art training at Makerere College.
Her early years had prepared her well for this challenge. Born in 1904, she spent much of her time as a girl studying maps, nurturing a lifelong love of exploration and discovery. She attended the Slade School of Art in London between 1924 and 1926, following which she enrolled in Marion Richardson’s course at London University Institute of Education. Richardson was a legendary figure for her revolutionary approach to art education, with its emphasis on encouraging the visually expressive work of children. Drawing from the principles of Richardson’s Child Art Movement, Trowell backed a pedagogy that prioritized self-expression over imitative representation, challenging colonial biases against African art and culture.
But, in colonial-era Uganda, how far was Trowell herself willing to go in her efforts to bridge the gap between Western artistic traditions and indigenous African art?
Her own Eurocentric biases and the colonial context in which she operated reveal the complexities inherent in preserving indigenous traditions while embracing European modernism.
In 1937, two years after her arrival in Uganda, the art school that would later bear her name was established at Makerere College. Throughout her tenure at the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts, her influence extended far beyond the classroom. She became not only a teacher but also a mentor, guiding her students towards a deeper understanding of art’s role in society. Her dedication to fostering cultural pride and artistic innovation left an indelible mark on Uganda’s artistic landscape, paving the way for future generations of Ugandan artists to thrive. That her school, still running to this day, has churned out hundreds of artists over the years is a remarkable achievement in and of itself. Students from near and far have come to study art at Makerere, so that even a few of the graduates over the years (from east and central Africa) make up a scintillating roll call: Sam J. Ntiro, Francis Nnaggenda, Leonard W. Kateete, George W. Kyeyune, Elimo Njau, Lilian M. Nabulime, Gregory Maloba, Berlings Kaunda, Rosemary Karuga, Henry Tayali.
Trowell’s strategy for securing a space for her project at Makerere College (and garnering public support) involved a manifold approach.
First, she initiated art classes for volunteers and persuaded the institution’s leaders to allow students to pursue art as an extra-mural activity. Despite facing attempts to exclude art from higher education, she successfully fought against bureaucratic resistance, leveraging her influence and reputation to garner support for her project.
Second, she conducted detailed ethnographic studies on traditional arts in Uganda and elsewhere. This was important at a time when the documentation of indigenous artistic practices was often sparse. This lacuna in documentation led to an underrepresentation of Ugandan art history in mainstream discourse.
She was also actively involved in public exhibitions and lectures, engaging with both local and international audiences. She organized successful annual student exhibitions in both Uganda and the United Kingdom, showcasing the academic progress and achievements of her students.
Beginning in 1943, Trowell delivered a series of lectures on African tribal customs, showcasing artifacts from the Uganda Museum to illustrate the significance of traditional arts in the African sense of materiality. These lectures served to demonstrate the value of indigenous artistic traditions and laid the groundwork for her advocacy for art education.
A significant event in Trowell’s efforts to promote African art was the Synod Exhibition, held at Namirembe Synod Hall in Kampala, in 1938. This exhibition marked a turning point in the development of Ugandan art at the time, demonstrating the potential of modern art education to nurture African artistic expression. The exhibition featured a diverse array of artifacts from east, central, and west Africa, highlighting the richness and diversity of artistic tradition on the continent.
The success of that exhibition challenged prevailing colonial attitudes towards African art and education, disproving notions that African students were merely imitating European styles without showing genuine creative expression of their own. Instead, the exhibition showcased the unique synthesis of Western techniques with African themes and motifs, signaling a new direction for Ugandan art.
The Exhibition of Ugandan Arts and Crafts, held in London in 1939, further underscored the regional significance of Trowell’s vision, featuring contributions from Uganda, Kenya, Zanzibar, and Tanganyika. This exhibition not only celebrated the achievements of Trowell’s students; it also emphasized the broader east African community’s involvement in shaping the region’s modern art scene.
Trowell retired or resigned from Makerere in 1958 – and what happened after is instructive in the assessment of her artistic legacy in Uganda.
Under new leadership, the school expanded its offerings and further solidified its position as a hub for art education in east Africa. Cecil Todd, Trowell’s successor in leadership at the art school, was responsible for the school’s new format as a kind of art conservatory, with a new universalistic curriculum mirroring formal art education in the West. This method was a departure from Trowell’s approach, which appeared to not suppress traditional expression while embracing European techniques and mediums.
In the mid-1970s Makerere University expanded its academic programs, offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in the fine arts. This expansion provided aspiring artists with opportunities for advanced study, further elevating the status of the art school within the academy. As Uganda transitioned through various political and socio-economic changes, the school adapted its curriculum to reflect those changes as students addressed contemporary issues and trends: identity, social justice, cultural heritage, war and conflict.
The universalistic bent of Trowell’s successors has caused some to see Trowell as different from Todd in one essential way: that she was more of an Africanist in her approach. That sense of Trowell may be misleading, to say the least.
There can be no doubt that Trowell played a pioneering role in formalizing art education and promoting traditional artistic practices. By providing students with formal instruction in new techniques and principles, she laid the groundwork for the development of a professional artistic community.
Still, she was not an unconditional supporter of traditional methods of expression. In fact, no matter the inherent benevolence of her work, her Eurocentric bias marginalized indigenous artistic expressions by stealth, by requiring a blending of materials and ideas whose overall effect was – before foreign eyes – to give heft to native creativity. Yet African art in a range of mediums was beautiful before European eyes pondered it, before it could ever be categorized as anything other than the original art it was.
By emphasizing the importance of preserving Uganda’s rich cultural heritage while simultaneously embracing modern artistic practices, by encouraging artists to draw inspiration from traditional Ugandan art forms while experimenting with modern styles and techniques, Trowell facilitated a dynamic dialogue between past and present, but in doing so she was only less aggressive than her successor Todd, who was blatantly in favor of the Western model of formal art education.
To be sure, Trowell’s commitment to exposing her students to international art played a crucial role in their overall education, in broadening their artistic horizons. By introducing them to a wide range of artistic influences from around the world, including European modernism and other art movements, she encouraged them to push the boundaries of their creativity and explore what else it was possible for them to make. At the same time, Trowell’s encouragement of experimentation fostered a culture of artistic innovation among her students, allowing them the freedom to experiment with different mediums, styles, and techniques.
But it is not easy to forget that she was first and foremost a British colonial teacher who, whether she knew it or not, had inherent Eurocentric biases. She prioritized European artistic techniques and norms, thereby undercutting indigenous expression and reinforcing a narrative of cultural superiority. As brilliant as her African students were, their success depended on their ability to modernize their way of seeing, and often this was not in the way of their ancestors.
These days it is hard to see Uganda’s representation at prestigious international art platforms, such as the Venice Biennale, as justifying Trowell’s approach. In fact, it may amount to a subversive departure from Trowell’s Eurocentric approach even if the works are being shown in Europe. Artists like Acaye Kerunen and Collin Sekajugo incorporate materials traditionally used by local craftswomen, infusing their work with multidisciplinary practices and exploring themes such as women’s agency and the impact of artistic labor on the climate ecosystem. The tribal women who make Acaye’s baskets have never been to art school, but who is to say they are not thoroughgoing artists? The commercially successful Sanaa Gateja, one of Uganda’s greatest living artists, depends on a collective of women who look at his designs and mould the paper beads he uses to fashion his beautiful tapestries.
As Uganda’s contemporary art scene continues to evolve, with artists challenging entrenched colonial legacies, Trowell’s contribution remains as important as it was in 1958. Yet it acquires a hard edge all these years later. After all, talk of restitution, particularly regarding the return of looted artifacts, has been gaining more currency in the academy as well as among African government officials and artists. What British colonial officials took from Uganda, much of which remains in museums there, was attractive to the hoarders because of its intrinsic artistic value, and we know. And Pablo Picasso, the Cubist who was the most successful artist of the 20th century, drew so much inspiration from African mask maskers that it could be said that Africans were truly the originators of modern art.
Trowell’s legacy in Ugandan art history is deeply entrenched and firm, but she was not the dean of modernism in Uganda. For the uninitiated, the term itself – modernism – refers to a distinct period in art history that emerged in the latter half of the 19th century and extended through much of the 20th century, until roughly the 1970s. It was characterized by a departure from traditional artistic conventions and an embrace of experimentation, abstraction, and innovation. In addition to Cubism, the other art movements manifested in modernism include Impressionism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism.
While colonial powers and missionaries viewed Africa through a lens of primitivism and backwardness, indigenous societies were undergoing their own processes of modernization and cultural evolution.
In Uganda, as in many parts of Africa, traditional artistic practices had long coexisted with external influences. The arrival of Arab traders, followed by European colonizers and missionaries, introduced new religious, political, and economic dynamics that inevitably shaped artistic expression. However, these influences were often met with resistance or adaptation, as indigenous artists navigated their evolving cultural landscape.
While some forms of indigenous art were demonized by missionaries as pagan or idolatrous, others were assimilated into Christian iconography or repurposed to convey religious narratives. This interplay between indigenous beliefs and external religious influences added layers of complexity to Ugandan art, reflecting the broader tensions between tradition and modernity but not, in any event, making the work any more important than it already was.
In essence, modern art in Uganda cannot be understood in isolation from its cultural, social, and historical contexts. While European and Western movements undoubtedly exerted influence, Ugandan artists drew inspiration from their own traditions, experiences, and aspirations. Attributing the advent of modern art solely to external figures like Trowell overlooks the creativity of Ugandan artists who were already forging their own path in a rapidly changing world. ▪